If you’ve browsed the internet for more than 5-minutes, you’d have seen an ad promising you a six-figure second income and have wondered if is it possible?
Firstly, it’s absolutely possible. And it’s possible online. But it’s not as black and white as the ad you saw makes out.
Like all subjects in life – everything is grey!
So with this in mind, let’s explore further the six-figure appeal.
Warning – If it were easy…
Let’s get real – ‘Create a six-figure income in six steps’ makes for a catch sales headline.
It’s irresistible. It will catch even the most sceptical of internet browsers attention.
But proceed with caution. I’m not saying don’t explore it. Instead, understand whats the underlying lessons.
In simple terms, if it’s focused on YOU and YOUR business, then it’s a go-er.
If it’s focused on a business in a box, then you’ve got to ask yourself – if this business in a box is so easy, then why’s everyone not doing it?
That also applies to the overarching – six-figure side income. If it’s so easy, why isn’t my neighbour rolling in a brand new Tesla?
To avoid a fad, learn more by reading Kyles article on the Best Online Business Course?
Another warning – Time availability
Yes, I know – I’m that annoying guy throwing up real-life challenges whilst your all buzzing for your six figures.
For context, I LOVE that you’re working towards an additional income stream. Having built multiple myself, I can speak first hand as to how it transforms your life.
Having built multiple incomes (and plenty of failures), my aim with this article (and I guess this entire blog) is to save you time, money and energy – by avoiding the mistakes, we’ve made whilst leveraging the learnings we have to share.
Anyway, now you know I’m really rooting for you, let’s talk about time.
Time and specifically – how much time you can commit! It is a big determining factor as to how quickly you get to your six figures.
I’m assuming that your first is locked down because this is a ‘second’ income you pursue. Typically in the form of a job. So you’ll need to maintain hours and performance levels at your job. Meaning it gets the bulk of your attention.
This is by no means a hard and fast rule. But the more time you have, the quicker you’ll get there. The less time, the longer it will take.
In the final section, I’ll talk about thinking like a business owner to maximise your time.
So don’t worry too much if you’ve got 1-hour spare an evening.
Now we’ve got the warnings out the way, let’s look at creating the possibility of six figures.
Business Framework
Before we kick off this section, I want to clarify. You don’t need an MBA to start an online business.
What you do need is a product that people want. At its core, that’s how simple business is.
However, that alone won’t get you to your income goal.
Instead, pair this with a framework built on business principles to turn your idea into a product into a marketing message, into a sale into revenue into expansion.
My biased opinion says choose our BATON framework, which focuses on what I’ve described.
The first stage is – take your idea and pair it with a market that exists. We call this product-market fit.
This is fundamentally different to making a six-figure side income from a business in a box—a business in a box being – Amazon FBA or T-Shirt Printing.
(Again – these will work, but they won’t be your business, which means there will be many things out of your control).
So my message here is to learn how to build a business from the ground up, stage by stage. If done online, it doesn’t take as long as you think. (Refer back to the Warning – Time availability section)
Six Figures – The numbers
Six figures sound more attractive than £100,000.
Suppose I was in a sceptical mood. I’d say you could pass off £1,000.01 as six figures.
So my message here is to look beyond the headline. Dig deeper. Understand what you’ll be learning.
Anyway, that’s me just being silly and poking fun out of headlines. (PS – These headlines exist all around us and are defined as clickbait).
Instead of focusing on the headline, shift focus to you. Because what’s more important than six figures are – how much you need/want?
Focus on understanding your personal income and expenses. What are your income goals? How have you come to this number?
Take it from someone who has in the past said to himself: I want to make a million quid.
To then work out my dream lifestyle costs no more than £80-90k.
It’s important to create a goal that aligns with you first. Once you hit your initial goal, then damn straight level up!
This being said, let’s assume it is six figures you want, and you’ve got a ballpark of £100,000 as a side income.
And assuming you’ve found product-market fit by working through the first stage of our BATON framework.
We can then start to model numbers.
For today’s post, I want to keep the numbers broad but give you three ways to model revenue generation:
Low price, high volume (on-off)
This is where we’ll sell a low-cost product/service to lots of people.
Think back to the yo-yo craze. These were low-cost toys sold to every parent who had a child.
£2 yo-yo’s sold to 50,000 parents equals £100,000 in revenue.
(Rubbish example, I know nearly every parent in the UK had to buy their kids a yo-yo – I was feeling nostalgic).
High price, low volume (one-off)
The flipside of selling low to many. It is selling high to few.
A good example here is in the luxury product or service sector. Where a client will pay a premium for status or scarcity. Let’s say you create bespoke dining tables. This looks like this:
£2,000 dining tables sold to 50 people equals £100,000 in revenue.
Reoccurring (one-off)
Finally, one has emerged in recent years because of its ability to spread costs, opt-out when you want, and provide access to quality product/service for a lot less.
It is a subscription fee. Netflix or Amazon is the obvious example here, but you don’t even need that level of scale to achieve £100,000.
Let’s say you send to run a Podcast and you give paying supporters of your podcast access to special perks. (Cheeky link to my podcast).
This looks like this:
833 podcast supporters paying £10 a month, equaling £100,000 in revenue.
What’s right for you?
As you can see from the above examples, the revenue generation model you select will depend on your business.
But regardless of the model, I hope six figures feels way more achievable now.
To help you understand this subject better, I talk more about focusing on income and expenses in a recent post on FIRE.
Thinking like a new age business owner
Whilst en-route to your six figures, your business will grow. And with it will its demands.
Everything from – customer service, ad management, funnel optimisation, content marketing, sales enquiries (If you’ve built a side income before, you’ll know that this list is endless with new things popping up every day).
At this point, you’ll need to balance growth vs operations.
Typically this means you’ll need a variation on – software, systems and people.
Which all will begin to take a chunk out of that six figures. But that is OK. Because it’s time to shift your mindset from an employee who does everything to a business owner who wins back their time.
Ultimately to commit the time, energy and financial resource to building a six-figure side income aren’t easy. We’ve established this in the introduction. So the reason why your building this income better be a good one. Simply chasing money for the sake of it becomes spiritless after a while. Often leading to a business failure.
So to help you develop the mindset of a business owner, here are three book recommendations with quick one-liners:
Rich Dad Poor Dad: Cashflow Quadrant
The finance wizard who moved hundreds of thousands of people to work towards financial independence recommends thinking like an investor/business owner.
He explains this by categorising 4 ways to produce income:
Your job is to move from the left-hand side of the quadrant to the right-hand side. Once your business starts making six figures plus, then you can move into the bottom right-hand quadrant. But before that, let’s nail your first online business.
E-myth revisited
This book is all about systemising everyday processes to the point where you can document end-to-end tasks you do and hand them off to someone else to do. As you grow, you’ll want to focus on high-value tasks and outsource low-value tasks. In other words, you focus on growing the business and leave running the business to your team/software/automation.
4-hour workweek
The side-income bible of sorts. It’s very much a practical guide of putting into play both of the above. If you’re still wondering if six figures are possible online, then this book shows you it is.
More book recommendations here.
Summary: Six-figure second income
Before diving straight into any old business in a box course like Amazon FBA or t-shirt printing.
Take the time to ground yourself with business principles and learn a system or framework that will allow you to put principles into practice.
That’s the aim of the BATON framework we developed. But by all means, work out which is the right one for you.
Then absolutely build yourself a second income stream. Then a third. A fourth.
Just remember to loop back to why you’re building these income streams in the first place.