Passive Income as a Young Entrepreneur | How Real Is It?

“The future depends on what you do today.” -Mahatma Gandhi

We can all agree that today will differ from tomorrow, and tomorrow will be different from the next. The world changes day-to-day.

This is no different from how we view finance, the markets, and even jobs. Just a few years ago, someone could bring up the fact that they decided to quit their job and start making videos on the YouTube platform, and people would turn a blind eye and even say, “How about you get a real job?” or “Maybe it’s the safer path to do it on your free time”. But as the world grows more knowledgeable about what is achievable on these types of platforms, people gain a better understanding of the monetary gain someone can achieve with these career paths.

And many more opportunities like this come out of almost nowhere. We’re talking about NFTs, Metaverse, Crypto Currencies. They all sound like fads to the older generation who have been working the same 9 to 5 desk job for the past 20 years.

I find zero problems in this path of a full-time job and working for someone else. The one thing it has is stability. Fixed salary, fixed work hours, fixed tasks… it is all the same thing every day, but people find that comfortable for them.

Personally, at 20 years old, I find this path so hard to take when I am seeing my peers do such great things at a young age just doing what they are passionate about.

Now, let us talk about passive income and how it is easier to access than ever. I currently have 3 streams of passive income, and all of them are in the crypto/NFT space. Doesn’t seem stable, right? These 3 streams pull in, on average, $1,500 per month, without me lifting a finger.

The biggest comments are, “Nothing is ever really passive that makes you income, there is always work behind it” and I can agree with this fact 100%. There were so many hours, days, and weeks of research, purchasing, setup, and troubleshooting, but that is the time you invest to make a potential lifetime worth of cash flow.

Just to put it in perspective, let’s say I put in my 80 hours of research into an average salaried, full-time job.

• Average Salary in the US: $51,480 in 2021 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)
• Average Days Worked Per Year: 260 days

($51,480 / 260 days) / 8 hours = $24.75 per hour

What this shows is that I would have spent close to $2000 of time to set up the entirety of my research for these income streams, bringing me $1500 per month. Of course, that excludes the initial investment I was required to make to get everything up and going, but you can see how this plays in the real world.

Let’s say, I lose, everything goes to zero.

1. If I have hit my return on investment, everything is now profit.
2. If I have not hit my return on investment, take my losses and move on.
3. Take your mistakes and learn.
4. I am 20 years old. I do not care that I lost. Let me find something else.

Yes, it hurts to lose. It hurts a lot. But how long are you going to whine and moan about it? This is where learning to deal with adversity and punch it directly in its throat comes in handy. Stop dwelling, and move on. Stress will come your way, roadblocks will hit you, and people will try to stop you.

At this age, I am trying to get ahead of everyone in my circle, trying to progress. This doesn’t exactly mean monetary wise, but this means making the mistakes they haven’t yet, gaining the real-world knowledge they haven’t learned yet.

I believe passive income is a huge way to progress through a young person’s financial career. You can start small and build your way up slowly. From mining Etherium on a singular GPU to owning multiple rental properties, that is always the goal in mind, but being one, two, ten steps ahead of the people surrounding you is something that will never go unnoticed in the future you build for yourself.

-PK