098: Monetizing What You Know with Jonathan Levi!

When I first learned about the concept of cash flow investing, it was like a religious experience. In my case, I went around everywhere proselyting the virtues of cash flow investing to my friends. I was so excited about the concept that I couldn't stop talking about it. In the process, I bored the heck out of a lot of people! But I couldn't help myself. The idea is so simple and elegant, right? Buy things that throw off monthly cash flow. When you have enough cash flow, you can "retire"! Indeed, all of this is true. But… over the years, I figured out that it's a little bit more complicated. It always cracks me up when I see someone have the cash flow revelation moment and the lights go on. They talk about their passive income goals and how they are going to retire in 5 years by buying real estate—even if they are currently broke! And the reality is that when you listen to a lot real estate podcasts out there, it might lead you to believe it is just that easy. Here's the problem though. In order to create passive income, you have to have money in the first place! It's math right? Remember, the Wealth Formula? Wealth= Leverage (Mass x Velocity). Let's just focus on mass for a second. Mass means how much money you have to invest. If you have no mass, it doesn't matter how much leverage and velocity you use. You still won't be able to create wealth. This issue isn't something that affects the broke either. I talk to plenty of high paid professionals who like the idea of replacing their W2 incomes with "passive" income. If you make $250,000 per year, that's not an easy feat! If you average 10 percent cash on cash, you have to get $2,500,000 into the machine to create that stream of income. Doable yes but most of us are not that patient. What if you want to move quicker? What are your options? Well—for one, understand that you have many options. If you want to move quicker, you might have to broaden your investing horizons beyond the real estate box. We might have to look into buying or starting businesses that produce a lot more income. These businesses can either serve as mass to accumulate more real estate or, like in my case, can serve to be stand-alone "passive" streams of income. Of course all of this can sound intimidating if you are a hard working professional already slugging it out for 50 hours per week. Who has time for all of this? But understand that in order to create more income, you really only have two options. Either you have to buy it (like real estate), or earn it with your time. If you can't afford to buy more, then you have to earn it and that will take more of your time. But taking more of your time doesn't mean that it has to be another full time job you add to your current busy schedule for the next twenty years. You can also invest a certain amount of time up front just like you put down a lump sum of money to buy a rental house. Then, you can leverage technology. Sound intriguing? Well, it should! My guest on this week's Wealth Formula Podcast is going to show us exactly how to do that. So…if you want to speed things up and get on the golf course, you won't want to miss this week's conversation with Udemy expert Jonathan Levi! Shownotes: [00:07] Introduction [08:59] Buck introduces Jonathan Levi [10:20] Jonathan's journey [15:57] What is Udemy and how does it work? [17:40] Jonathan's experience with Udemy [22:49] Is Udemy the an option for YOU as a stream of income? [28:39] What are the more appealing courses from the buyer's perspective? [33:30] How do I get started? (The Branding You™ Academy) [39:43] How to reach Jonathan Levi - jle.vi [42:45] Outro