Why Trying to Make Multiple Income Streams Can Be Bad
Oh here we go again.
I bet that you as my reader have ever heard the phrase "More is better" before.
I am also willing to bet (although I hate betting) that most people, think that its always good to have more. That depends really. Having more sickness, and medications to swallow isn't good, as one of the example why "More is better", not always a good thing.
"More is better" then is not the optimal way about thinking about things in life, having always, means that sometimes, it is not. It is much accurate to say that "Certain things are better more, sometimes".
Unfortunately, having multiple streams of income is not always a good thing. Which is a conclusion that can be derived based on what is consisted in that "multiple". We will try address that in this write up, more of as an idea first, of how to achieve optimal results with minimal stream of income while reducing the risk of blowing up, and have a good amount of safety net for failures.
Ideally, this discussion is beneficial for the general viewers, although it is specifically catered to those who wish to break from their 9 - 5 job in mind. Regardless, in return, what I wish is that this article to deliver its value to the readers.
*In no way I am referring to 9 - 5 of other people is bad, but only mine because of what I am trying to achieve and how the system is structured to get most of my time, with little to nothing as compensation in return*
If you saw the title and click anyway, knowing that your beliefs will be challenged, I salute and admire your openness to discuss the subject matter.
Now, I am not claiming that what I say is right, and yours are wrong. But rather to inspire critical thinking and to challenge the norm's principle to why "More is better" is not always the case with money generating streams.
The only scenario that it is good, is when you already have all them set and is currently producing with minimal supervision and minor hiccups along the way. If you are at the current point where you are still trying to make multiple of them work, its best to take a step back and take a harder look to why you might fail in most of them due to overloading and other unforeseen events. Do so, to minimize the risk of failing multiple endeavors and increase your chance of success focusing on a few.
Bear in mind, this is not me putting bad juju on your endeavors, but most of the time, focusing on less, is going to give you a better return in monetary gains from your effort and focus. Sometime, the difference is jaw dropping.
People who plant more will lose
Both my grandfather and father used to tell me a story from the time when they were farmers before moving to the city. I did not understand the true meaning behind those stories, instead understanding that those were their precious memories. As I became older, I became to understand what those stories truly meant, for both of them and myself.
My grandfather owns a piece of land, just like everybody else back in the village. As a part of government subsidized program, they were encouraged to grow Black pepper on their lands. The agency will provide them with the black pepper's saplings and fertilizers. The receiver however have to work the lands, harvest the pepper and sell the pepper back to the government agency with an agreed price.
Black pepper is not to be confused with Bell pepper. Just for your information. They are entirely different plant types.
On their piece of land, my grandfather and my father work to grow their Black Pepper. My grandfather decided that they will only grow 100 saplings as opposed to their other relatives and friends who grow more than 1000 saplings on their own land. "We have grown more plants, and we will reap more rewards!" they said laughingly looking at the huge gap between the saplings on my grandfather's land.
My grandfather heard them speaking and ignored it while my father got angry. Angrily, he asked my grandfather this question "Dad, why don't we plant more Pepper? We have a bigger land than them, and we have the knowledge to take care of them!". My grandfather answered with just a simple response "It's alright, just keep working the land". My father, being puzzled and angry to why grandpa wasn't fazed by the demeaning laughter, in the end, just followed grandpa's instructions.
I know you will say "Your grandpa and father harvested more than the rest of them did!". In fact, they did. Many of their friends and family were confused why. Their first thought is that grandpa uses better fertilizer, but in fact, they just used the same brand fertilizers that were subsidized by the government. Some even assumed that grandpa uses black magic. lol. I don't care enough to explain that part. Not interested.
Their large harvest, year after year were contributed by not because my grandfather were an experienced Agriculture officer, but by the mere fact that the less Pepper plant he has, the more focused he can be with his plant as he said so himself. Making his Pepper trees much more healthier, bulkier, bigger, and produces more pepper than those who planted 1000. Due to the huge gap in between the pepper trees, an infected plant could then be isolated and burnt without affecting other plants.
On the other side of the fence, the neighboring farmers had most of their plants died, and infected with Foot rot (stunted growth) sickness, and had to kill off more than half of their plants as the sickness were spreading due to the tight spacing with each plants. There were no known chemical agriculture products during the time. Making their workload increase. The other half were not properly fertilized, and did not produce any pepper, while some produce only a little.
Quality over Quantity, could not be pictured more accurately than this.
On top of that, since their relatives planted more Pepper that cause the high workload, they had to hire extra manpower - causing their sales margin to further diminish. In the end, their relatives and friends could only keep as much as they pay their workers. My grandfather and his children on the other hand, earning almost 50 times more for almost 10 years before they decided moving to the city. To this day, grandfather's method is used for the pepper's tree management blueprint by the agriculture agency due to its efficiency in production.
Ultimately having too much on your plate could cause you to spread yourself rather thinly. One way or another, that will break.
Here's me reading in between the line; Although we could say that doing too much will cause us to lose focus. But the story also tells us this: Most endeavors or business adventure requires time. In this story, planting Black Pepper took roughly 6 months to 1 year for you to start seeing any actual results. This is the same with any business adventure or income stream creation you have in mind. The neighbors, not knowing what the result would be 12 months into future, ultimately wasted their time, effort, money and other resources. Most people continue on their failing endeavors due to cost sunken fallacy and much like other fallacy, they will incur cost and lost.
How does it looked like today
During the boomers era, having one job is more than enough for a family to thrive. That is why the mother of the family could afford to be a housewife while her husband goes to work and become the only breadwinner. Around 10 years ago, for a family to thrive, both of the husband and wife has to go to work, while leaving their children with a nanny or to leave them at the child daycare. Today, not only both had to work, in certain cases, both of them had to work at two different jobs each. What it will be in the next 10 years? Of course we are talking about a low wages job here, but still, this represents the reality of vast majority of the populations in the world.
A full time blue collar worker today could not afford to have life savings, even when they are single due to high rent, car for commuting and paying for necessities like foods and bills. Whatever the argument people have about learning to save, while eating once a day, or cheap trash food, the fact remains, the wages are not moving up in parallel to the economic pressure and inflation. In the end, for most people, its an endless struggle.
What consequences it have?
It has become a rather normal thing today that everyone wants to be an entrepreneur, investors, and philanthropists. Not surprised by it, with monetary policies in the dump, and with influencers flaunting their wealth on social media (Which by the way are mostly fake!), most people found themselves entrapped in mind and reality by the allure of "I want to be just like that". We may think its funny, but I see a troubling issues the world population would have, if the trend continues.
It is not all bad to be honest, as at this golden digital era, working for money is no longer something you can only achieve by working in corporate environment, but you could also earn a living by utilizing the digital network.
It's the new normal
While investing for residual income could be considered as a stream of income, a good one at that, other type stream of income however, require a lot of effort and energy in comparison.
If you are working at the same time, then that will qualify you to 2 income stream.
Adding business on top of that will add to that, and so on and forth.
In the end, a today's normal person's income stream will be as below:
1 Day to day 9-5 job
1 Investment portfolio that heavily emphasized on residual incomes
A person who tries to break away from their 9 - 5 job normally will have
1 Day to day 9-5 job
1 Investment portfolio that heavily emphasized on residual incomes
1 Investment portfolio that emphasized on future profits
1 or 2 Side hustle/business
Finally, a person who takes the advice from the internet influencers
1 Day to day 9-5 job that they will quit soon
1 Investment portfolio that heavily emphasized on residual incomes
1 Investment portfolio that emphasized on future profits
1 Side hustle that is based on the skill of the person like Upwork and Fiverr
1 collaborative side hustle with a group of friends that emphasized on service providing
1 Consultation/teaching business
1 Side hustle based on social media (branding/influencing)
That is a lot, and yes while it is possible for a person to do all that, it will get real dicey considering how much thing can go wrong at once. We need to note that some people have two jobs at once like I have previously stated.
Don't spread yourselves too thin
I find myself kept repeating the phrase, after all, it is that important.
On the surface, having a multiple income stream of 1,000 USD per month each, is a good thing. Afterall, more money opens up to more possibilities in life. Also, isn't diversifying is the go to mantra for every successful investors?
Let's be real, first of all, to maintain multiple income stream, takes a lot of work.
Humans, such as us, assuming you are one yourself, time is a limited resources we have in life. You can't technically buy more time for yourself, but you can save more time. Time is an illusion, in no way that you have control over, or have more by buying them from the shelves of 24hour convenience store. People tend to overestimate how much time they have, only to realized the lack of it at the end of the rope. Let's try not to be them.
This is where the whole idea of having multiple income stream gets a jolt of reality.
I must have watched a lot of youtube videos that explore on the idea of having multiple income of streams. Truly, I liked watching them for ideas, but to truly took their advice is something that I always something I deter. Well, some of the ideas aren't just feasible.
Now that we know that how much hours we have, how about how much time in those limited time, that we can remain focus?
Focus, the elusive one
Now now, there is almost no way of answering this correctly. The push for focus, feel different depending on the tasks at hand and the amount of energy you have for that day. I said "feel" because there are no metrics to measure focus. You just are, and you just don't. And in no logical sense one would say they would work 12 hours per day non stop, without getting a burnt out and demotivated. No one could, without occasionally take a smoke/coffee breaks in between tasks.
*Don't smoke! It's bad for your health*
Humans on average could stay focus on their work for around 5 hours per day while having an attention span for around 15 seconds before getting distracted. For those who are working, what happens to that remaining 3 hours? Eating, chit chatting, watching youtube, playing games, toilet time, smoking breaks, and etc.
Adding the time, on actuality, people who work could only focus on their work for no longer than 3 hours. Some study suggest that 1 hour is a maximum time, and for every task after, are completed on a drained brains. This makes for poor decision making, low quality work, and mismanagement of work. Instead of being productive, a counter productive work, is produced.
It - happens - all - the - time. Whether you care to admit it or not.
Tying it all up together
Now that we have established the sense of time as limited resources, and our capability to stay focus on a task, an appropriate way forward is to understand why having too much multiple income streams could potentially be the very thing that will hinder you from seeing any success.
Some people doesn't like the idea of having multiple income streams to be shitted on, I'm not. Its a waste of my energy and shit anyway. What I'm proposing is this.
What about having only 2 to 3 active income streams - focusing on them, making them stronger, making them earning more. While having 1 or 2 passive ones, like owning a residual income generating investments like crypto staking and a tradfi scheme.
With this discussion in mind, I will list the pros and cons of having multiple stream of incomes.
Pros!
More money (maybe) if done right
You can brag to your friends and family about all the business you have
If you are not dictated by the shiny object syndrome, you could actually learn a lot from all of the endeavors on your list
More opportunity, if you are able to determine them while being busy
Whatever you think the good things that come with multiple amount of businesses
Cons~
You might not be able to earn anything for a long time, or only earn from only some of them. Every business/ income generating activities are a part of process. In order for you to start earning, you have to start monetize. To start monetize, you have to actually get the business preparation go into (70-100)% completion state before it is stable enough to earn. Most quit halfway anyway.
More business, more distractions.
More problems to solve
You might not be able to attend to all of them in one day, well, because you only have 18 hours a day (minus 6 hours of sleep) just like all of us. Boohoo, you are not special. Me too!
High starting budget due to the multiple interests.
Some of the business endeavor require your full attention, and you are forced to keep some of your interest on KIV (Keep in view) list of to do. Making the itch behind your skull worst.
You can't scale your businesses properly due to the limited time
Now, it is not all gloom and doom. For those who want to make their interest be fruitful. You can:
Only take a handful of endeavors one by one. Completing each, one by one. Not all at once. You can include those activities that does not require a lot of your time. Like having 1 Side hustle related activity, and 1 investing related. If you feel comfortable enough, you may add 1 or 2 more activities.
Make 100% sure that some of your endeavor can run on its own first, before leaving it to pursue another endeavor. Choosing a business model that requires a minimal monitoring and maintenance is probably a good idea. For example:- A laundry machine business/vending machine business.
There are no such thing as true passive income. There is a passive income, with minimal supervision (Crypto staking). If there are any, the required initial work will require immense effort. (Book writing/Youtube channel).
All in all, if you wish to have multiple income streams, you might want to have some kind of assistance and professional advice to reduce the risk of blowing up.
The best way of making a multiple income stream is to create income that originated from the same skill. And this is according to my own experience.
For example;
Writing business
You could potentially earn from:-
Google adsense (only available for web2.0) - create your own blog with hosting sites
Product based affiliate marketing
CPA affiliate
Selling courses/your own products
Tipping (Kofi/Patreon)
Web3.0 tokenizing (only available for crypto projects)
Be a freelancer and write for others (Copywriting/Ghost writing/Fiver/Upwork)
You have to be aware although all of it originated from the same skill, some required extra skills to make them complete. Creating your own website will require you to understand SEO writing, directing traffic to your website, understand google adsense, backlinking, website designs and many more to make the endeavor work. Writing only come, after you have set up all of the above which will make the journey much more harder, and tedious.
Now, what's the point of knowing all this?
Remember that knowledge is potential power. But is not power itself. There for, action is needed. In order to take advantage of this knowledge, learning how to prioritize is important. And with that limited time in a day, you have to nit pick what is actually important for what you are doing currently (business, work, freelance, etc).
However, it is my wish that every reader's endeavors to be fruitful. Just remember, if you see anyone who has successfully done this, are the 1% survivors of the endeavors. You might be subjected to survivorship bias and might not realize that you are on your way to failures. It is alright to fail, as they are invaluable experience. The last thing that you want to do is to take any advice seriously and do things in accordance to your own capabilities in skills and learning. Nothing is ever guaranteed, but it does not mean it is not worth doing. But, venturing the path wisely, will make your endeavors much easier to navigate. Last, all the best.
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