I Built a 6-Figure Passive Income Machine — Here’s How to Do It Without Quitting Your Job

It’s okay to be petrified of life without a job.

Tim Denning

Follow

Oct 18 · 6 min read

Photo by Ubiq on Unsplash

The subject of passive income can make people vomit.

I get it. There’s a lot of nonsense when it comes to the topic. There’s plenty of hyperbole too. My
approach is different. I am not some passive income badass. Actually, when I started, I was more of a
passive income snowflake. One gust of wind from a person at work and I’d blow over from their
comments.

Passive income is often framed as something only people with superman powers can access. The
truth is if you’ve ever earned a dollar outside of your job without trying to, then you’ve experienced
the mythical fairy-godmother of passive income. Congrats.

The purpose of this article isn’t to make you feel bad or to get you to quit your job or start a blogging
empire. All I want to do is share how I did it because it will give you ideas. You won’t do it the same
as me. That’s cool. But you can copy and paste different parts. Let’s go.
Your 9-5 fuels your side hustle

I worked in a bank. They paid me okay, given all I had was a sound engineering qualification when I
started.

During business hours I’d serve clients and get them to bank with us. After hours I would write
before and after work. There were plenty of times I’d be late to work because I got caught up in a
blogging idea and couldn’t leave home until it was all on the page. Thankfully I had an understanding
boss. Instead of caring how many hours I worked, his focus was on outcomes.

Every two weeks I got paid. After I paid my living costs the money leftover went into:

 Online courses related to blogging.

 Books about the topics I write about.

 Live events that everyday people attend to get business ideas.

 Custom illustrations for my eBooks.

 Wordpress hosting for my blog.

 Web developers to update my website.

 Software subscriptions like Grammarly.

 Subscriptions to newsletters and content I would consume to serve as inspiration for my

writing.

For many years, I spent my salary on this side hustle and didn’t make a dollar. My friends used to
laugh at me. They said that the blog I started writing on 7 years ago was taking advantage of me. I
had bills. The platform I wrote on paid none of them for me.

On the one hand, they’re right. On the other hand, they’re wrong. When you fund a side hustle with
your job and do it for free, it forces you to think differently. You don’t chase the dollars. Instead, you
take your time. That means getting good at what you do.

When a side hustle pays you on day one it makes you unconsciously entitled. You start to think a
tech company owes you something. The truth is the world doesn’t owe you anything. You earn what
you get. Took me a lifetime of pain and misery to learn that.

Your side hustle fuels your investments

Eventually my side hustle of blogging started to make some money through eBooks, consulting to
businesses, 1-1 coaching, online courses, paid webinars, and platforms that pay for written content.

I didn’t quit my job though once a bit of passive income started coming in the door. Nope. I stayed a
scared little snowflake. The whole thing seemed like short-term luck.

I did something nobody in the side hustle space talks about: I invested the money into financial
assets. My regular salary paid my bills and what was left went into assets. Then the new passive
income streams bought more financial assets. Those investments made money. That money
compounded over the 7 years I followed this strategy.

Your investments replace your 9-5 income

I quit my job this year. Many people miss the point. I quit my job after doing my side hustle for 7
long years. It didn’t happen overnight. It’s definitely possible to replace a job a lot faster with a side
hustle than I did. But every one of us has our path, our challenges, and the fears that hold us back.

It’s okay to be petrified of life without a job. It’s okay to fear going back to the job market and being
asked “why do you have a one-year employment gap?”

A lot of old-school recruitment folks don’t understand side hustles. They think our lives are full of 5-
year back-to-back stints in various roles. Cancer, having a baby, and divorce are life events they don’t
get. Their resume software gets frazzled and has a fit when it sees a 1-year career gap.

I shouldn’t admit this but screw it: the fear of going back to a job is what keeps me motivated every
day not to give up.

Now, when I say ‘investments,’ I need to disclose that one part of that puzzle is crypto. I did a tonne
of research on platforms like ethereum and came to the conclusion, “this will replace the internet.”
Don’t let crypto make you think this strategy doesn’t work.