How To Earn Money In Your Sleep

I’m going to share the exact formula I use to start making money in my sleep and how any business owner can hack their thinking and create valuable high-ticket services.

When I was younger, my dad kept telling me the same thing over and over again, “Adam, if you want to be successful, you need to invent something.” Whenever he met a business owner, he would have me come and meet that business owner, I suppose, hoping that some of it would rub off on me. 

And maybe it did because ultimately, I went off to grow multiple businesses that bring in over seven figures every single year. I consult for companies to earn eight figures a year or more simply because I dared to start my own business and learn the way that I can earn money while I am sleeping.

Is It Even Possible? 

Work your way up to passive income

I kept thinking for years and years, “How is it possible that I can earn money while asleep? What could I invent?” But I just couldn’t think of it no matter how much I tried to think of the right thing. So, I ended up taking on the family business of being a janitor. While being a janitor is a pretty sucky job when it comes down to it, what it does give you is a lot of time.

I decided I would use that time to educate myself on a certain subject. I didn’t understand how to build a business or how to be more successful, so I focused on really basic things, like finding someone that loves you, dating, and relationships. 

But I wasn’t just looking at random forums online. I downloaded some psychological journals and started reading them. I decided that rather than learning from somebody that was merely paraphrasing, I wanted to read from the source, I wanted to hear what the actual experts had to say.

Start Your Earning While You Sleep Journey

It didn’t take long before I was helping people online on forums, giving them advice, and people found my advice to be more relevant, simply because I was quoting actual psychological journals and giving evidence from studies. 

Soon enough, I had people contacting me, asking to pay me money to teach them dating skills, but I didn’t want to do it… I didn’t like the idea of getting paid for something that I wasn’t an expert on. Instead, I would go out with people, and teach them what I could in exchange for maybe a coffee or for a drink in a bar. But it didn’t take long before I was so overwhelmed with people wanting to learn from me that I had to start accepting the money.

I found myself in a situation where I had people willing to give me money, to teach them dating things. But the problem was, I only got paid when I worked, and when you’re spending all your time, going out and running a business, those big checks might sound great, but they don’t happen all the time.

My First Product: A Book

Write a Book to Make Passive Income

One of my friends told me that I should write a book. I could take all of the knowledge I’d collected over the last few years, compile them all into a book, and get paid even when I wasn’t awake. I figured my book will just sell itself on Amazon and I’ll learn money from it.

I didn’t know the process of writing a book back then. Now, I have an entire system where I can write an entire book in two days. But back then it took me two weeks to sit down and write a book. The book only ended up having about 60 pages in it, so really it was more like a booklet, but I made the book, and put it up on the internet, hoping that people would buy it.

I first launched the book for about eight bucks and figured that was a good amount. I also wanted it to be in dollars because there was a bigger audience in America. And while I put this book up hoping it would sell itself, it didn’t and I started getting frustrated that this book is sitting up there not making me any money!

Since helping other business owners, I’ve learned that many people have this problem where they put something online hoping it makes money and ultimately it doesn’t. Just because you put something out there, doesn’t mean you’ll immediately start making money, you need to know how to promote it, how to market it, and how to run a business!

Thankfully I had a friend my dad introduced me to who sat down and gave me some advice. He said to me “There are two ways to think about business. On one hand, you’ve got a niche business, which is a very small business that targets a very specific amount of people looking to solve a very specific problem. And then you’ve got your general businesses, something that applies to most people.” 

Passive Income Streams Don’t Just Happen

work then money in your sleep

“You’ve got to decide which of the two you are because what you’re doing is you’re doing general pricing. A small book is $5 to $10, but you’re targeting a very small group of people that really want the advice. So, my best piece of advice for you is 1: Learn how to promote, learn how to communicate that you’ve created this book, and let people know about it. And 2: Increase the price.”

I started going out there and promoting the book by making some posts on forums and messaging people that had worked with me before and started averaging about two sales a month. I didn’t really want to increase the price because I didn’t dare believe that I could justify charging more money for it. 

So, I’m selling this work for $8, making two sales a month, although these sales are now passive. However, after a few months of doing this, I realized that earning $16 a month really wasn’t much, especially living in England where you have to pay for everything in pounds.

I decided that I would take the other piece of advice and increase the price, seeing how the first one had worked so well. While doing everything the same but increasing the price from $8 to $67, a price that was recommended to me. 

Learning To Generate Passive Income

I found it had no impact on the number of people purchasing my product. I still was selling two books a month. Only the difference is now I was earning like $134 every single month for the exact same book. Never in my wildest dreams did I believe I would get a single sale at $67!

Making Money Is All About Value and Perception

This taught me a very important lesson about business. The value of something is not in how many pages it has or the amount of ink you use; the value is what result people get from the product you give them. 

It doesn’t matter whether it’s a book, a piece of information, a video, or whether it’s an item of clothing. There are some items of clothing you can buy for three bucks and there are some items of clothing that cost thousands of dollars. What’s the difference between them? The reality is it’s the value and the perception they get.

The point is you must understand that when it comes to building a business, you need some system to earn while you sleep. You also need to understand that you can’t assume you already know how much something’s worth based on other things you’ve seen. 

If I were to give somebody advice for their dating life and it ends up helping them meet the person of their dreams, what is that actually worth to them? Is it just worth $8 to settle down with your one true love or is that in fact worth tens of thousands of dollars

Understanding that the value of something is based on the result people get and not what you charge really helps you understand how to build a business.

Psychology Hacking Your Way To Passive Income

This is the key to Psychology Hacking. Psychology hacking is thinking about things in a different way and giving yourself permission to not accept what everyone else tells you! Then what happens is you start thinking outside the box and wonder if there’s a better way to do it.

If I’m only selling two books every single month, but have an opportunity to increase the price because there is a very small amount of people that want them. Those that really want them are the people willing to pay for it. Now, I’m essentially earning more money for doing the same job!

To listen to the full episode of the most comprehensive podcast about strategically building and growing your business, the S.M.A.R.T way, click on any one of these platforms and subscribe!

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About Adam Lyons

Beyond his own portfolio of growing companies, Lyons is an advisor for over 500 brands across the US and Canada. Lyons has been featured on the Today Show, The Steve Harvey Show, Forbes, Bloomberg Business and the NY Post. He has been awarded 3 different ‘Wicked Smaht’ Awards due to his innovative business strategies and multiple 2 comma club awards. Companies he has worked with include PepsiCo, Nike, Nescafé, Discovery Digital Networks and many smaller brands.

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