The 15 Hour per Week Business Model

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Welcome to another issue of Passionate Income.

Today we’ll be discussing a business model that is both red hot right now, and can be run from A to Z in just 15 hours per week.

In particular, we’ll explain how these companies work and how to spread out your time to build and manage one in just three hours per day, Mon - Fri.

Let’s dive in.

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Before we dive in, some quick housekeeping.

First, moving forward we’ll be putting effort into creating more of a Community around Passionate Income.

While I can’t reveal the details quite yet, if you’re interested in networking / rubbing shoulders with people running successful Internet businesses, this is definitely something you’ll want to pay attention to.

Further, we want to get you - our reader - more involved in the newsletter.

So, in addition to encouraging you reply to our emails with your thoughts, ideas for what types of content you’d like us to create, etc., we’ll also be featuring our more active members right here in our content.

Starting with the results from our Christmas Cash Flow Ideas issue from December 8th. While this was something we thought of at the last minute, it was by far people’s favorite issue, getting a 96% positive feedback rating in the polls.

In response to the issue, here’s a comment from one of our loyal readers (whose actual identity we will always keep anonymous for the sake of privacy):

As you may or may not know, when you rate our issues using the Poll feature at the bottom of each newsletter, our software allows you to leave a comment afterwards.

So if you ever have any feedback, vote on the poll and drop a quick note. If you’re lucky, we might even include your insults (or words of praise) in one of our issues!

With that out of the way, let’s get into the content.

Ever since Tim Ferris’ Four Hour Workweek came out, young entrepreneurs have been fascinated by the idea of outsourcing, automation, and working as few hours as possible. Except for one small problem:

As an old business coach I used to know once said:

For better or worse, truer words have never been spoken.

Unless you worked the type of 9-5 where you gained so many of the right skills you can jump straight into entrepreneurship and launch a passive income business overnight, odds are you’re not going to be working a 4 hour workweek anytime soon.

But that doesn’t mean you “have to” grind for 50-100 hours per week just to get something off the ground. Quite the contrary in fact.

And while there are - in theory - many ways you could earn a full-time living online working just three hours per day, most of them:

1. Are not scalable

2. Can never be sold as part of an exit

3. Require you to trade dollars for hours

4. Would be dramatically hampered by you working so few hours

With Newsletters, however, it really is possible to build a biz in three hours / day. And really, I should know:

In addition to this (Passionate Income), I also run an AI newsletter.

Either way, here’s a basic breakdown of the prep work required to launch a Newsletter.

In Part Two, which will be delivered as a separate issue, we’ll discuss what tasks you would work on each day to actually build one of these in just three hours / day.

Prep Work

First, I should be clear it’s impossible to sum up how to launch and operate a literal business in one short email (LOL). With that said, you can use the below as a jumping off point if you decide this is a path you want to pursue.

Anyways, the first thing you need to figure out is the What.

As in, what subjects / topics / industries are you interested in enough that you could commit to writing about them for the next 12+ months?

While many people will tell you to start with the Who, your target market doesn’t matter if the only reason you’re writing to them is because you think it will make you money. Mainly because, if making money is your only motivation, you’ll eventually give up when things get hard.

But if you’re legitimately interested in the topic, it’s likely you’ll push forward.

Mainly because the topic is something you’d want to learn about regardless of whether you were building a newsletter about it.

Second, once you’ve figured out what you want to write about, you need to see if there are any others newsletters in your niche.

While many people see saturated niches / competition as a bad thing, in the newsletters space its a blessing. Why? Because it means more opportunities for cross-promotion.

For you to legitimately work 3 hours per day, you’re not going to have time to build an audience on social, create organic content or run ads. Meaning, if you want news subscribers (which are critical to growing the biz), you need to get them from other newsletters.

But if the niche you choose is so small there aren’t any other newsletters, it’s going be impossible for you to grow your business working just three hours / day.

Admittedly, there are situations where people launch these without depending on referrals from other newsletters to grow. The only caveat is, in 95% of situations they already had an existing business and/or Personal Brand they could leverage to drive new subscribers.

If you’re starting from scratch, however, growing your reader base via promos inside other people’s newsletters is a must.

Next, once you’ve figured out the What and the Who, the How, When and Where are easy.

In terms of the Where, you’ll want to get yourself setup on either Beehiiv (our preferred platform), ConvertKit or Substack. We like Beehiiv and ConvertKit as they easily integrate with the growth platform you’ll be using.

In terms of the When, you’ll need to decide how often you want to mail. We recommend 3x per week, as anything less means you have very few opportunities for promotion.

At the same time, the more often you mail, the more hours you’ll have to work.

Last, in terms of the How, these platforms are very easy to use.

In fact, in addition to their native tutorials, support and onboarding documents, you can find “How to…” videos for using each of these softwares on YouTube.

What matters most is identifying competing newsletters.

While many beginners are scared of competition, saturation in markets shows there are tons of people interested in XYZ topic.

As an example, while there are lots of AI newsletters, there are also hordes of people interested in AI.

So, by carving out a specific niche and tailoring our content to them, I was able to go in and start getting readers / generating revenue despite having lots of ‘competition.’

On the flip side, while starting Surfing for Single Dads newsletter could help you avoid competition, doing so would make it near impossible to grow. Mainly because there probably aren’t that many single dads who surf.

Further, newsletters aren’t exactly news. In fact, they’re red hot right now and have been for a while. So if you can’t find any competing newsletters in your niche, it’s probably because there isn’t any money to be made there.

So, embrace saturated markets.

As long as you can put a unique spin on the topic to separate your newsletter from everyone else, that’s all that matters.

And in our next episode, we’ll break down what kind of tasks you would work on each day to legitimately build your newsletter in just 15 hours per week.

Until then.

💡 Takeaway: Some businesses, like Elon Musk’s rocket company Space X, involve thousands and thousands of moving parts. Newsletters, however, only involve a small handful. And because of that, you can launch and run one in as little as three hours per day, making them highly attractive for solopreneurs, creators and digital nomad types.

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