The Roadmap To Time Freedom—Destination Passive Income

Hey, it's Mark Podolski. The Land Geek is your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com and I'm really excited for today's guest. She's a little different, but we are all singing from the same passive income song sheet. And we're really excited to really get a full sort of view of what she does differently and uniquely than anyone else. But I'd be remiss if I didn't properly introduce my co host. You know him, you love him. The professor, the brain, the flight school sherpa. Scott Todd from Scott todd.net landmodo.com if you're not automating your Craigslist and your Facebook postings, posting domination.com thelandgeek and I have to even mention another one investor ninjas.com Scott Todd how are you? Mark I'm great.

How are you?

I'm great. I'm great. I, I love passive income. SCOTT TODD well, who does?

Like, why wouldn't anybody? Like, why doesn't look, you know, that's one of the, I think the coolest buzzwords out there is passive income. Like you say passive income and like, you catch everybody's thought because everybody dreams of, like, money just showing up. Like, just back up the Brinks truck. It just shows up at your house. We unload it, maybe it just shows up in your mailbox. And there's lots of different ways to create passive income. And I think today we have a different perspective too. So I can't wait to get going. Yeah.

Let's talk to our guest, Sylvie McCracken. And if you're not familiar with Sylvie, she's got a very simple bio. She helps hardworking health professionals harness their drive and take back the wheel to get more out of their practice and their life. So she's got this amazing website that is all about the analogy of your life being an automobile. Sylvia the Kraken.

How are you?

I am fantastic. Thank you for having me, guys.

All right, Sylvia, let's just jump in your car and let's rewind. Let's reverse. We're going to shift into reverse. And how did you start working with health professionals? And what got you into that aha moment of hey, I got to help these people get passive income?

Yeah. Well, it started kind of, I guess by accident. So my first website, my first business was a health nutrition blog is what it started as and continues to run today. And it is, you know, we were just sharing health and nutrition information and monetizing that. And sure enough, eventually, Docs and nutritionists and RDs started purchasing that information and asking for advice and whatnot. So that's when I started dipping my toe into helping and coaching and figuring out, do I even want to do this? Do I even, can I teach this? And so that was a few years ago. And cut to today, where we only really help. I mean, 98% of our clients are probably health professionals. A few others have snuck in, but that's kind of what we focus on now.

Why health professionals?

So mostly because that first website was all about health. And so that's who just naturally started gravitating and asking those questions to start with. And then also because what we found was that health professionals that were going to just generic business coaches that helped anyone and everyone didn't really understand their positioning their market, you know, how to sort of, you know, we bring kind of that health background as well. So when we're crafting and positioning a title, we kind of know what someone with autoimmune disease struggles with or what someone, you know, that's losing weight struggles with, or what someone that has Lyme disease struggles with. You know, we have a background in health as well. And so that's just kind of naturally evolved that way.

Very cool, Very cool. So why do you think passive income is essential for all your clients, for every entrepreneur?

Yeah, Well, I mean, the main reason, I mean on the, for the entrepreneur is really it's like insurance for your business. Right. So the complaint we hear most, and of course the misconception there is, you know, there's the myth of the rich doctor. The doctors make so much money and you know what, how could they possibly have any sort of problem revenue wise or profit wise? The reality is, you know, my opinion, docs don't actually make that much money. But more importantly, that money is usually tied to their hours, meaning the minute they take two weeks off, God forbid, they take a month off to, for maternity leave or for, you know, to help someone that's sick in the family or anything like that, their income drops to zero. And when they, when their overhead is what it is, that's a pretty dramatic. Takes all year to recover. So having no income at all that comes from anything other than their time being alive, well and at their desk is really a problem business model wise. It's a, it's a business model problem.

Scott. Todd.

You know, Mark, I went to, I went the other day with my, one of my children to the dentist office and I'm sitting there at the checkout counter and there is literally A stack, I don't know, the size of my head, filled with what looked like checks, you know, like, check after check, check. I'm like, man, look at all those checks. And I'm just thinking, like, man, there's a lot of money in there. And then I started thinking through, like, holy cow, like this. This doctor must be printing the dollars. And then I stopped for a second and I looked around and I'm looking at the building that they had to pay and all of the equipment they had to invest in and their education, and those dentists are tied to those rooms all day long. And I was thinking, there's not a dollar in the world, like dollar price tag in the world that would get me to like, stop what I'm doing now and go and do that. I don't care how large the checks were, right? Like, it just seems miserable that they're locked up there. And so I think that that's, that's a key point, is that, you know, like, you some at some point in time you have to weigh out, like, yeah, there's a lot of revenue coming in. What's the profit? And then at the same time, what's your time worth? And like, how much time are you losing by not enjoying your life, not. Not living the way that you want to? Key point.

It's so true. And you know, I coined that word solo economic dependency, which means if you're personally not working, you're not making any money. And in my book Dirt Rich, I actually used the dentist as an example. If their hands are not in someone's mouth, they are not generating any revenue. And I actually think it is irrelevant if they love it or not, because at some point you are going to wake up and you are not going to feel like doing it. Your energy is going to be different. And if you don't have that choice, you are really not free. So, Sylvie, how do you get somebody to kind of step back and see that, hey, you don't have a money problem necessarily. You might. But let's say that they've got a successful practice. Let's say they're generating a million in revenue, their take homes. Half a million. They're the top 1%. That being said, out of that half million, how much money do they need to save to even get to that point where that savings is even gonna, you know, move the needle? Because as they're making more money, their lifestyle continues to increase. And so it's, it's just this massive treadmill. So how do you help them see number One, you've got a, you've got a, you don't have a money problem, you have a time problem. And number two, how do you create that roadmap for them to solve it?

Yeah, so number two, I can definitely answer number one. It's hard because the reality is I often can't, I can't, I can't get someone to see it. Either see it or they don't. So, meaning usually by the time they come to us, by the time they become a client, some other external factor has shown them that. For example, my chiropractor client who broke her wrist, all of a sudden, that's it, game over, party's over. Right? So her revenue dropped from 60k to 20k immediately and will probably go close to zero. Because as a one handed chiropractor there's only so much you can do. So a lot of times it's that or it's death in the family or it's maternity leave and now racking up loans to make up for three months of no income, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That's much more impactful than me trying to convince someone on a presentation. I just don't do it. They either can see it or they can't. So unfortunately a lot of the times, a lot of times the sort of newbie doc or newbie health practitioner, dietitian, nutritionist, etc. Has this sort of, for lack of a better term, delusional optimism of I just graduated, all I got to do is put up a shingle and everything's going to be fantastic, clients are going to fall from the sky, it's going to be great. And there's really not much I can do with that. You know, there's not much light shedding I can do at that point. You know, I mean, they either can see ahead a little bit or they can't. And if they can't, then we've got to, you know, I'll hear from them two years later when things are not going the way they thought they would go. As far as creating that roadmap, I mean it's, it's somewhat simple in that they, you know, health professionals have such a wealth of information and expertise in their brain, so they are more than educated. You know, million years in school and then a lot of the times, quite a few years, boots on the ground, dealing with patients and usually 80% of the time, you know, it's Groundhog day repeating themselves over and over and over again with their specialty endocrinologists. See, you know, you know, two different cases 80% of the time, and then there's the rest of the cases. Right. So all of this stuff that they're repeating themselves 80% of the time, we really just pull it out of their brain and put it in something that's packageable and sellable and, you know, it's able to help, of course, the masses. Right. This is a win, win, win scenario where the reality is we're never going to replace one on one care entirely, and there's no way. Should we. Right. Emergency rooms need to exist. One on one care needs to exist. But can we agree that we don't need to do one on one for the things that we're repeating over and over and over again? For preventative medicine, there's a better way for the patient client to receive that as well. So we just take them through our process and really pull that out in a marketable and organized way and help them to sell it.

Give us a case study.

A case study. Oh, my goodness. All right, let's see. I'm thinking of my nutritionist client, but that probably won't apply because she's a blogger as well. How about my. Well, the macronutritionist client, I can think of. So with her in particular, I mean, it was 99 problems, one of which is she was charging too little because of course, she's not an md. So there's all these other sort of things in the health world, right, of this sort of hierarchy of degrees. And so she was charging too little per hour. She was getting exceptional results for her clients, helping them lose weight, helping them transform their bodies. Which meant, of course, in addition to just that, which seems simple, it meant really that these mothers are able to chase after their children. It meant that these mothers are not hiding behind the camera and not wanting to take pictures with their kids on family vacation. So she's really transforming generational problems, really. Right. It's really this multifaceted domino effect. And we just took her incredible expertise and her incredible experience. She brought that to the table, gave her none of that, and we just helped her pull it out. I call it like, you know, a bunch of gold necklaces in her head that were just a tangled mess. And we just helped her unpack that. We created an incredible outline, you know, gave her an incredible title, an incredible sales page, incredible cover. Content marketing helped her with her affiliate marketing. So she was. She had a little bit of an audience herself, you know, tiny list of 600 people. And we helped her create an audience by Reaching out to other people where her audience were already hanging out. And right now she's making probably about 30k a month. And she's a stay at home mom essentially.

So, you know, it's not 30,000amonth from an ebook.

No, it's a combination of ebook and her group coaching program. So the other thing is we, you know, again slowly phased out her one on one entirely that she was making peanuts on and had her just turn that into groups. And so, you know, again, it's either passive income or leveraged income. I wouldn't call group coaching, you know, passive income. I would call it maybe a hybrid. But the reality is what was most important to her was not money. She really didn't care about the money. She wanted enough money. She wanted to make, you know, six figures, but didn't really, you know, just, just that it wasn't like she has this dream of a multi million dollar business. She wanted to make enough money, but more importantly, she did not want to sacrifice picking up her kids after school and spending the summers with her kids. And so we had to fit it into that. And for a lot of our clients that's the drive, possibly because that's my story as well, where the money was sort of like, yeah, we need to make money, but more importantly, is it, are we going to be there after school for our kids? And that was the main driver. So we managed to make it work even during the, even with those time constraints and get her to her call.

Scott.

Todd, I think it's a great story. I think that, you know, for me, one of the things that stands out a lot, and I think that people get hung up on this is people look at, you know, there's a lot of people listening to this, that they want to add their corporate jobs, right? Whatever it is, they want out. And then they think like, okay, well I have to make exactly what I make now. And Mark, I gotta tell you man, like a lot of people, they don't need to make what they need, what they're making today. They can actually make less and still enjoy. And you won't even feel it because for example, like when you have your own company, the tax rules are different. Things that you can't deduct as an employee, your business can deduct for you. Like for example, health care, your business can pay for your entire family's health care insurance and every bit of medical claim that you have. And there's various other ways that you can still get that income, if you will, and let the company handle It. And so you don't even need as much money as what you needed to bring home. Literally bring home. And I think that that story kind of pulls that through. It's not like you need a billion dollars. You don't need to live the billion dollar life. I mean, if you want to, great, go do it. But that lifestyle is not really, you know, like you got to, you got. I guess what I'm saying is you got to be careful what you want. Do you want, do you want to have a lifestyle and life, or do you just want to be chasing the dollars and trying to collect, you know, billions of dollars? Because you can't do both. You got to really decide what you want and then choose an avenue to go get it.

Yeah, I really like the way that she leveraged the time from one on one to group so that she was exponentially able to increase the output and keep the input essentially the same. And then what I really liked is the fact that, you know, it's this gradual sort of process. It wasn't just this, you know, hey, we're gonna throw this against the wall and see if it works. Sylvia, I can imagine though that If I'm working 40, 50, 60 hours a week, I'm tired. How on earth will you be able to convince me to spend more time doing this side hustle, with the main goal being some passive income or even leveraging like you did before?

That is a great question mark. And I think the key word there is convince. And the reality is I can't. You know, and again, I go back to, I don't convince, I don't sell. It's, you know, they have to be convinced, usually by external circumstances. So the reality is it gets worse before it gets better. Right? Because you have to now take your, you have to keep your 40 hours a week or 60 hours a week, where it's putting food on the table. And now you're gonna have to give up some of your evenings and weekends too, to create this. So the reality is it's not for everyone. And that's the buy in, right? That is the cost of entry to this. There's nothing passive about setting up a passive income stream. There's real rolling up your sleeves, work to be done to set it up, and you've got to want it bad enough. So for me, the drive was there. I had two toddlers and a teenager. I had a full time day job. I was the sole provider for our family of five. And the reality is I knew that I could either give up my Netflix time and make this happen or this was going to be my life forever. And I was going to, you know, those toddlers were going to be teenagers and I still was going to be doing the same thing or more. So, you know, it is one of those things where, you know, the sacrifice, I can't really sugarcoat it. It's not going to be easy. There is no get rich quick. There is no easy button. We can definitely remove a lot of the learning it the hard way and skinning your knees along the way, but there's some real work to be done, and that's going to require time.

Yeah, absolutely. So how do you define time management for your clients?

Yeah, so time management. Well, I mean, one of the, I think the first step in time management is really taking a red pen through a whole bunch of things that don't need to be done that you can eliminate. Really kind of auditing your time, I think is probably the best way to start. I love that. You know how lawyers work where they know where every three minutes went, you know, and part of that's because they bill 400, 600 or whatever per hour. And so they will bill you for the three minute it took them to reply to your email. I kind of take that same approach, and I think we should all apply it. We should all be valuing our time as this precious finite resources that expires every 24 hours. You're done. The day is done. And if you were to, you know, if any one of your listeners wanted to take this as an experiment for one week, just one week, track your time like a lawyer does and see where it goes. And I guarantee you there is no way you would have estimated that. I guarantee you you were wrong on your estimate and myself included. So every once in a while, I'll spot check again. Every few months, I'll be like, wait a second, let's take a look at this again. And sure enough, there's these leaks of time, these buckets of time that either, you know, again, you kind of are able to make decisions, right? It's your time that you, you get the budget of 24 hours just like everybody else, and you can decide where that goes. If you're serious about getting this done, then you're going to have to be kind of ruthless and remove some things to make room and make space.

I love it. Scott Todd.

Yeah, Mark, that's, it's funny because when people ask me all the time, they're like, hey, you know, how did you, how did you do the business to where, you know, you were able to get out of the rat race and do it just a couple hours a day while you still had another job. I think that one of the things that people forget sometimes is that it's not like I had any extra time or you had any extra time. We all have the same 24 hours a day. I think the difference is how we utilize those times. And a lot of times people say, well, I don't have enough time in my day. Well, look, just look at your phone. For example, every Sunday, my phone tells me that I spend four hours a day looking at that stupid screen. And I can say, well, I can try to justify and go, well, you know, I'm looking at my email. It, it's. There's nothing, nothing. Like nothing good comes from that phone screen. It really doesn't like, you know, it doesn't matter if it's social media, you can. And you can say, I'm doing social media, I'm trying to post ads. Lame, lame example. Right. Because you can get out of that. You can get somebody else to go do it. So for every justification that you have, it's a lame excuse is all it is. So, you know, we. How do you control the time? That's the question that we should be looking at. When you're struggling to find more time or time to do something, it's the priorities. How are you prioritizing your time over something else? If you just do that exercise that Sylvie just said, like, you'll be amazed where your time went because it's getting flushed down the toilet oftentimes.

Yeah, I mean, I 100% agree. I would actually even make it even more precise from what you said, Scott. And it's not necessarily the time. It's. It's the attention. Where are you directing your attention? So, and are you completely aware that, like, what Sylvia was saying, is that going to be the best impact of your attention, or are you better off having somebody in Pakistan at $1.50 an hour? Check your email for you. Go through your email and then forward to you. These are the most relevant emails to you. How much time would that save you? Not necessarily time, but how much attention would that save you? Where should your attention be? So, Sylvie, when you have a client, how do you actually guide them to say your attention really should be directed here? Because when we do it this time, audit, we can see there's a lot of things that you're doing that we can eliminate, delegate, or outsource.

Yeah, well, part of it is really putting it into those categories. So there's things, you know, you've got to start with that red pen because there's things that you shouldn't be outsourcing because not only should you not be doing them, but no one should be doing them. So there's that, right? And then, and then really we just categorize them with which are the money, the needle moving, money making things. Those are the things that you need to start with. Those are the things that you don't get to run out of time for. The other things are the ones that go on the back burner. And you know, a lot of the times what I notice is we don't have a time management problem. We have a mindset problem. We have a procrastination problem. So it really doesn't, you know, I mean, and these are the tough conversations. So, you know, people hire me because they want to hear the actual, you know, there's no sugar coating. I just tell it the way it is. So I'll just flat out call my MD client and say, girl, can I be honest with you? And that's exactly how I talk to him and say, you know, you had time for all your workouts this week. You had time for this, you had time for that, and you had zero time to devote to that biggest needle moving thing. Like, I'm just curious what happened here? And we really have the real conversation, which is, okay, this is not a time management problem. This is fear. This is, you know, fear of rejection. This is fear of falling flat on my face. This is da, da, da. And now we can get to the real conversation and the real coaching, which is okay, okay, cool, that's it. So we're not going to hide behind this time management thing. We're going to actually have the real conversation of that was a 15 minute task or three 15 minute tasks total. You had three, 15, three, you know, three times, three 15 minute chunks throughout the week. It was fear. And you know, that's a whole other ball game.

Scott. Todd sounds like, sounds very similar to what we deal with, huh?

Yeah. And I was just going to say, like, literally right before this call, you and I were having that exact same conversation. We, we were saying that, look, somebody that puts off something over and over and over again. It's not a time thing, it's not a priority thing. It is a fear thing. It's a fear of success, it's a fear of failure, it's a fear of the unknown. And the minute that you can say, I'm fearful of this and not let it stop you. Like, okay, admit you're fearful and then step forward or lean on your coach. Even better idea, lean on your coach and say, listen, I want this to be successful, but I'm afraid of making a mistake. Now let your coach help you break down the fear. Because any coach that's a coach and can call themselves a coach, well, they've done this over and over and over again. And any good coach, honestly, if you chose the right coach, they've had all of the exact same fears and thoughts that you've already done, that you're walking in there, their shoes or they've walked in your shoes. Any good coach. You know, there's lots of people out there that call themselves a coach that they haven't done anything, but they said, I'm a coach. Well, you haven't done anything. You don't know anything. So, you know, choose your coaches wisely, but lean on them.

Yeah, yeah. I think, you know, people took that four hour workweek book a little too seriously when he's like, the definition of an expert is somebody that knows more than you. Well, that might be true, but I'm not going to spend that kind of money on somebody that's doing it a little bit longer than me to coach me. I want to.

You're the expert.

Yeah. I want my coach to be the living embodiment of someone that's, you know, been through the full cycle of ups and downs and has a track record that's long and they've got gray hair and all that good stuff, but teach their own.

Stop dying it then.

Yeah, I mean. Yeah, exactly, Sylvie. So, Sylvie, I feel like you're, in a lot of ways our passive income or wealth creation, whatever you want to call it, doppelganger. Because we literally have the exact same views on really what we could argue is the best way to get the most out of this very short life. And it's such a tragedy when you come across somebody and they just, they don't see it. And we've, we've lived it, we've seen it, and yet they don't. And they have to go through so much suffering to finally, you know, be like, oh, my gosh, you know, I'm midlife now and it's not even my life. I'm working for my employees, I'm working for my mortgage, I'm working to pay my rent. I'm not free. And it sounds like, here's somebody that can help me become free. And all I have to do is, you know, go through A little bit of action. Not a little bit action, I've got to take action. But you know, like Zig Ziglar says, if you'll do for the next three to five years what other people won't do, you'll be able to do for the rest of your life what other people can't do. So with that, Sylvia, I think your mentorship, this podcast has been great, but we are going to ask you for one more tip, piece of advice, some wisdom, a website, a resource, a book, something actionable where the passive income listeners can go improve their businesses, improve their lives. What have you got?

Yeah, so I mean, I think the biggest tip would be to make sure you can, you know, you simply journal out what your vision for your life is, because you can get really off track if you're not entirely sure where you're headed. And I think that that's the thing I see the most is really just having that vision. What do you want your perfect week to look like? Maybe it is like my client, my client Krista, who wants to pick up her kids from school every single day. And if she's not doing that, she feels like, what's the point of life? Whatever it is for you, journal it out. And then one book recommendation would be the Big Leap by Gay Hendricks.

Alright, fantastic. Scott, Todd, what's your tip of the week?

Mark, you and I uncovered this little tip today and so I'm going to share with everybody and here it is. If you're doing any type of like web meetings on Skype or Zoom or whatever, you know the problem of the dogs barking and the generators running and all the other noise that comes through, well, make your place, make your calls so that you don't have those annoyances anymore. And I'm not talking about getting rid of the dogs or like going into a soundproof booth. What I'm saying is check out Crisp with, with a K. Crisp AI and you get this software and it's the coolest software. I'm actually using it right now. And it blocks. Yeah, Mark's using it too. It blocks out the dogs. It's, it's like artificial intelligence. It takes care of the dogs. And Mark, I don't, I don't know if you know it, but can you hear like there is literally a generator running right outside right now? Let me, let me stop for a minute. Let's see if you hear a hum.

Nothing.

Nothing. Okay. It sounds like I'm in a private booth or something. I'm telling you, there's all kinds of Noises out there in the world. Check out Chris AI. It will make your life much more enjoyable.

I feel like I have to go on, like, these podcasting groups on Facebook and let everybody know to do this, because it's. Even the guest should be downloading this. This is, like. And it's cheap. I think it's like 39 bucks to download.

It was. It was good. It was good.

That's great. My tip of the week is learn more about how you become free, whether you're in healthcare or not. I think Sylvia McCracken can help you and learn more at SylvieMcCracken.com Nobody can spell Sylvie or McCracken, so I have a link to it and you'll go there and learn more@sylvie mccracker mccracken.com. sylvia, are we good?

We're fantastic, Mark. And thank you so much, Mark and.

Scott Todd, Are we good, Mark? All right, well, I want to thank the listeners. Just remind them the only way. The only way we're gonna get the quality of guests like Sylvie McCracken is if you do three little things. You gotta subscribe, you gotta rate, you gotta review the podcast. Send us a screenshot of that review to support@thelandgeek.com we are going to send you for free our $97 passive income launch kit. So please do that. Just a reminder, today's podcast was sponsored by flight school. Learn more@thelandgeek.com training Scott, Todd, you ready?

I'm ready, Mark. Ready? 1, 2, 3. Let freedom ring ring.

Thanks for that.

I don't know why we count anymore. Because we don't do it together anymore. We just gotta just.

I just feel like it's so embarrassing to try to sync this, and then.

Yeah, so we're just gonna do let freedom ring, right?

I mean, the shame that I have to feel now of Sylvia looking at us like, boy, you guys really are geeky.

What just happened? She's unclear what just happened.

I know, but it's a good thing that we do it after the podcast so that she would actually even do the interview, right?

Yeah. I mean, we have way too much.

Fun on this podcast. Way too much fun.

All right, well, thanks, everybody.