 A really good question here about, how do we design a better business model that supports potential emergency crises in one's personal life? For example, caregiving, right? Like, and I can totally relate to this because as of this recording, my dad is not, it could actually pass sometime in the next few months, pass away, die. So I'm facing this exact question myself right now. But there are also personal other personal crises, like getting COVID or some other reason where you need to go support a family member or friend, travel to go support somebody, right? Like those are all real potential situations. So let me first talk about, you know, coping with your current business model. Like, I think it's good to think ahead right now. I'll use myself as an example. Right now I run two group programs that have multiple, many calls per week. I have, I'm gonna count right now. I've got how many group calls I have. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven group calls a week. Not counting the courses I teach. Courses I teach are another two calls a week. So I have six, whatever I said, six or seven to nine group calls every single week. Just recurring for the rest of my life, you know? And so if my, when my dad passes, what does that mean? Cause I didn't, I have told my group members that I have certain weeks off during the year. I purposely plan, and this is part of your learning to something to plan for yourself. I have structured weeks off 12. I said 10 or 12, something like that. I have 10 to 12 structured weeks off every year. Like that my group members already know there are no calls during those weeks. Like every four weeks, basically, I take a week off. But unplanned, the same, my father passes. This is not gonna be doing one of my, conveniently during one of my vacation weeks. No, it's gonna be during, you know, could be, but could not be. So what does that mean? So I think in case of personal COVID, also when you get a deep sickness that you literally cannot work for a week, it's reasonable, maybe you should start writing that message just in case, right? I think all of us could be struck with something. So start, be good idea, draft a message. So you have it in, not that you're like law of attraction attracting it to you, right? I don't think that's true. I think if you, hopefully your law of attraction mindset is good and you're thinking health and well-being most of the time, but you've set that aside. So it gives you some peace of mind. Like, okay, if I were to something, then here's the message I would tweak a little bit and send, okay? That's step one, right? And the message should say something like, listen, I just got COVID or this happened in my family. I, my apologies, I have to cancel my calls this week because of travels or because of grieving this week. And I think one week of calls canceled and maybe even two weeks of calls canceled that were already pre-planned, right? Two weeks, I think is reasonable. I think most people will say, of course, of course take the time to heal, to grieve, to take care of that person or situation, of course, right? Two weeks, I think beyond two weeks, if you already had client calls planned, you know, every single week and you took two weeks off and then beyond that, you're gonna have to think of a contingency plan to say, well, I might need to refund, right? My clients have already paid. If I need more than two weeks off of calls or you might say, listen, after those two weeks I'm willing to show up for calls again. So that's me, that's my own plan right now. I mean, I had, even during COVID, I've got COVID twice now, by the way, where I was like bed rest. And I, during my COVID times, I think I was lucky that I got COVID, my COVID really bad COVID started during the weekend. So I was lucky that I had two days, Saturday and Sunday of complete bed rest. And by Monday, I was doing calls again during COVID. During my worst COVID times on the third day I was doing calls again. I think some of you may remember who were there. I was like, let me mute, you know, like blow my nose on it. Now that's kind of extreme because I'm a bit of a workaholic. And so I don't mind just showing up for calls again. And there's a great, there's a good comment here from Christine saying, sometimes engaging in our business can't support with coping with these kinds of crisis and losses. Yeah, you know, I kind of felt like showing up for my business, again, not being stressed. I've practiced joyful productivity. So I'm not stressed in my business. It's more activating for me. It did, it did, I think it kind of helped me to heal in some ways. I'm not, I put aside any kind of long-term planning that may have been more stressful or launches and things like that for sure. So contingency plan for yourself. But now let's also talk about sort of like designing your business model such that you can account for these kinds of things, right? Like for example, one to one, if all you did was one to one clients, like I said, you might be able to take two weeks off and your clients don't need a refund, right? Make it, you just postpone the calls. But after that, if you're gonna take two months off, for example, it's gonna eat into your income, right? So it's better therefore to start thinking about the concentric circles business model. If you don't know what that is, I invite you to Google it or whatever search is popular these days. Consent trick circles business model. Does it show up? There it is, hey, all right. So everyone help me out on Google, by searching concentric circles business model and then hopefully my Google image or my blog post will show up. And basically I'm going to just recommend that you study this because if you are only doing one to one clients, it does not set you up for a more passive model that can account for occasional times off that you need to take. So group programs are a little bit better. Like I said, I could take probably a week off of my group program calls, but the following week I would show up again with joyful productivity. So it's not a stressor on my body. I enjoy being with my clients. It does take energy, but it's an enjoyment. So that's another mindset issue there. And then, but here, online courses, right? The more farther out you go, well, except for free content, you're not making money unless your content is going viral on YouTube and you're making ad dollars or whatever. But generally speaking, the farther out you go, the more time you can take off without notice, without giving anyone notice, right? So online courses, that's why I want you all to start thinking about creating them so that you can be selling them, practice how to sell online courses so that you know how to use ads, you know how to scale that thing out so you don't have to show up for meetings, you have to take two months off, you're still earning income. That's true for me. If I literally did no calls, right? I'll still be earning honestly, probably at least minimum, at least 1,000 to 2,000 a month, doing no calls and just evergreen online course sales, minimum, right? Sometimes up to three or 4,000. But books are not as reliable honestly as an income source unless you're famous. I would say online courses is really the most likely middle ground for most of us to earn a passive income without spending time on calls or with clients. So that's my recommendation. Now, sometimes a free content, it's funny. I don't think books is as reliable as a passive income source. It's more of a people discovering use source. But I'd say passive income source is online courses and free content. What I mean by why is free content a passive income source? Because if you make a lot of YouTube videos, for example, some of them are going to reach a lot of people. And those videos, you can turn on ads, meaning people will watch some advertisers as they watch you. Maybe you've seen that before in YouTube videos. You watch a YouTube video and then in the middle video, some ad comes up for a car or a vacation or whatever. Different advertisers are doing different ads on your content, not on literally your content, but just content like yours. And so, for example, I made a video a couple of years ago about how to use Zoom, right? And I was lucky because I made a video before the pandemic. So once the pandemic hit, it started getting hundreds of thousands of views. And by this point, it's gotten almost 3 million views. And I'll tell you this, YouTube has sent me, get this, over $30,000 for that one video. Let me say that again. I made a YouTube video for my clients, really. Like, oh, let me show you how to use Zoom and I uploaded it. And it got now, like I said, almost 3 million views that I've earned more than $30,000 from that one video. Now, because I turned on ads for that video, nobody complained. It's really interesting to me. I have turned on ads for many of my popular videos and I've never gotten a single comment or email saying, why are you showing me ads on the video? Millions of people, not one, because people are used to it. People are used to seeing ads on YouTube videos. So they don't even, they don't realize, now some of you are gonna complain to me now. Somebody, nobody realizes it's the creator going, ha ha, I'm gonna show you ads now. Click on the checkbox and then start earning money from it. I could turn off ads on all my videos, but make no money. But I turned on ads and then you get to see the ads. You interrupt you for 15 seconds, like two or three times during the video. But while it's interrupting you, I'm making money. So I apologize for that, but I don't apologize because it's free content. So that's what I recommend. Online courses, free content, start, continue, practicing, making more of those and practicing distributing them, meaning getting more people to see them, both the courses and the content, and you will set yourself up for passive income for the rest of your life. So like I said, I made the Zoom video in 2017 and it didn't get popular until 2020 because YouTube has a very long shelf. YouTube has a 10, 15 year shelf life, some video. Like I said, right now I'm recording this in 2023. My Zoom video is still getting hundreds of views a day. It's, no, I'm sorry, not hundreds of views a day. Dozens, at this point, six years later, it's getting dozens of views a day. Why? It's because so many more Zoom tutorials have piled on, right? Ever since the pandemic, like so much more competition for that video. So now it's dozens of views a day, not hundreds. But it was going hundreds of views for years. I'm like, what is going on? It is making money every single day. So anyway, the more YouTube videos you upload, the more likely that's going to happen because every YouTube video has the keywords and the title that you use. And so anyway, I hope this is helpful and hopefully inspiring for you to think about your more passive income model that can allow you to take time off, whether planned or unplanned. And just an add on to this, get started, right? Get started with both creating the courses and the free content. Knowing that right now you are practicing and while you're practicing, it just happens that very few people are going to see your courses or your content and think of that as a blessing in disguise. Because you're practicing, you're practicing creating quality stuff or relevant quality and relevant things. And so the more you practice, the more naturally actually word of mouth will spread and more people will buy right now maybe your best friend will buy your course. That's it, one sale for every course. And then going forward, three people buy it. Oh, 10 people bought it. Oh, now you're learning how to use ads. Oh my gosh, 20 people bought it. They just go from there. So gotta start somewhere, start now by practicing creating them courses and content.