Recurring, Repeatable, Reliable Online Income with Dan R. Morris

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. Brought to you by the HubSpot. podcast network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Hustle and Flowchart. Today, we'll be breaking down recurring, repeatable, reliable online income. To drop these value bombs, I brought Dan R. Morris into EO Fire Studios. Dan and his wife, Rachel, have been full-time online entrepreneurs since 2013. Every year, they do two six-figure launches and have grown their Facebook page to 1.1 million fans. Today, we'll be chatting about drawing a full-time income as an online entrepreneur.

0:36Is it really realistic? We'll talk about the minimum that you need to make that happen, the hallmark traits of successful online businesses, repeatable, reliable income, and oh so much more. And the big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Dan and our sponsors. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer, hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lands, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier. AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented.

1:13The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business. Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts. Are you looking to start or grow a successful business? Attend the world's highest rated and most reviewed business growth workshop taught personally by Clay Clark and football great Tim Tebow at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. Again, request life changing tickets today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. Dan, say what's up to fire nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

1:53I'm not exactly sure what people disagree with, but I have figured out that nobody talks really about time. Like the things that you think make a successful business today aren't going to be the things that you believe 10 years from now. Like things completely change. And I would have had a different thought of that even three months ago. But recently, like my body has gotten creaky. Like I want to go out and play basketball, but it's just harder. And I don't know why it's harder, But all of a sudden I'm thinking about like health. Like now I got to make sure, man, once the kids are gone and I can just travel with my wife, I got to be healthy.

2:37I got to make sure that while we're making a lot of money, I'm not doing so – making myself so busy that I'm not able to keep control of my health issues. So I just think as time marches on, your view of success changes as you age. I guess that's what I'm saying. Fire Nation, all we have is time. Time is all we have. I mean, that is a topic you're right, Dan, just does not get talked about, discussed enough. But man, we're going to shift now to recurring, repeatable, reliable online income because Dan's the man when it comes to this stuff. But I want to be real with my audience, Dan. I want to be truthful with Fire Nation.

3:22So is it realistic to be able to draw a full-time income as an online solopreneur? Well, you would know of all people. It's very realistic. Like, you do pretty well. Man, we're not talking full-time. You're like four times times five.

3:43Most people would be happy with just a month of EO Fires income. So it's possible. And Rachel and I have been doing it since 2013. So it's definitely doable. But it does require a level of focus and tenacity that I think if you're working a corporate job that you aren't bred to have. because because your corporate position or even as an employee like you're pretty much paid if you show up i mean you're supposed to do a good job you're supposed to do your work but if you have an off day like it doesn't really change your world you have a kind of an off day in our world it could snowball into many off days so you have to stay focused um what we teach is to our audience all the time is that you really have to focus on kind of like what we call rolling a snowball.

4:41You have to make sure that everything you're doing contributes, you know, even three months down the line, six months, a year, five years down the line. So you don't spend all of your time making one-off dollars that you're never going to make again. You've got to figure out, how do I think ahead? How do I make sure this activity keeps going next month and the month after that? Or else you're reinventing the wheel every single week. And I don't think you get anywhere because you just haven't switched your mindset to full time all the time. And Fire Nation, this is one thing that really impressed upon me early on in my entrepreneurial journey was something called the compounding effect.

5:26And in fact, there's a great book called The Compound Effect, which was written by Darren Hardy. And his mentor was another great author who wrote The Slight Edge. That guy's name was Jeff Olson. And those books just really made me realize, hey, if I'm going to build a business, I want it to have this compounding effect. I want it to have a slight edge over time that's building on top of itself. Now, let's talk about the absolute minimum that my audience at Fire Nation, that a human being would need to make that happen. Well, the funny thing about this concept is that there are many people who are like social media experts or they're doing things online and somehow they still don't have the three pieces that you have to have.

6:13Like you have to have a home base. Now, it's possible that your home base is YouTube or it's possible that it's a podcast. But most of the time, you have to have a website. You have to have a presence. You have to have something that is your home. And then the second thing you have to have is you have to have something to sell. Now, that doesn't mean it's a product or service. My parents run frontporchideas.com, and they make all of their money with Google AdWords or Google AdSense and other advertising networks. So what they're selling is content to readers. as long as readers read the content and see the ads they get paid so you don't have to have a product but you do need to have something that you sell and then the third is you have to have a way to take money like there has to be something some a shopify account you have to have your paypal connected you you have to have something and what's strange is a lot of times we sit down with a one-on-one class with people been working online for years and they don't have one of those three like you you can't you can't really make it happen without all three so that's your minimum you you need a website like eofire.com is a website obviously you listen to john you know maybe you listen to him on spotify but he's got a home base and then you have to have a way to capture money.

7:46So, you know, John makes money with sponsorships and affiliate income and all these other things. And he has a way for that money to come into his bank account. And then you have to have something to sell. He sells content. He sells our stories. He sells his voice, his advice. Like you need something. We have a mastermind group. He's got books and journals. You've got to have something in order for somebody to exchange their hard work and time for your product in order for you to get paid. So you just need those three things. It's not rocket science. You just need those three things. Fire Nation, we're talking about the absolute minimum that you would need to make it happen.

8:28And obviously, this kind of blends and merges into what I want to talk about next. But I want to really dive into what you would consider the hallmark traits of successful online businesses. Like let's really dive deep here. You moved outside of the country. And I have a feeling that that was out of like desire to live like at a beach location or exotic or something fun. But for me, there's a guy next door and he seems to be working all the time, all the time. And he's never really traveled, but he always talks about places he wants to go. And he's got a brick and mortar business. And I always think if he's so successful, why can't he do the things that he wants to do?

9:17Wouldn't that be like the hallmark of a business is that you're able to do the things you want? You could go to Tuscany. You could fly to New York and eat at Tavern on the Green for your anniversary and fly home. You could have the car that you wanted, even if it's an old beater, but it's the car that you want. So for me, the hallmark trait of a successful business is that you get to live the life that you would like to live. Now before, back in 1994, I used to work for Warren Buffett, who at the time was the richest man on the planet at the time. And he's a very hardworking man. But at the same time, he drives the car that he wants to drive.

10:02He does what he wants to do. He goes where he wants to go. Drinks Coca-Cola, eats hamburgers from fast food restaurants. Not only does he eat hamburgers, but he has a gold card in his wallet from McDonald's that allows him to eat free at any McDonald's in the world anytime he wants. And I was like, aren't you the last man in the world that needs this cardboard? But yeah, he's got that in his wallet. You know, that's important. I mean, I mean, what do you think is the hallmark trait of successful business if it's not like being able to live the way you want to live? A lot of people say, John, how do you define success?

10:41And how do you define what's the hallmark, the pinnacle is of what you're doing? And for me, it's always saying, you know what? Success for me, and this is my definition, and it's different for other people than it should be, but for me, it's waking up in the morning and knowing that everything that I'm doing that day is by my choice, by my design, the freedom to make those choices. Now that's important to a lot of people, but in different ways, shapes and forms. And so that's why it's so key to understand Fire Nation. What is it that you're really driving towards? What is it that you really want to accomplish to accomplish your version of success?

11:24And we have a lot more to talk about around this topic when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Being a small business owner comes with a lot of challenges, especially now. It seems like everyone is working with smaller budgets, shorter timelines, and sky-high expectations, and that can make growing a business feel pretty painful. Thankfully, HubSpot can help. HubSpot just announced dozens of major product updates that'll make impossible growth feel impossibly easy, like Breeze, a suite of new AI-powered tools that deliver personalized insights to level up your work, plus AI agents designed to automate your work for you.

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12:36Are you looking to learn the proven success systems that have been used to create thousands of millionaire success stories? See thousands of success stories and testimonials from real people just like you, who Clay Clark has mentored and coached into prosperity at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. Clay's proven business coaching program is month to month and it costs less than hiring a minimum wage employee. Yes, it's month to month and costs less than hiring a minimum wage employee. Schedule your free personal 13-point assessment with Clay Clark himself today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire.

13:11Because Clay only takes on 160 clients and only allows 300 attendees to each business conference, you will interact with Clay directly, see thousands of real success stories, and learn about attending the Thrive Time Show two-day in-person workshop featuring football great and entrepreneur Tim Tebow today at thrivetimeshow.com slash eofire. Become the next success story. Schedule a free consultation and request tickets to join Tim Tebow and Clay Clark at the next business conference today at thrivetimeshow.com slash eofire. Dan, we're back and you make repeatable and reliable income. I want to talk specifically on this topic.

13:53How do you do this? And how can Fire Nation really start to fire up this part of their life? We just finished our 10th anniversary of our biggest product that we sell every year. And it's called BC Stack. And it's like a bundle of digital marketing products that we put together. And we sell as a kit. and for us the very first year that we did it i didn't really have that mindset that it would be an annual product i didn't even have the mindset that we should have something that recurs we should do something again like that wasn't really bred into me in the beginning of being an entrepreneur On the second year, somebody suggested to us – well, every year people suggest how we could have upsells and we could say make more money this way and that way.

14:50And you really have to build things the way you want to build them. People will have suggestions. But the second year, somebody suggested that we pre-sell the next year. And I thought about that and I was like, whoa, that is really intriguing. If we pre-sell the next year, then not only would I ensure that I can do it the next year, but I would also make more money this year with the pre-sales. So that was kind of the first thought that we had about how we could repeat the income from one year to the next. And this happens in June. So for me, that's an important point is that this is June, and I'll get to that in a second.

15:36And then a couple years later, or maybe the third year, but Nicole Dean let us know that her affiliate program, Nicole Dean runs CoachGlue.com, and she sells all kinds of products for entrepreneurs. But her affiliate program has a lifetime cookie. And I was new to that as well. I wasn't new very long, I'll tell you that. so inside the download page of bc stack i put one of nicole's products using her affiliate link because i figured if i could drive 2 000 people to nicole's site to pick up something for free and they were all cookied then whenever nicole would send out an email if any of those people bought something from that email i would make a commission like to me that was perfect pure passive income.

16:31Like there was nothing more passive about it than I make money whenever Nicole goes to work. So that concept made me wonder, what if we changed our affiliate program so that somebody who became an affiliate of BC Stack, they would get a lifetime commission. And it didn't occur to me then until three or four years later, when one of our affiliates who had moved away and I hadn't heard from in a while got a check from us for about$2 ,000. And I thought, how did this guy get a check? He doesn't even – he's not even involved anymore. He hasn't sold anything. And so I looked at it and I realized that the lifetime commissions were building up for him and now he was starting to make money from us every June.

17:22Remember, the June is kind of important for this. So I talked to him and he said that one of his business plans is to find lifetime commission locations because he's the kind of person that connects people. So I would occasionally get an email from him that says, hey, meet Bob. I think he would be a great affiliate for BC Stack. Please sign him up. So I would reply to Bob and, you know, nice to meet you. And then I would sign him up and I would sign up under Ricky. whose name I didn't mention a minute ago. And then every time Bob would make an affiliate sale, Ricky would get paid. So Ricky knew that every June, he would get a check from me, and then we'd do another one in October, and he would get a check from me in October.

18:11Well, he actively searched the marketplace for other lifetime commission opportunities, and he looked for when do those things pay out, because I found out that he was a little bit risk-averse when it came to the life that we live and maybe a realtor lives where you don't get regular, consistent salary-type income. You get more like chunks. He wanted to spread his income out throughout the course of the year. So every month, he had figured out a new thing that he would promote and talk about and work towards that would bring him money. And each time, that thing would grow from year to year. So eventually now he has somewhat of a repeatable and reliable income.

18:55He's got different affiliate income streams from different people like myself over the course of the year. And so for me, I thought, oh, that is brilliant that he's actually taking the concept of lifetime affiliate cookie and then combining that with like, how does he make sure that he has enough each month and then he actively looks for that month so i thought about that with stack and i thought oh well what if we looked for contributors who had lifetime cookies in their own programs and we added their products into stack so instead of when somebody buys the product we promise 65 products but when they get to the download page it's more like 80 because we've included like 15 bonuses, which for me are affiliate link bonuses.

19:44They're lifetime commission bonuses. So as long as every year I can get people cookied in all these different programs, then not only do I make money from stack in June and October from our big sales week, but I also get commission checks every month from all these different lifetime cookies. So all throughout the month, we make enough affiliate commissions to pay our mortgage and our bills and it's not dependent on any activity that I'm doing. It's, it's passive income. It's like the only passive income that I've come across. Cause you know, some people will mention that like a membership is passive income, but I've run memberships and that takes a little effort.

20:24That's not passive at all. Uh, but a lifetime affiliate cookie, every time Nicole sends an email out, she's going to make some sales and I'm going to get some commissions. So she's doing the work and I'm over here, basically introducing new business to her business. So for us, that concept has been important in each thing that we do. And in fact, when Rachel, we put out Rachel's book two years ago, she's got another one coming out this year. We tried to figure out how do you make a book turn into more income than just the book? Because somebody buys it on Amazon, You don't have any idea who that person is.

21:06You don't – nobody gives you the email addresses. So we had to start inserting into our books. There's a – in Brave Art of Motherhood, her first book, there's actually a page that invites you to the website to see all of the pictures, the visual journey that goes along with the book. But also for all of the books that we mailed out, which I think is probably like 400, we put a postcard inside the book, a stamped postcard. And the cover of the postcard was the book cover. And it was – we put a little sticky to send it to a friend because part of the book was about making sure that you bolster your friendships.

21:49But we wanted – if everybody that bought a book then had a postcard and can send that to another person, then maybe that person had an opportunity to buy the book as well. And then when they came back to the website to the visual journey and they added their email address in, then we had a chance to sell them the next book. So each time that we've been doing things, just like the affiliate Lifetime Cookie, we're looking for opportunities so that it's not a one-time activity, but it turns into more income down the road. And if you don't have that culture inside of your business of how do we extend this, then I think you end up just spinning your wheels all the time.

22:33You're just doing one thing. And then you're redoing the one thing. And you can't really ever find the traction that you need to feel like your business is growing. Fire Nation, I'm hoping that some light bulbs are going off as you're hearing Dan talk about this process. Because I'll be honest with you, a light bulb went off with me years and years ago around this similar topic where I had done a couple episodes with Russell Brunson. We had talked about ClickFunnels. I promoted his book. And then before I knew it, I was just getting these huge checks every two weeks from ClickFunnels. And they just seemed to be getting bigger and bigger as we talked about compounding earlier.

23:11and I kind of looked at it and I was like, man, like I'm sending a lot of people to this SaaS product, ClickFunnels, and I'm getting an affiliate commission from this. How do I pour gasoline on this fire? So I started thinking about other ways and other things that I could do. And one idea that I came up with, I said, you know, I'm going to create a one-time course. It's going to be a free course called Funnel on Fire. And I taught people in this course, it took me a while to create, but once it was created, once it was done, how to create their first funnel. And then at the end of it, I just say, hey, this is a free course.

23:44I hope you enjoyed it. If you want to create funnels like I do, I use ClickFunnels. Here's a link to ClickFunnels for you to start building your funnel. And that just blew that up even more and poured gasoline on the fire, which I hoped it would. And long story short, and other ideas and iterations that I did along the way, I became the number one affiliate of all time for ClickFunnels. And actually right behind me, I've got a custom guitar from Russell handed to me at a conference of his a couple of years ago for being that number one affiliate. And by the way, I haven't actively promoted ClickFunnels now for years.

24:21And every two weeks, I still get a big check from them as a result of that initial work that I put in that's now passively coming my way. So just some other things to think about. Yeah. I mean, there's so many cool ways to do this. So, Dan, we've obviously talked about a lot of cool things today when it comes to the focus of this entire chat, which is recurring, repeatable, reliable online income. What would you say, in closing, is the one thing that you really want to make sure our listeners, Fire Nation, gets from our conversation today? The most important thing is that you really need the three basic tentpoles you need a website a way to capture money and a product to sell service content you just need that and then when you have that and only when you have that does every other part of your business have purpose because until you have that you can be a social media maven forever without any real end game or you could you know you can make all all the memes that you want you can you have the hugest tiktok channel in the world but without your your home base and your product and your money making tentpoles like there's just no purpose to the rest of it but once you build that foundation you you've got something and then hopefully you've got a spouse or a friend or a mastermind mentor somebody that then you can sit down and say, okay, how do I turn this into a real full-time income?

26:01And the real advantage of that, like the major advantage of turning those three tentpoles into a full-time income is a freedom that if you were working in corporate America, you can't begin to understand. But like I, you probably too, John, I haven't had an alarm clock for a decade. like I it's just not part of the culture of the house like I wake up when it's time to wake up um and there's something there's just something wonderful about that I remember having to wake up and go to get into the car and get into rush hour and stuff and oh I mean listen I'm from Maine I mean I got to get up and then walk to my car bundled up and then scrape my car from ice and oh man it was bad yeah if you have a home base the most important part and i would i would really base it on something that you love like there's no smarter way to go about it because if you love it you're you're just gonna love it forever like it's just part of you you know if you try to build something just because you think it's a cool idea right now in my opinion it's just not gonna last but if you build it around something that you love and you're able to think forward, how does today's activity turn into money in December and in next January and in next March?

27:28And you have the internal fortitude to actually say, no, I'm not going to do this if you can't figure out how to make it go longer. Then you'll end up building something really nice. And it doesn't have to be Warren Buffett big to be a great business. It could be just enough money for you to live the way that you want to live, take trips, travel, enjoy your family, go to every soccer game that your kid plays in without having to miss anything. It doesn't have to be rules and rules of money to be really successful and a fun life for you while in the short time that we have. You just need the base and the mental aspect of how do I make this last?

28:13And once you get that, I mean, you really have just a piece of heaven. Dan, if Fire Nation wants to connect with you, learn more of what you have going on, give us a call to action. I love Twitter, even though it's called X. I love it. It's my favorite thing. So I'm Dan R. Morris on Twitter. I run BC Stack, which is a June and October event. But otherwise, I'm pretty much Dan R. Morris on Twitter. Instagram. Oh, you know what? You know, I never mentioned my favorite thing in the whole world that my business has enabled me to do is I have a podcast called tracing the path, which is a 20th century history podcast.

28:55Cause I, I used to absolutely love Paul Harvey. He was my favorite radio voice storyteller. And I just wanted my kids to have that storytelling that you just don't get on Tik TOK. You don't, I mean, you take away the visual and just listen so I started telling these great stories about things from the 20th century that you would never think are connected connecting them in ways that you wouldn't have considered and I'm on episode 55 and it makes no money which I'm totally fine with it's just what I love hopefully this audio is the audio that you hear on the podcast it's pretty good but if you like 20th century history you love the unbelievable stories than join us at Tracing the Path.

29:42Otherwise, I'm happy to chat anytime, anywhere. I always love meeting new people. Fire Nation, you're the average. Of the five people you spend the most time with, you've been hanging out with DRM and JLD today, so keep up the flipping heat. And for everything that we've been talking about, links, you name it, visit eofire.com. Type Dan in the search bar. The show notes page will pop right up. And Dan, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value for Fire Nation. And for that, we salute you and we will catch you on the flip side. Fantastic, man. Just fantastic. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Dan for sponsoring today's episode and Fire Nation's successful entrepreneurs.

30:23They're great at three things, productivity, discipline, and focus. Follow one course until success. That's why I created the Mastery Journal so that you can master these three things in a hundred days. hello step by step, visit themasteryjournal.com and I will catch you there or on the flippity flip side. The next wave, your chief AI officer hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lands is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier. AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented.