PFI Weekly Updates – March 31 (2009)

photo credit: lumaxartWelcome to PFI and the weekly updates – The Entrepreneurship Edition. I have always longed to start and run my own business. My favorite class in college was Introduction to Entrepreneurship. Over the past 15 years I have had thousands of business ideas running in and out of my brain and even started writing several business plans. Every time I was really excited about an idea, I always seemed to talk myself out of it. I have a fear of the business going belly up and not being able to support my family. All these fears and concerns were not even in this scary economy – it was during periods of strong economic growth. The thoughts of starting a new business now in this environment are even scarier with all the unknowns out there.

One option to avoid a lot of initial capital investment as an aspiring entrepreneur is to slowly build strong passive income that can do a lot of the work for you. The beauty of passive income is that you don’t necessarily have to sit there and look after it on a daily basis. Sure, there is still ongoing maintenance of each and every income stream – but the majority of your time can be spent creating new business opportunities for you and your family!

Just over a year ago I came to the realization of the power of passive income. Since then I have slowly been working to build my passive income streams. Building this style of income will allow me to confidently pursue other business ventures that will feed my desire to be a successful entrepreneur. All of the income that is generated from my passive income streams is and will be used to reinvest and fund new opportunities. The goal is to create more and more wealth instead of relying on bank loans and other lines of credit to start up a new business.

Do you use passive income to launch new business opportunities?

Personal Finance Blog of the Week
As part of my effort to meet my personal finance goals for 2009, I plan to visit other personal finance blogs and help promote the good ones anyway I can. Each week I will write a short review of a site that I believe is worthwhile checking out.

• Smart Passive Income – I have talked about and referenced this blog many times here at PFI in the past. This is one of the most useful sites that is out there today for anyone interested in starting or building passive income. Pat (the author) provides his readers with a wealth of FREE information on how he has worked to grow his passive income each and every month. At times, I can’t believe he is posting all of this information for free to his readers it is that informative. He also covers things that he hasn’t done so well and how you need to learn from your mistakes. I truly appreciate the honesty in these posts instead of an author only promoting what they have accomplished and not discussing what they have failed at. If you have not checked out this site, please take the time to go over to this site and say hello to Pat!

Carnivals
I participated in the following carnivals over the past week. Please check out some of the great reads from these carnivals!

• Carnival of Debt Reduction No. 185: The Charles Dickens Debtor’s Prison Edition – (Mar. 30, 2009) EDITOR’S PICK – Recession in America – Gardening – hosted by Pecuniarities.
• Carnival of Personal Finance: World Record Edition – (Mar. 30, 2009) Personal Finance Lessons from The Great Depression – hosted by Wide Open Wallet.
• Money Hacks Carnival – Spring Edition – (Mar. 25, 2009) Cutting out Wasteful Spending from the Budget – hosted by Money TLD.

Articles I liked
Here are a few articles from the past week I enjoyed around the topic of entrepreneurship.

1 – MD from Studenomics gives us a list of 10 places to look for startup funding for a business. As the credit markets continue to tighten, you need to be creative when looking for capital to start a new business venture.

2 – TAM from The Almost Millionaire tells us about franchising for cash flow. I found this to be an interesting way to raise positive cash flow if you can select a good franchise and hire the right people to run it for you.

3 – Dusty from Chasing The Bull debates why passive income is so much better than active income. Another compelling reason to be your own entrepreneur and continue to build your own passive income streams!

Have an wonderful week!

Tagged as: entrepreneurship