You know, a million dollars a year is
roughly $83,000 a month. You could spend
$2,000 every day and still have money
left over. But I mean, what would you
actually have to own to bring in that
much? A whole apartment building, a few
McDonald's restaurants, the rights to a
song everyone knows. Well, we're
counting down 10 possibilities from
music cataloges to stocks, and we're
counting the money you can take out
before your personal taxes. The business
has already paid its bills and put aside
what it needs to keep running. We'll use
published figures alongside worked
examples. And as we go, watch what
changes. How much cash you need to get
in, how much work stays with you, and
whether the income can last. Owning
something that earns a million once is a
very different proposition from having
it pay you for life. So, let's dive in.
Welcome to Alux.
Number 10, a music catalog. You don't
have to be the person singing to collect
money from a song. You can own the
rights to the recording, the
songwriting, or a share of either. And
those rights can earn money when the
music is streamed, broadcast, or
licensed for a film or advertisement.
But, [music] you know, owning a song can
mean something narrower than it sounds.
If you own one particular recording and
another singer records a cover, you
don't automatically collect from that
new recording, but someone who owns the
songwriting rights might still earn from
it. Spotify says more than 1500 artists
generated over $1 million in royalties
on its platform in 2025. That money goes
through rights holders and contracts. It
doesn't mean each artist personally
receives $1 million. And that
distinction matters if you're buying a
catalog. Just suppose the rights you're
looking at produce $2 million a year
after administration costs and everyone
else's share. Buy half without borrowing
and your portion is $1 million. How many
songs would that take? A catalog with a
few endearing hits, well, that could
outperform thousands of forgotten
tracks. Counting songs won't tell you
very much. You need the payment history
for the specific rights being sold. And
you'll want to know whether people still
listen to it after the promotion stops.
A song that suddenly goes viral might
have its best year just before you buy
it. You would also separate regular
listening income from a big one-off
payment for an advertisement or film. If
that deal made last year looks unusually
good, paying a price based on last
year's total could mean buying income
that will not repeat. Number nine, a
licensed product or invention. Now, you
could also earn your million from
something sitting on a supermarket shelf
without owning the factory that makes
it. You own a design or invention that a
manufacturer wants to use. The agreement
gives you a payment whenever the product
sells. So, let's use a kitchen gadget
for example. Suppose your contract pays
5% of the manufacturer's $20 selling
price. You get $1 per unit. At 1.1
million units a year, that is $1.1
million in royalties. Allow 100K for
your legal, administration, and other
ownership costs, and you're left with $1
million. Those are example contract
terms. The important detail is what the
percentage applies to. That gadget might
cost $40 in a store, but if your deal is
based on the manufacturer's $20 price,
you still only get $1. You would need a
product selling around 3,000 units a
day. That could happen across thousands
of stores with only a few sales in each.
The hard part is getting a manufacturer
to commit to that distribution. A patent
sitting in a drawer pays nothing, and an
exclusive deal can leave you dependent
on one company. If it loses interest in
selling the product, you might be unable
to take it elsewhere until the agreement
lets you. Minimum sales commitments and
a way to recover the rights can matter
just as much as the royalty percentage.
Number eight, [music] a book catalog.
With books, $1 million a year could mean
selling about 550 copies a day. And
here's how that could work. A $20
paperback sold through Amazon's
self-publishing service can pay a 60%
royalty minus printing. For a standard
black and white 300page paperback in the
US, printing currently costs $4.60.
That leaves $7.40 per copy. You'd still
have to cover things like advertising,
editing, and cover design. But if those
costs average $2.40 per copy across the
sales, well, in that case, you keep five
bucks. You would need 200,000 copies a
year to make $1 million. One book
selling that many copies would be a
substantial success. But spread it
across 10 books and you're looking at
20,000 copies each. A series gives
readers somewhere to go after finishing
the first book. If they buy the next
four, you haven't had to find five
separate customers. But the annual part
is the challenge. A launch can
concentrate years of interest into a few
weeks. To keep selling 200,000 copies
next year, you need new readers finding
the older titles, new releases bringing
people into the series, or both. A large
first royalty payment doesn't tell you
which of those is happening, and you do
need to own the rights that produce
those payments. A traditional publishing
contract could give you a very different
amount per sale. And buying your readers
through ads, well, that can swallow up
that five bucks surprisingly quickly.
Number seven, subscription software.
Now, to get to a million dollars a year,
about 3,400 paying customers could get
you there with software. We're talking
about a product business that you pay
$100 a month to use. [music] At 3,400
customers, annual sales would be just
over $4 million. Suppose a quarter of
that is available to you after staff,
hosting, customer support, marketing,
and money kept in the business. That's
just over $1 million assuming you own
the whole company. Keeping 25% is an
assumption for this example. A product
that needs a large sales team could
leave much less. So could an AI tool
with an expensive usage cost. The target
is 3,400 customers that find it worth
paying for every month. And they have to
stay. [music] If 3% cancel each month,
you need about 100 replacements just to
hold your position. At an assumed $500
to acquire each replacement, that's
roughly 50k a month before you've grown
at all. That expense has to fit inside
the costs we already allowed for. And
this is where the kind of software
matters. Something a business uses to
run payroll has a different place in its
budget from a tool somebody tried twice
and forgot about. Moving important
records and retraining staff can make
switching inconvenient, provided your
product still does its job well. You can
build software without first buying
millions of dollars of property. But the
code is only part of what you're
building. You also need a way to find
customers at a cost their payments can
cover. Ownership matters here. If a
co-founder and investors own half the
company, your $1 million of available
cash leaves roughly 500k for you,
assuming equal distribution rights. The
company reaching that target doesn't
mean that you have.
Number six, self storage facilities.
Another version of that monthly payment
is someone paying you to keep their
furniture in a locked room. Take 1,000
storage units averaging 150 a month.
With 90% occupied throughout the year,
they collect $1.62 million. If operating
expenses and money set aside for repairs
and replacements total 620K, that leaves
$1 million. Now, we're assuming that you
own the facilities outright here. A
purchase loan would come out of that
amount, too. That might be two
facilities with 500 units each. But the
physical picture is already quite
different from owning a couple of
garages, right? Buying established sites
can involve serious money. In the final
quarter of 2025, Public Storage acquired
13 facilities for $131 million combined,
about 10 million each on average. Now,
that's not a price quote for our
example, but it shows the scale of
actual purchases. A site with customers
already paying rent can cost far more
than the rows of metal doors might
suggest. For context, Public Storage
reported 92% average occupancy across
its established facilities in 2025. Our
90% example is close to that, but a new
site can take time to fill. You also
have to watch the price that people
actually pay. A facility can fill its
units by offering discounts and still
collect less money than expected.
[music] The vacant units are easy to
see, but the customer paying half the
advertised rent, well, that looks
occupied on the spreadsheet.
Number five, laundromats. Now, for
laundromats, think of a small chain. In
this example, 10 stores. Each takes in
500K a year, and you keep 100K after
paying staff, utilities, rent, and the
other costs, including money reserved
for replacement machines. That puts your
share at 20% of sales with no
acquisition loans to repay. 10 stores
would leave you $1 million from 5
million of customer spending. These
would need to be substantial stores,
though. In a marketplace data set
covering 855 reported laundromat sales
from 2021 to 2025, median annual sales
were about $220,000,
less than half our example. The median
sale price was $250,000.
Now, across those deals, the median
price was 3.5 times the reported owner
earnings. So apply that multiple to
150,000 of earnings and you get a
$525,000
purchase price, but those earnings can
include payment for the owner's work.
You can't assume the full 150k will
reach you after hiring someone to
replace them. And the machines make this
business look more automatic than it is.
Someone still has to clean the place,
handle problems, and arrange repairs. 10
stores also need someone to oversee the
managers. Our example has to pay for
that work before the million belongs to
you. And there's another cost you can
postpone just long enough to fool
yourself. Replacing the equipment. You
could take every spare dollar out for a
few years. Then several machines need
replacing and suddenly the business
wants the [music] money back. Our 100k
per store has to survive setting money
aside for that purpose as well as paying
the people to run it. Number four, fast
food franchises. Could four burger
restaurants make you a million in a
year? Well, they could if each sold $3
million in food and left you 10% after
all costs and necessary reinvestment.
That's 300k per restaurant or $1.2
million across the four. But that 10%
has to include the whole bill, managers,
rent, franchise fees, equipment, and any
loan [music] payments. It's our example
margin, not McDonald's earnings
forecast. Okay. The familiar name helps
to attract customers, but you pay for
the right to use it. You also accept
rules about how the restaurant operates.
And owning the restaurant business
doesn't necessarily mean owning the
property. Under McDonald's conventional
franchise model, the company generally
owns or leases the site while the
franchisee invests in the equipment and
the operation. Your restaurant can do
well for years while you continue paying
rent. You haven't automatically been
buying a building along the way. [music]
Even getting through the door takes some
serious money. McDonald's currently says
US candidates typically need at least
$750,000
in nonborrowed personal funds. That's a
qualification requirement, not the price
of four restaurants. At this scale, your
job becomes overseeing the people
running several locations. One poorly
managed restaurant can consume a lot of
the money the others earn. Number three,
government bonds. [music] With
government bonds, the calculation gets
much simpler. At 5% annual interest, you
need $20 million. That assumes you buy
bonds at their face value with a 5%
fixed coupon. We're using a round
example rate, not quoting an offer
available today. So, with US Treasury
bonds, the interest arrives every 6
months. That would mean two payments of
500K a year on $20 million bonds before
personal tax. There are no customers to
replace and no employees to manage here.
You do, however, need to have $20
million first, and the payment stays
fixed while prices around you change. At
3% inflation, $1 million received 20
years from now could buy roughly what
$554,000
buys today. You would still receive the
full million. It just it wouldn't
support the same lifestyle. If you need
to sell the bonds before they mature,
their market price can also be lower
than what you paid. Holding them for
interest and treating them as money you
can withdraw at any moment. Well, those
are very different plans. Number two,
rental [music] apartments. How about
five apartments in Manhattan? To leave
you $1 million a year, each would have
to put almost $17,000 a month into your
pocket after expenses. Whatever those
apartments are, they would need to
collect considerably more than the rent.
A less spectacular version is 84
apartments, leaving you $1,000 a month
each. Together, they produce just over 1
million a year. That $1,000 is the money
left after allowing for empty months,
management, maintenance, property taxes,
insurance, and future major repairs. And
any mortgage payments have to fit in
there, too. If each apartment leaves
2,000 instead, you need 42. You might
even own those in one building rather
than buying 42 separate properties. Now,
put a purchase price on an example
building. Say it costs $20 million and
leaves $1 million a year after operating
costs and repair reserves before
financing. Buy it with cash and the
income target is met. But instead, you
could put down 10 million and borrow the
other 10 million. At an example 6%
interest rate with monthly payments
calculated over 30 years, the loan costs
about $720,000 a year. your spending
money falls to 280K. In this scenario,
you put in half the purchase price but
kept much less than half the income.
Some of those loan payments reduce what
you owe. That builds your ownership in
the property, but you can't use equity
to pay for dinner without selling or
borrowing again. Debt can make a
purchase possible earlier, but it
doesn't make the million of annual
spending money arrive earlier
automatically. And if your loan comes
due before that 30-year repayment
schedule ends, you might need to
refinance the remaining balance. And you
know, if real estate is an appealing
strategy to you, we just dropped a brand
new expert mentor in the app with a
collection that you will not want to
miss. Max Kim is a multi-million dollar
real estate investor. And over the
course of 20 lessons, he walks you
through the process of building
generational wealth by buying properties
at half price. And right now, we've
actually got a pretty sweet membership
deal running for the Alux app. We're
calling it the Great Founder Lockin, and
it's for everyone ready to end this year
and begin the next one on the highest
note possible. Now, typically the app
costs almost 30 bucks a month or just
under 200 bucks per year. But with the
Great Founder Lockin, you can sign up
for $59.99 for the next 2 1/2 months.
And then you're able to lock in every 12
months after that for only $82.99. And
that is taxdeductible if you're a
business owner. So scan that QR code on
screen to sign up or follow the link in
the description. All right, back to
business. We're on to number one,
dividend stocks. Finally, a version you
can own without ever visiting the
business. Dividend paying stocks. So, at
a 4% cash dividend yield, you need $25
million invested to receive 1 million a
year. At 3%, it takes about 33.3
million. [music] At 5%, it takes 20
million. Those are example yields with
payments assumed to continue and
investment costs already allowed for.
Now, it's tempting to push the
percentage higher. A 10% yield would
bring the starting amount down to 10
million. But a high quoted yield, well,
that can appear because a share price
has fallen while the displayed dividend
still reflects earlier payments. If the
company cuts its dividend, the income
you calculate disappears with it. and an
investment gaining 10% in value isn't
the same as paying you 10% in cash. You
may have to sell shares to turn that
gain into spending money. What makes
stocks appealing here is how little of
the operation you personally handle.
Other people run these companies. You
can spread your ownership across many of
them, but the difficult part with this
one is reaching a portfolio large enough
that ordinary dividend payments add up
to extraordinary income. So, which
version of the million would you
actually want? In our examples, stocks
and bonds demand 20 million or more
upfront, but once you own them, they
require very little of your time. The
difficult part was accumulating the
money to buy them. Restaurants and
laundromats can offer a route with less
starting capital, but you take
responsibility for an operation. And
like sure, a manager can handle the
shift, but someone still has to choose
that manager, check the results, and
deal with a location that keeps losing
money. Books, inventions, and software
give you a chance to create something
valuable before you have a fortune. You
can start smaller here. You can also
spend years working on something that
never finds enough buyers. Buying an
established catalog or business lets you
to inspect a payment history. Building
your own means creating that history
yourself with no guarantee of what it
will show. You could use both
approaches. Build a business, take some
of its earnings, and gradually buy
investments that need less from you. And
over time, more of your income could
continue, even if you stopped running
the original business. The million is
the same number on paper, but what you
have to do to keep receiving it, well,
that can make for a very different life.
All right, that's a wrap on this one,
Alexer. We'll see you back here next
time. Until then, take care, my friend.