Part of learning how to be a human being is making room in yourself for what you don’t know. It’s about becoming whole, and to inherit that wholeness. To reveal what your place to take in the ecosystem is, you have to learn how to release yourself and surrender from having to figure everything out. In fact, the more absent you are in making space in yourself, the more that gives rise to new beginnings and places in you that are ready to be born into the kind of signals that life gives you.
Life is in the business of creating life. Life has a design all its own. It has its own nature, and as we show up to it we can listen… And we can listen from emerging futures and learn from them. As we walk into them, we learn how to show up and be leaders. We’re being enlightened doers, and as we do that, we are not only being (in a highly tuned level of awareness and alertness), but we’re also moving from that way of being into the doing.
Part of the doing is what we have to do to go out and make ourselves protected and safe, and preserve wealth so that we can sustain ourselves. Money buys time. And so time is something that we have the opportunity of, and we can use it in the way that we choose to. We can’t control it, but we can make the time that we have usable by being discretionary. When we have more wealth, when we have our earnings, we’re able to use the time in a more discretionary way, and therefore, we may lend ourselves to more of what matters to us versus what we have to do.
And so part of creating this kind of earning capability is understanding that money is time. You buy time with your money. That money you can invest in having others take care of activities that you’re not necessarily having fun with or excellently skilled at… But yet you can have others do them for you, or with you, and they get all the joy and pleasure out of doing something that they were meant to do.
The other thing is that you can buy time in terms of free time, and time for you to invent, to be introspective, to reflect, to consider what matters, to generate breakthroughs… So looking at money this way makes it really purposeful in that you’re going to need to make this kind of profit, and generate the earning power, to support your purpose!
There’s nothing nasty or dirty about that. We should be making great, obscene money to fund our purpose. It has a very noble cause. That’s obvious. That’s natural… But if we just did everything that we wanted to do without looking at whether it was relevant or valuable, then we may be jeopardizing that earning power.
So, the question is, “how can I serve?” The question is, “how can I help?”
We start to turn our attention into value creation for the market. Earning power always starts with positioning and understanding. He or she who better understands those that they serve will be more relevant to the solutions that motivate and engage them… For long-term.
When I think about great entrepreneurship, I remember when Steve Jobs was in the design stages of the iPad. He started with a customer experience and all the empathy of envisioning what he wanted that customer experience to be, but also what could be possible for that customer… And then coming back to the design from the customer experience itself. What a great thought process!
So that’s similar to what I’m saying. How do you position your earning power? Who is your ideal customer? What kind of help do they need? What are their highest future possibilities? What’s the biggest danger that you can help them remove? What do they fear losing that you can help prevent from happening? What are their best opportunities that you can help them reach? What are their best strengths that you can help them reinforce as a supply line? What is the future that they want? Maybe also, what’s a higher future possibility that could happen, and if it were possible, what would happen if it did?
When Bill Gates said that he wanted a computer in every home on Earth, that was a pretty impossible goal that still drives him today. It’s not whether he accomplished it or not, it’s what it did to him. It oriented him at a very deep level. It got him to take action.
Could he recognize it if it existed? Sure! Has it ever been accomplished? Somewhat. Does it organize action? Absolutely. Is it noble? Yes. It matters to him.
So, what is it that you’re great at doing? Or your business? What is it unique at doing? Its Unique Selling Proposition? How can that be preserved? Can you increase the visibility of that unique process? What must happen to do that? Are there new customer segments and opportunities that are presented to you right now? Is this a time for you to be thinking about what you can do to add more value to customers? Yes! Should you be listening? Yes!
So what can you structure? How do you set yourself up for earning? What are your vehicles? Do you work remote? Do you work at home? Do you work by phone? Right now, we’re in the process of recalibrating the way work is done. We’re learning that it is possible to work in different manners, that we can work wherever we are, that we are mobile, and that people can get great value by this dynamic, by this model…
So you’ve got to shore it up. Structure it. Make sure that you’ve got your spaceship built, planning your onboard computer before you’re going to fly to the moon… Then you’re going to fly to the moon by getting in the right spaceship. Getting to the right destination. Doing the right things to be effective, efficient, and productive so that you can create the kind of earnings that you’re talking about.
What are two things you can do right now to increase your earning power? Don’t think about spending a lot on this. You don’t need to be investing a lot of dollars. There are probably more things you could do in your relationships. As a matter of fact, maybe tally up everyone that you have given services to. Any strategic partnerships. Any potential prospects. Take a fearless inventory of all the relationships that you have fielded in the last 36 months. Make a master list, then maybe segment them according to your As, your Bs, and your Cs. Now you’re starting to think strategically.
What are your As have that your Bs don’t? Based on what you said about your As, what would you do for them that Bs wouldn’t get? What do your Bs need? Education? Do they need stimulation? What do they need from you? Then your Cs… What are you going to do with them? Are you going to cut them loose, or are you going to move them in a certain direction? Maybe there’s another opportunity for them. Maybe somebody else could delight them. Maybe it’s time to strike up some kind of partnership.
The point is that it’s time to remove the dead weight. Cultivate your lilies and cut your leeches. Don’t water weeds.
It’s a good time for you to be shoring up all kinds of structures that are really all for your earning power, and taking away the things that are not relevant to that. It’s about relationships. It’s also about getting your support system set up. What are you delegating? What are you automating? What is it that you eliminate?
Take an inventory of all the activities you do. What are your top three money making activities? How can you make them more prominent features? Can you schedule two days a week where you just concentrate on the money making activities? Can you delegate everything else and do all the maintenance work, prep, in-between, and the buffer work on another type of day? Maybe on that day you just do maintenance stuff. On the other type of day you do game day, prime day, high performance day…
And so on those days, you’re going to be making great decisions and plays, and I hope that whatever you think about, the activities you do are very high leverage. That means they are 9, 10, or 11… They’re not a 1, 2, or 3. They’re a 9, 10, and 11. They have big payout, good ROI, they utilize your strengths, they trip your passion, and they involve delighting relationships that are really meant for your services, your products. They’re totally relevant. They’re in the mood. They have a motivator. The intrinsic motivator is understood, and you keep delighting them, and more and more as you do that, you keep making them thirsty for another drink.
Do you want to earn more? How are you doing in multiplying the value that you give to your current clients? What are you doing right now to generate new potential clients? What are you doing right now to increase the transaction sizes that each client actually has with you? Are you measuring these? How many customers do you have? What’s the average transaction size and how many times do they repurchase? Come up with an algorithm. What should that look like compared to the way it is today?
Set some new goals around that and define some strategies that would support it. That’ll automatically put you on the path of being tactical with increasing your earning power. Remember that as an entrepreneur, your earning power is the one thing that you can control above all else because you can position your talents. People buy people.
The more that you feature your unique ability and personal X-factor and what you’re doing, the more chances you have for being a magnet to other people. The more that you recognize that in others and become a supply line, the more they circulate more opportunity your way. It’s a game of trust and credibility. You have to do things that you say you’re going to do. If you want to increase your earnings, you have to finish things that you’re going to start. You have to always be on time… Say please and thank you and maybe even sorry. Those habits are like a referral plan. They’re a marketing plan. If you drop the ball on any of them, your habits will lower your income potential because people love dependable people. People that they love to refer are a great deal…
So why not be that valuable by demonstrating the kind of habits that create the future earnings that you want to create? That’s something you can do immediately. Always be on time. Say please, thank you, and I’m sorry. Make sure that you finish things that you start, and always do what you say you’re going to do.
Your word is your currency. Your habits create your future.
On the next audio, I’m going to go into what’s called Relationship Management, so I look forward to seeing you there.
