Making Money: Ten points

The first point: passive income is better than working for money

Talking about income, the bottom line is this: the best income is a passive income. No doubt about it. Interest, dividends, royalties, money from web-based schemes, lottery winnings, being left money by your long lost great aunt who just died. All far better than actually working. When you work as an employee, you swap your time for money. This is OK if you have an employer who compensates you very well for your time or if you don’t really want a lot of money. But I don’t think many of us fall into these categories. So the only really sensible way to go is to generate passive income. It takes work up fron, of course, but when the work is done, the money keeps on coming and coming and coming … Which lads us nicely onto …


The second point: the magical power of leverage.

Or not reinventing the wheel. Or getting the same thing done over and over again without actually doing it all those times yourself. For example, you can set something up and leave it to do a job over and over. Take this article, for example. I wrote it once and it can be read an endless number of times. Now if everyone who reads it pays me a dollar, I could get very rich. Being such a generous guy, I’m putting it out there for free, but you get the idea

Or I could give a lecture, as many life coaches and trainers do. If I give the lecture once to a small number of people and charge an entrance fee, I can make a bit of money. But I have to keep on doing it, so instead I could rig up video links all over the place and pay people to watch all over the world. I could record the lecture and sell it. Does it sound far fetched? Well, it’s just an example, but people are really doing it right now!


The third point: it’s quality not quantity that matters.

You’ve heard it a million times, but maybe that’s because it’s so true. It’s the value that you deliver that makes a difference. I used to know the regional manager of a big bank. During one of our regular drinking sessions, he told me the secret of being a good salesman. He said that you have to find out what people want and then give it to them. Sounds obvious right? Well, it’s amazing how many salespeople just try to sell you anything, just try to get commission with a one-off deal. But you know from your experience – if the property agent or the car salesman or the tailor or (fill in the blank) takes the trouble to get to know your needs and then delivers something to really address those needs, you’ll go back again and again. You can make a hundred one-off sales and you’ll still have to work as hard to chase down every prospect, but if you deliver value, people will come back of their own accord. That’s the power of delivering value.


The fourth point: Don’t be lazy

What stops people getting rich? I would say that number one is this: laziness and procrastination. What more can I say? Decide what you want, come up with a plan, and do something! Although honestly, I don’t think a plan is that important. You can plan and plan and plan and plan …. Better just get on with it.


The fifth point: the benefits of passive income

I’ve read about how some people think that employees are ‘slaves’ and that the only way to escape from your boss / society / “the system” is to generate income yourself and not rely on an employer There’s nothing wrong with working. I think the issue is that you shouldn’t be working for a living. You should be working for the joy of it. What’s that? You don’t love your job? You don’t bounce out of bed every morning and skip to work? I passionately believe that you should not be working for an income. Money comes when you choose to have it; it comes when you think about it and dwell on it and intend it. Doffing your cap to a boss because you need money shows that you havn’t got a clue about how the world really works, just like Jennifer Aniston in this clip from Office Space, one of my favorite comedy movies.




Put it another way:

Morpheus: The Matrix is everywhere, it is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, or when go to church or when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

Neo: What truth?

Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind.

Couldn't have put it better myself. Of course, choosing the red pill gives you ...


The sixth point: freedom...

… from schedules, being told how to dress, how to behave, who you hang out with (you aren’t forced to share a room with moaning, whining people who you despise for eight hours a day). Let’s face it, money makes you free. It isn’t everything – far from it, money can be the source of untold pain and suffering. But it can also give you a wonderful life. When you need a holiday, you can choose where to go, how to get there, where to stay. When someone you love gets sick, you can choose how and where they get treated. If you get tired of your job, you can walk out and go somewhere else or even just take a break. Maybe never work again. Money is a good thing because it makes you free.



The seventh point: not working for money gives you a reliable stream of income

Yes, it sounds counterintuitive, but a passive income stream is arguably more reliable than working for a living. While you’re working, your boss can fire you at any time, but if you rely on passive income, it’s much less likely to dry up, especially if you have multiple income streams. The companies whose stock you own aren’t suddenly going to stop paying out dividends (assuming you bought the right stock, of course); the bank isn’t going to stop paying you interest.

In fact, in the end, you’re going to be relying on a passive income anyway. Where does your pension come from? Basically it comes from a portfolio of bonds, dividend stocks and mutual funds – all generators of passive income.

The eighth point: do what you love!

Doing what you love and not thinking about how it will bring you success and money is, paradoxically perhaps, the surest way to attract money into your life. You can't possibly tell how it will happen, but if you do what you love and trust the universe to figure out the details, you'll look back with amazement about how things worked out. I found a wonderful story recently, recounted by Steve Jobs - he had just dropped out of college and came across a calligraphy class which he was interested in. Later on, it changed everything but at the time he couldn't have predicted it. Here's his story:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

The ninth point: trust yourself

You know best. You know what's right for you. Nobody can tell you the best path to take. Sometime, you need experts - when you're sick, you need to go to a doctor (though this is arguable - but that's another post for another day), if a pipe bursts in your house, you need to get a plumber in. But for the most important thing in your life - you - you don't need them. In fact, they will probably do you harm. I used to rely on financial experts, but every one of them has let me down with the wrong product, the wrong package - now I take care of all my own investments and I'm doing great. When people give me advice or tell me their opinion about what I should do, I listen, I consider, and then I decide what's best for me. Do you think this is selfish? Well, I can't live my life for other people, and neither should you. And I don't expect anyone to live their life to accommodate my expectations and for my convenience - now that would be selfish. So follow your heart, do what you love, and the money will surely follow.