Table of Contents
We rise by lifting others. —Robert G. Ingersoll
Rich Dad Poor Dad author Robert Kiyosaki says, “Rich is measured in money and wealth is measured in time. Most people focus on getting rich rather than becoming wealthy.” It’s true. One of the “secrets” you don’t hear too much about when it comes to wealth attraction is how to keep wealth once you have it. In both life and business, wealth is not only how much money you have, but it is also how loyal and committed your teams are, and how much time you have to spend on your passions outside of business. Measure the wealth in terms of happy teams, free time, and intangible benefits. After running dozens of successful businesses, Andres Pira, the founder and CEO of Blue Horizon Developments, teaches the concept of “Pay More, Give More, Keep More.”
- Pay more than you are expected to when compensating your team and vendors because they will pay more attention to detail, which your clients will deem valuable.
- Give more personal, non-monetary compensation to your team, vendors, and clients.
- Keep more time for yourself by managing your team, vendors, and clients from afar.
Pay More
Simply put, if you want the very best for your business, then you must make sure that you are working with the best. Working with the best requires you to pay them more. If a business is always looking to maximize profit, it focuses on cutting expenses whenever possible—including employees’ wages. The truth is that most companies pay employees as little as they can get away with. That’s the perfect way to encourage workers who will, in turn, provide as little effort as they can get away with. This is a backward way of thinking about compensation. A profit-first mentality of paying the lowest-possible wages ultimately cripples employee performance and engagement and damages your bottom line.
Results of Paying More
When employees and vendors are not worried about money, they focus on details and getting the details right. This saves money overall and raises client satisfaction. Here are the benefits of paying more:
- Great people don’t work for garbage wages. They’re smart, and they know their worth; that’s part of what makes them exceptional. If you fish at the bottom of the barrel, that’s what you’ll catch.
- If you want people to perform at higher levels, set the bar higher. You can’t excite top performers when you have low expectations. If you pay employees generously, then you can expect more from them and hold them to a higher standard. They will also expect more from themselves.
- Research shows that happy employees are 12 percent more productive than their less-than-enthused counterparts.
- Paying more keeps your best people more loyal.
- Consumers love doing business with companies that treat their people well. When you interact with employees who don’t care about their jobs, it’s noticeable and unpleasant.
Can You Afford To Pay More?
Business myth: Small companies can’t afford to hire the best because they are focused on staying out of debt and boosting profit. Business fact: This is running a business with a scarcity mentality. Hire what you can afford and you get results you can afford. By changing your mindset to one of abundance, you can start taking steps to hire the best and in turn get the best results, which will produce more revenue and more satisfied customers, not to mention more free time for you. Perhaps you can’t afford to pay too much more when first starting your business—this is where giving more helps tremendously.
Give More
“Give more” means you give more than just money to your employees to spur higher levels of job satisfaction. “Give more” can be benefits, bonuses, education, incentives, responsibility, or shared ownership—anything that has value to employees and is not related to their salary. People are motivated by money only up to a certain point. We, as a species, desire the intangible things money can’t provide, like feeling valued, appreciated, and recognized. This is why we should give more. If you want the best in the business working for you, make sure you can offer them something that will set you apart from your competitors. They need to see that working with you is their best option in the industry and personally. By getting to know your employees, you will know how to create “give more” situations that motivate them beyond money and don’t cost you very much.
You can implement one, two, or more nonmonetary benefits to an employee’s package that add tremendous value. Things like:
- flexible schedules,
- paid time off for personal development or family,
- cross training,
- online class tuition,
- workplace wellness programs,
- motivational seminars,
- structured bonus programs, and/or
- shares in the company.
Give More Faith, Trust, And Runway
Employees want to feel empowered; your faith in their decision-making ability can be more valuable than money in many respects. One of the ways to build that faith is to allow them to work in jobs they were not originally hired for; it shows you have faith that they can succeed with new things. By giving employees more responsibility to make decisions without fear of making a mistake, you build trust. By putting employees in charge of solving problems, you show them that they have the runway to be a leader. These are incredibly powerful ways to create loyal employees who will have your company’s best interests at the forefront.
When it comes to working with the best, you must hire those you already know are top people from within your own company; doing this gives more faith, trust, and runway to these critical employees going into important managerial roles. Faith, trust, and runway are incredibly rewarding. Applying this strategy has given Andres Pira, the very best employees in the industry, from sales superstars to the most talented marketing executives, accountants, financial people, and trainers. Paying employees more and providing them more reasons to be inspired and loyal is an incredible combination.
We pay a heavy price—both personally and collectively—when we treat employee engagement and profitability as separate. —Arianna Huffington
One of the best examples of this is Southwest Airlines. For more than forty years, Southwest has shared company profits with its workforce. Each week, Gary Kelly in his tenure as a CEO, publicly praises employees who’ve gone the extra mile to exemplify great customer service. The airline’s in-flight magazine, Southwest Spirit, features employees who go above and beyond, while down-to-earth videos shared internally further capture the company’s passion. The company operationalized its purpose throughout its culture by tying exceptional service to profit. Equally important, it used the power of storytelling to reward high performers, embedding the purpose across the employee journey. When we design engagement—strategies grounded in purpose and aligned to employees’ underlying aspirations—productive, loyal, high-performing teams can emerge.
Keep More
One of the critical factors in keeping the wealth you attract in your life is to have enough time to reflect on it, enjoy it, and continue the practices that made the wealth possible.
Reflecting on your wealth is very important because it helps you feel gratitude toward it, determine how to best use it, and reflect on the things you need to do to maintain it. Enjoying your wealth, both monetary and intangible, requires time—free time. Free time means that you can physically and mentally detach from your responsibilities. This allows you to put real-time into enjoying family, friends, experiences, and self-evolution without the mental ties to your business; this is key to long-term success.
Continuing the practices that made you wealthy is also paramount. If you are not able to keep more of your time away from being actively engaged in your business, then you will always be chasing wealth, as opposed to attracting it. It is important to place as high a priority on keeping more of your time free as it is on attracting and retaining the best employees. Keeping more time free requires that you not micromanage your well-paid teams.
Micromanaging Steals Your Time
Micromanaging is one of the most damaging habits a leader, entrepreneur, or business executive can have. It goes against the principles of giving more and keeping more. Teams get bogged down going through laborious procedures, and worse is the environment it generates. Groups that adapt to a micromanagement style are either quietly rebellious or unfortunate, unable to make any independent decisions. Compensation matters less and less in this downward spiral. Micromanaging leaves you continually putting out fires, rather than focusing on the tasks that only you can perform. Why micromanage, especially when it is counterproductive to the “Pay More, Give More, Keep More” strategy? The reason for micromanaging ranges from lack of trust to simple inexperience. To avoid the need to micromanage, you must build trust with your team members.
Every team, department, and business work together. If one department of a business is lacking, the results will show in the daily reports and at meetings. Solutions are created, and problems are remedied. Even when you do become a successful business owner, the work doesn’t stop there. It takes a lifetime of dedication and discipline to keep a business thriving; it is easier with a dedicated team. It is easy to manage from afar when you trust your team; trust comes from the intangible benefits created when you pay more, give more, and keep more. (Excerpt is from “Homeless to Billionaire” by Andres Pira).
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