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There is one simple question for you about your income. Can you earn twice as much money as you do now in the same amount of time? Can you earn three times as much money? Ten times? Is it possible that you could earn 1,000 times the amount of money you do now in the same amount of time? Absolutely!—if you find a way to be worth 1,000 times more to your company or your fellow man.
Below insightful excerpt is from one of my favorite books ‘Awaken the Giant Within’ by Anthony Robbins.
Become More Valuable
The key to wealth is to be more valuable. If you have more skills, more ability, more intelligence, specialized knowledge, a capacity to do things few others can do, or if you just think creatively and contribute on a massive scale, you can earn more than you ever thought possible. The single most important and potent way to expand your income is to devise a way to consistently add real value to people’s lives, and you will prosper. For example, why is a doctor paid more than a doorman? The answer is simple: the doctor adds more value. He has worked harder and developed himself so that he is worth more in terms of his capacity to add measurable value to people’s lives. Anyone can open a door. A doctor opens the doors of life.
Why are successful entrepreneurs so well rewarded financially in our culture? It’s because they add more value than virtually anyone around them.
“All wealth comes from adding value, from producing more, better, cheaper, faster, and easier than someone else.”- Brian Tracy
Add Values
There are two primary benefits that entrepreneurs create. First, they obviously add value to their customers by increasing the quality of their lives through the use of their products. This, by the way, is critical for any company to prosper. So often, companies forget that their real purpose for being is not just to make a profit. While a profit is an absolute must for a company to survive and flourish—like eating or sleeping, a necessity—it’s not the real purpose.
The true purpose of any corporation is to create products and services that increase the quality of life for all the customers they serve. If this is achieved on a consistent basis, then profit is absolutely assured. However, a company can profit in the short term and not be here in the long term if it doesn’t continually add value to people’s lives. This holds true for corporations as much as individuals.
The second thing that entrepreneurs do is that, in creating their products or services, they create jobs. Because of these jobs, the employees’ children can go on to higher education and become doctors, lawyers, teachers, social workers, and add more value to society as a whole—not to mention the fact that these families spend the money that they earn with other vendors. The chain of value is never-ending. When Ross Perot was asked for the secret of his wealth, he said, “What I can do for this country is create jobs. I’m pretty good at that, and Lord knows we need them.” The more value you contribute, the more you will earn if you put yourself in the position to do so.
The lesson is simple. You don’t have to be an entrepreneur to add more value.
Expand Your Knowledge
But what you must do every day is to continually expand your knowledge, your skill, and your ability to give more. This is why self-education is so critical.
If you want to earn more money where you are today, one of the simplest ways to do so is to ask yourself, “How can I be worth more to this company? How can I help it to achieve more in less time? How could I add a tremendous amount of value to it? Are there some ways that I could help cut costs and increase quality? What new system could I develop? What new technology could I use that would allow the company to produce its products and services more effectively?” If we can help people to do more with less, then we truly are empowering others, and we will be empowered economically as well, as long as we put ourselves in a position to do so.
In sessions, participants brainstorm ways they can add more value and therefore increase their income. The key question to ask yourself is: How could I help touch more lives? How could I do it at a deeper level? How could I give a better quality of product or service? Inevitably, some people will say, “There’s no way that I could add more value; I’m already working sixteen hours a day as it is!” Remember, there is no suggestion to work harder or even work smarter. The point is, what new resources could you employ that could add more value to other people?
#1 Real Example
A massage therapist who was one of the most successful in his field, and he wanted to know how he could increase his earnings when he was booked solid. He couldn’t see one more person a day, and he was already charging the highest rates in his field. As he began to brainstorm new ideas, focusing on how he could take the resources he had to help his patients and others, he began to realize that if he could team up with someone who owned a physical therapy unit, and refer his patients who needed help, he could receive a referral fee.
His income is now almost double, working the same number of hours a day. All he did was find a way to add more value to both his doctors and his clients. Since he knew the doctors well, and they understood his form of therapy, there was a greater consistency of care between them, and he benefited financially in the process.
#2 Real Example
In another area, one of the top radio salespersons is a woman whose primary marketing strategy is not merely to sell radio time, but to constantly look for opportunities to help local companies prosper. For example, the minute she hears that a new shopping center is going to be built, she contacts potential vendors for the shopping center and lets them know about the opportunity, allowing them to get a jump on the market. She then contacts the developer and introduces herself as a radio station representative who works with people in their industry all the time. Would the developer like to see a list of the top vendors in their fields?
Out of this strategy, several things result. She’s adding value beyond the radio time people would purchase to promote their companies. She’s found a way to give them much more than anyone else around, so they usually buy a significant portion, if not all, of their radio time from her. This motivates them to reciprocate value for value. This does not require a great deal of her time, but it makes her more valuable to her customers than any other radio salesperson in the region, and her income reflects it.
#3 Real Example
Even if you work in a large corporation, you can add more value. There was a woman working as a claims processor for a hospital. She saw how slowly things were going and, knowing that claims processing was the economic lifeline of the hospital, she discovered that she could be much more efficient and potentially process four to five times as many claims as she had previously. She asked her supervisors if she could do the work of five people, would they increase her salary by 50 percent? They said that if she proved she could consistently produce results over a period of time, they would do so. Since then, not only has she increased job efficiency and her income, she has a newfound sense of pride.
The key to increasing your income with your company is remembering that you can’t just increase the quality of what you’re doing by 50 percent and expect a 50 percent increase in income. A company must profit. The question to ask yourself is, “How can I increase the value of what I do by ten to fifteen times?” If you do this, in most cases you’ll have no trouble increasing your income.
