We’ve just ushered in 2009. We’ve got electric cars, skyscrapers and the ability to urinate while floating around in outer space. I mean…we’re like crazy techno freaks now.
So it struck me as sort of odd the other day when someone said to me, straight to my face, while looking in my eyes, “Money hates me and avoids me.”
I laughed hysterically for a while until I realized the person wasn’t laughing along with me and was actually quite serious. So I had to cover up and say, “Oh! Ahem…excuse me…that’s, uh…my allergies.”
“Allergies make you laugh at people?”
“Uh…it’s a…pollen…thing.”
While choking back more laughter, I had to struggle my wits around the statement.
“Money avoids me.”
Despite our ability to split atoms and walk on the moon, there’s still this odd voodoo/mojo/magic/aura/mumbo-jumbo thingy about money and how it comes and goes. Or fails to do so, for the less fortunate.
Well, I took it upon myself to do some ultra-scientific tests about money, how it works and how it gets from one place to the other. Preferably your hand to my wallet.
The Truth About Money
Seriously now. As we all embark (or wish to) upon business and life, the first thing we need to do when it comes to making money is banish the thought that it’s not ours, that it somehow avoids us and that we don’t deserve it.
People are afraid to even dream about hoping to commence upon considering the possibility that they may, someday, if the stars align, start a business. They worry, first, that they may fail. That worry is at partially based on a false idea that money is somehow self-motivated and out of one’s control. Like money is out there and just chooses to grace Company A with profits and inversely runs screaming from Company B willy nilly, nothing we can do about it.
Ain’t so. My very scientific researches uncovered the truth about money and I’d like to share them with you now:
- Money has no mind, no thoughts and no personality.
- Money doesn’t know your name or where you live.
- Money doesn’t know if you work 1 hour a week or 14 hours a day. Nor does it care in the least.
- Money is not drawn to people with strong personalities.
- Money isn’t offended if you smell like rotten armpit.
- Money does not avoid people who wear excessive plaid.
- Money doesn’t have a favorite color, but if it did I bet it would be “off-magenta.”
- Money doesn’t desire to drive a nice car or have slumber parties with its friends.
- When it gets up in the morning and thinks about what it wants to do today, it has absolutely no fucking clue.
Do you get what I’m saying here?
Money is dead. It’s paper. It’s a thing, with no more mind or personality than a brick or your left knee. (For people who actually do keep their personality in their left knee, my apologies.)
Nobody deserves money more than another and nobody is more entitled to it than you are. Money is created and earned by much less complicated means than all of our strange ideas would suggest.
“Well, what about me?” you ask. “I’ve been working hard for 20 years and I’ve got about six nickels to rub together. Money avoids me like the plague.”
Bummer, and I understand. I’ve been there too. But money is NOT avoiding you because money can’t avoid anything. Avoidance assumes a power of choice, and money’s ability to make a decision ranks somewhere between that of cardboard and a chicken nugget.
If you currently have no money, it means you haven’t earned, haven’t saved or both.
So let’s be done with these frilly other-worldly explanations. Money is not based on magic, karma, your facial features, childhood memories, freckles, height, luck, beneficent blessings from The Great Creator or leprechauns.
Okay…maybe leprechauns. I’m still looking into this one.
“Do you think I’m weird?”
“Definitely.”
“No, man, seriously. Am I weird?”
“Yeah, but so what. Everybody’s weird.” – Stand by Me
Life.
You’re late for work one day. Your car breaks down. You get fired. You find unexpected money somewhere. Someone surprises you with a gift. You surprise yourself with your own integrity. You stand up for a weakling. You get punched in the face in front of thousands of people, maybe even for standing up for a weakling. You make a great new friend. You lose a friend. You fall in love. You get dumped flat out. You discover a new author that changes your world. You discover you can actually cook. You enjoy a long span of great health and vitality. You puke your guts out. You get really hungover and vow to never drink again. You drink again. You take your first vacation in years and end wishing you were back at home, being productive. A secret admirer leaves flowers on your doorstep.
Life.
Don’t think too hard about it. You can drive yourself nuts and get awfully introverted trying to find why these particular bells are tolling for you.
Funny thing is, I’m not so sure there’s anything profound to figure out anyway.
These are the rewards and payments for living life.
Play hard. Get hurt. Fall in love and get your heart broken. Make some money with your own good work. Take a chance and fail. Be ethical, even when it’s uncool and people call you “sissypants.”
You’re alive.
Consulting Case Study: How $19,000 becomes invisible
Question: If you were about to flush $19,000 down the drain, would you know it?
The question up there is a serious one. If there were a division of your company that brought in roughly $19,000 a month, would you keep it going? Shut it down? Would you even know it was pulling in that amount of money?
I would hope so, but on a recent consult I found the same old huge glaring omission that I find with pretty much any individual or business person I talk to. I tell you, I’m about to hire a guy to carve these into stone tablets for me. Or one of those chainsaw artists. He can carve up my couch to read:
- Some people have no clue how their business is really doing.
- Some people have no clue how to keep and use stats.
- Usually these are the same people.
Stats? We don’t need no stinking stats!
I can tell you from first-hand experience exactly what happens pretty much any time you ask an individual or business person for his stats.
“Show me your stats, please,” you say.
“….,” says the guy.
“You know,” you say again, after a long pause, “statistics.”
“Statistics?” says the guy.
“Yeah, stats you know. Up. Down. Sideways. Graph paper sort of thing.”
“Oh, yeah. We don’t really have time for that here,” he says, all puffed up with pride.
“Totally,” you say, “I understand. Must be pretty time consuming walking around with that paper bag over your head.”
Read the rest →
Disclaimer: The next sentence contains the “f” word.
This post is fucking brilliant.
There is a gigantic and almost universal mistake being made by salesmen, website owners, bloggers, ad men, affiliate marketers and probably even vegetables and fish. It’s going on right now in the world of business.
Here’s a little scenario. At the end of it is a question which you should answer as honestly as possible because it highlights this common confusion.
Scenario: You’re a coffee salesman and you sell the best coffee ever. Gandhi himself drinks urns of it, and even the Anti-Coffee Coalition gave you a testimonial that reads, “Coffee is the fruit of Satan’s loins, but damn this is good stuff!”
Now, there’s a dude named Biff. He looooves coffee. He lives on the other side of the world from you, has never heard of you, doesn’t know you have a website, doesn’t know you sell coffee, doesn’t know your phone number and doesn’t care because he gets his coffee fix from the cafe down the street.
Now here’s the question:
Is Biff your potential customer?
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Promote : to help or encourage to exist or flourish
When you think of promotion do you automatically start thinking about advertising, posters or banner ads? Perhaps you think of sending out 1,000 pieces of direct mail or physically knocking on doors. Or maybe that hairy naked dude who stands on the street corner downtown talking religion.
Those things are promotion in a sense, yes, but that’s also sort of a shallow view of it and lacks an incredibly important element. And this element, let me tell you, can make you sick amounts of money and teach you that promotion can be done anywhere and always. Actually, scratch that “can”. You ARE engaged in promoting always and everywhere.
Promotion is making something known AND well thought of.
People tend to think promotion is just getting the word out, but is not enough. The word has to be acting to your benefit.
Promotion has to further your cause, not just garner attention. Any freak can get in the newspaper, but not every freak is doing real promotion.
Read the rest →
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Finally...a book on freelancing that's not just about taxes, client acquisition and time management.