How to Make More Money

The other day I ran into an old friend from school.

"How are you?" I asked.

"Oh, you know... just chasing that next dollar," he said before taking another swig of beer. He's one of the entrepreneurial-minded millennials who spends a lot of time working on many different side projects and opportunities, but never makes progress in any of them.

Money is his motivator, but it's never enough. There are a lot of reasons for that, but life-fulfillment lessons aside, let's talk about the five ways that we can all make more money, as employees or entrepreneurs or somewhere in between.

1. Improve Your Skills & Abilities

Money follows value. The best way to increase value is to improve upon what you bring to the table.

It is the best time in human history to learn new things, yet we often overlook how easy it is to pick up our phones and learn how to greet someone in a new language, or code an app, or get certified in Google Analytics. All these things add value.

Sharpen Existing Skills

Determine where you make the most money, what skills and talents generate the bulk of your income. Then, look at the person who's the best in the world at those things or in your industry.

What can you do to take one step toward knowing as much as they do, or more?

Read their books, articles, or watch their videos. Study them. Become a student of excellence in your field. It only takes 15 minutes a day to build a pattern of growth.

Explore New Skills

Make a list of all the things you've ever thought, "I'd like to do that!" It could be to play the piano, do photography, drive stick shift, calligraphy, inbound marketing, anything.

Go over the list and pick the one you're most interested in, then find a resource that teaches you how to do it. Bonus points if it's related in some way to your job.

Content Creation

In the current economy, one of the most important skillsets is content creation. Learn how to write well, take pictures, do some graphic design on a tool like Canva or the Adobe Suite, and make videos. Content creation is the most valuable skill set in any industry during our Digital Age.

Resources for Learning

• LinkedIn Learning - Professional Skills
• Duolingo - Language Skills
• HubSpot Academy - Content Marketing Skills
• CodeAcademy - Coding Skills
• And don't forget your local library, search engines, and good ol' experimentation

With a combination of increased ability and new skills, you are able to bring more to the table. Just don't ever count your money while you're sitting there.

2. Increase Productivity

Most of us spend our workdays mired in bullsh*t. We field phone calls from spammers, answer redundant emails, and get sucked into the vortex of Instagram or Facebook.

Increasing productivity begins with focus. Focus on the task at hand and ignore everything else. Multi-tasking is a myth. Leave your phone in the other room for one or two hour time blocks of productivity. Between these focus blocks, take fifteen or twenty minutes to answer whatever came in while you were dominating your work.

Get a whiteboard. I have about a half a dozen of them and I use them to take notes, create to-do lists and most importantly, mind-map ideas out. Whiteboards help me to get clear on ideas and action plans, they also allow me to drop an idea quickly and come back to it later. Journals serve the same function and you should keep one on you at all times, or use a productivity app that works across devices, like Evernote.

Get a coach or an accountability partner. You can't do this alone, so have someone who cares about you enough to check up on you and hold your proverbial feet to the fire.

Utilize a daily planner like the one from Michael Hyatt or Brendan Burchard.

Shut out the noise. Close your door, turn off the music or television, shut it down. If you're in a common area, put on big headphones; you can use some ambient tones in the background to drown out voices, but don't listen to anything with lyrics.

Use one browser tab at a time, and shut down email notifications.

Take little power breaks of fifteen minutes throughout the day. Go outside and take some deep breaths. Do a Headspace meditation. Enjoy a brisk walk.

The truth is, you already know what it takes to be productive. Embrace it. Embrace the silence, embrace the work, shut down the distractions and dive in.

3. Eliminate Options

"No one can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other." Matthew 6:24

The best advice, like my grandmother, is really old.

Pick a Venture

So many young entrepreneurs are involved in multiple ventures, yet none of them are successful. Many have a job and a "side hustle" or two. However they lack vision and focus with their ventures.

Pick one thing. Get great at it. Stick with it. Spend five years on it, not five months. Master it. Don't pick up any side hustles - I realize that seems to go against the gig economy, but on the contrary, it supports it. If you are a freelancer, pick one service to provide and deliver it better than anyone else does.

True experts are rare, and they command the highest rates.

Stop Living for the Weekend

Eliminate your weekend options. The weekend isn't for forgetting the week, it's for recapping the week, rejuvenating, resting, and building up for a phenomenal next week.

A wildly successful mentor once told me, "If you want to be successful, don't do what everyone else is doing on Friday night. Those people have what they do because they act how they do; if you want to be different, act differently."

4. Revamp Your Attitude

Begin your day with gratitude and a killer morning routine that screams positivity.

Read and listen to books that build confidence in your abilities. Follow podcasts about business and self-development.

Build a mindset for yourself of excellence. Memorize affirmations, build visualizations, and pray for guidance every day with a consistent routine. Remember that affirmations without discipline is lunacy, so once you revamp your attitude, take massive action.

Love everyone you meet. Love in the sense that you care about them, that you want the best for them. Make a habit of complimenting people, genuinely, about something you admire or respect about who they are; it can be small, but it must be honest.

Choose to be happy.

5. Charge More

Once you have done the above four, you are ready to ask for more money. Give the above a good six months, let your clients or your boss see the changes you've made.

If you have a job, ask for a pay raise.

If you have a business, increase your prices 10 or 20%, proportionate to your increases in value. Figure out your hourly rate here, if you don't already have one.

Conclusion

Be disciplined, grow, be and do more. The hard part is building the habits and staying focused on what truly matters to allow you to make more money.

Learn new skills, improve existing skills, focus on productivity, eliminate distractions, develop a more abundant attitude, increase what you charge.

Remember to get a coach or a mentor to help you. Share your game plan with your mentor and ask for feedback; ask for help! An accountability partner will change your life.

Stay inspired by watching Kerwin Rae, Jim Rohn, and other leaders of the past and present.

Go forth, kick ass, make more money; and let me know how it goes.