Making a lot of money has absolutely nothing to do with how “hard” you work…
Richard Lomax
20LeadsEveryMonth.com?? Helping SMEs get 20 quality enquiries, consistently, every month. With an improved sales message and offer + more exposure + automated follow-up.
I’d like to talk to you about one of your most precious, but grossly under-valued commodities…
Your Time!
You see, most of us are taught that you’ve got to work long, hard hours if you want to be a ‘success’.
But by the time you’re through reading this article – it’s going to become “crystal” clear to you that…
Nothing Could Be Further From The Truth!
I’m going to reveal to you a little-known but highly effective system for working “smarter” not “harder”.
How many times have you told your spouse, friend, or significant other “I work so damn hard, I should be a millionaire by now” or ” My competition must be doing something dodgy to make all that money since I work probably three times harder and make a lot less than they do!”
If you haven’t figured it out yet, making a lot of money has absolutely nothing to do with how “hard” you work.
Let me try to be more specific.
A renowned business consultant named Michael Gerber wrote a book called The E-Myth Revisited, several years ago (which every single one of you should buy and read immediately). This book is considered by many, including myself, to be one of the most important business books written in the last 100 years.
Although I strongly urge you to read it for yourself, I’d like to give you a brief synopsis of the invaluable lessons it taught me:
1. Most Business Owners Are “Technicians” NOT Entrepreneurs.
Gerber explained that most successful employees sooner or later conclude that they could make far more money if they owned a business rather than working for someone else.
So what they do is go out, start their own business, and create a “job” for themselves.
In most cases, these people end up working harder for themselves with less money to show for it, because they now also have a dozen other “jobs” to worry about, and there are no other employees to do them. These business owners are worse off with their own business than they were working for someone else because they never truly understood what it meant to be an “entrepreneur”.
2. You Must Work “On” Your Business Not “In” Your Business.
If you truly want to be successful in your own business, you cannot and should not do everything yourself.
Your job should be getting and keeping customers not ordering office supplies, doing your own bookkeeping, answering your own telephones, cleaning, and doing everything else your business requires.
If all of your time is spent doing administrative “detail” work, you will never have time to focus on the truly important things like marketing, getting new customers, and keeping existing customers happy.
3. You Must Have Predictable “Systems” Set Up For Running Your Business.
Every single business, no matter how large or small it is, must have a “systematized” way of doing things.
Otherwise your business will operate in constant “chaos” which will ultimately lead to customer dissatisfaction, and probably the failure of your business.
A perfect example of a system is a franchise like McDonalds. They have systematized every single aspect of their business so that any new franchisee can open up a McDonalds restaurant in their area, and their customers will have the same exact experience as they have had at any other McDonalds restaurant across the country.
Virtually every aspect of your existing business can be reduced to a “step-by-step” procedure that is repetitive in nature.
There are very few things that will happen in your business that are totally new or unfamiliar to you.
Understand that most aspects of business are repetitive in nature, and then set out to put together your own “operation’s manual” which explains how to do every function of your business in step-by-step detail.
This way, when you start hiring new people, most of your training can be done by handing them your manual and telling them to read it. It will make running and growing your business much easier.
Now, let’s talk about “Operation Money Suck”.
What Does “Money-Suck” Mean?
Good question. Let me explain.
A famous copywriter and marketing expert named John Carlton coined the term “money suck”.
What he meant by this is that the goal of every entrepreneur or business owner should be to literally “suck” the maximum amount of money out of every minute they spend working.
To be more specific, he explained that most entrepreneurs have a difficult time differentiating between £10/hr. work and £150/hr. work.
In other words, every time you send an email, answer your own phone, order office supplies, do your own telemarketing, or book-keeping – you are “hiring” yourself to do £10/hr. work.
I’ll bet you’re saying to yourself right now – “But Richard, I don’t have the money to pay someone to help me do these things – I’ve got to do everything myself.”
If this is the case…
You’re Costing Yourself A Ton Of Money!
“What do you mean?”, you ask.
Let me explain. Every hour you spend doing £10/hr. work is a “working” hour you can’t spend doing £150/hr. work.
Since most of us work about 8 – 10 hours a day, every hour you waste is money lost that you can never regain.
To put this more simply, there are two types of jobs in every business, regardless of what type of business you’re in:
- Money Dissipaters:
These are jobs like administrative work, book-keeping, running errands, etc. They don’t make the company any money, they cost the company money.
These jobs must be done to run a business, but they do not bring any money into the business, and without sales, these jobs are useless.
2. Money Makers:
These are jobs like marketing, selling, and setting up joint ventures. All of these activities bring money into the business. These are the £150/hr. jobs. And if you haven’t figured it out yet…
These Are The Only Jobs You Should Be Doing!
You see, the true definition of an entrepreneur is a person who is a “Rainmaker”.
You’re the one who “makes things happen”.
Your job is getting new customers in the door, and keeping existing customers happy so they keep re-buying from you.
All other jobs should be hired out!
Let a £10 an hour person help you with every aspect of your business other than “Getting and Keeping Customers”.
For example, if you’re still mailing out FREE reports, checking orders before despatch, arranging the office cleaning – you are now doing £10/hr. work.
The only, and I repeat only thing you should be doing is conducting seminars and webinars, doing sales presentations, and continually staying on top of your marketing (i.e., making sure proposals are sent out every week, doing follow-up mailings, communicating with prospects on Facebook or LinkedIn, etc.).
Every other job that you’re currently doing should be off-loaded to someone else who is probably far more capable in that area than you are.
I’m always asking myself the question, “Can someone else do this job cheaper and more effectively than I can?”
If the answer is “yes”, I immediately pay someone else to do it!
Every time you start doing £10/hr. jobs, think to yourself…
“I’m Burning Up £150 Notes Right Now!”
That should put you in the proper mindset, and make you feel guilty that you’re “costing” yourself hundreds of pounds.
This is the “secret” to money-suck and making a fortune in your business.
It’s not working “harder” that makes you rich, it’s working “smarter”.
So the next time you hear someone say “I work so hard, I should be a millionaire by now!” – ask them if they have employees, or if they have an “operations manual” for running their business.
I’ll bet you the farm these people don’t know how to delegate or differentiate between £10/hr. and £150/hr. work!
Let me know your thoughts and comments please!
Professional actor - getting your message across - and accredited artists' model at Gruffudd Arts
6 年This is where I've been for almost 20 years! I've been an acolyte of Michael Gerber for longer than that - but my experience with money-suck comes from the experiences of my then girlfriend, who was working for an engineering company in Wales. All was well when the old Managing Director did his thing - people would do what they were supposed to do, and everything ran tickety-boo: the typist typed, the salesman sold, the secretary kept secrets etc. But then the Old Man retired to the links... and all hell broke loose. You see, the new broom swept crooked - not that he was fly or underhand, but he would insist on doing his own typing. I told him that's crazy - he's doing a £12k job for a £100k (or whatever) salary, and doing it badly to boot. The typist was an excellent one, with excellent grammar and almost faultless typing ability: the new boss, however was, whilst good at organisation, absolutely useless on a keyboard. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't educate pork - and I think the company went down shortly after...
Working with clients to protect their data from any form of threat, as well as helping them become compliant with various regulations be that on-premise or in the cloud
6 年So true