When is it OK to be focused on money?

I got asked an interesting question on my show #HeyKerwin recently – it was, ‘When is it ok to be focused on money?’

I thought I would share my response on the blog because so many people place such a high emphasis on money, and that mindset can bring about some pretty serious consequences.

We need to understand what focusing on money does fundamentally to our psychology and our behaviours.

The reality is, when people focus on money, it actually narrows their perspective and it increases the probability of them experiencing stress.

But also, when people focus on money they’re eight times more likely to engage in deceit or deception, which also means they could be charged with a fraud related offence because of some form of dishonest conduct in business – this is not where you want to go.

Now that doesn’t mean that everyone that focuses on money is full of shit and a big dirty liar, but it does mean it increases the probability of certain behaviours and certain traits that may come out in normal everyday people because they’re focusing on the wrong thing.

My advice to you is the only time you should ever be focusing on money is when you’re looking at your financial reports either every fortnight or every month.

If you do that then you’re not focusing on ‘getting’ more of it, you’re focusing on better ‘managing’ it.

Money likes order and structure and a level of appreciation. It likes to be measured and looked after. It’s not just about how much is coming in and where it’s coming from, but also how much is going out and where it’s going to.

It’s about reducing costs where needed to protect and care for what you’ve got.

Look, I’ve made so many mistakes and have seen others make so many mistakes by purely focusing on money. The flip side to that is that I wouldn’t be where I am today if I didn’t make those mistakes.

However, the sooner you can move away from focusing on money and focus on something greater, like living your purpose – why you’re here, what you’re here to do, the legacy that you want to leave behind – the sooner your life is going to get in a much better state of flow for you to move in the right direction to where it is that you want to go.

Most people are really excited about the money. But let me ask you this, what if you had a million dollars. That would be amazing right? But imagine that money was locked in a room with no chairs, no seats, no bed, and when you went to visit it, you couldn’t even touch it. You can look at it, but you can’t spend it.

Would you love it as much then?

No you wouldn’t because it would just be an innate object sitting there that doesn’t mean anything – there’s no value to it unless you can do something with it.

Money has no value. The value of money comes from what it can actually give us, so we need to be focusing on what we want from the money, not the money itself

One of the things I’ve learnt about money is that when you focus on doing business well, and you focus on delivering value, and you focus on good business practices and principals, money is a natural consequence. And that’s the challenge for most people, they’re focusing on the consequence not on the action.

When you’re focusing on the consequence of money, you’re going to make a lot of silly mistakes but if you’re focusing on the things that will by consequence create the money, then the money just takes care of itself

Just focus on the thing that produces the money and get money out of your head, the only time you should be thinking about money is once or twice a month when you’re looking at your financials.