A Big Fat Rant On Money, Value, And How To Get Paid What You’re Really Worth

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A Big Fat Rant On Money, Value, And How To Get Paid What You’re Really Worth

November 12, 2008

A French woman, upon seeing Picasso in a Parisian restaurant, approached the great master and insisted he put down his coffee and make a quick sketch of her. Graciously, Picasso obliged. When he was done, she took the drawing, put it in her handbag, and then pulled out her billfold.

“How much do I owe you?” she asked.

“$5,000,” was Picasso’s reply.

“$5,000? But it took you only three minutes!” she exclaimed.

“No,” Picasso answered. “It took me all my life.”

Value is a funny thing.

How you value the things you buy, and more importantly how you value yourself and your skills, is literally all in your head. Once you realize what you’re really worth and have the balls to ask for it… eventually getting to the point where you assume your value to be true without question… you’re already rich; the rest is just the mechanics of making it happen.

Successful people say your income (and success in other areas of life) is about the average of your closest 5 friends. So look around. Who do you see? What do you see?

I remember one time my friend Jason was having lunch with some of our old friends from high school. One of them asked him “what Greg was up to” – Jason told them about some of my publishing projects. They sneered.

“Where does Greg get off charging people so much for his books,” one guy said, “It’s robbery. Here I am busting my butt at Lowe’s for $7 bucks an hour and he’s sitting back in some chair selling damn books on the internet.”

Hmm, interesting. Have you heard people talk like this before?

Jason, being the good friend he is, countered with, “Greg’s books are worth every bit he gets for them. They change people’s lives. He gets e-mails from happy customers almost every day. Just because he doesn’t sweat it out and get all dirty doesn’t mean there’s no value. How many people have you helped today?”

My old friends are good people. They mean well. But if I want to have the kind of life I KNOW I can have and be the kind of person I KNOW I can be, I can’t hang around people who think like that anymore. Hear too much of their negative bullshit and you’ll actually start to believe it yourself. And since what you believe is the core of your success, sometimes old friends just have to go.

One of my earliest mentors, Tim Fortier, said something to me that stuck really well: “Find a way to keep getting paid over and over again for the work you did 5 years ago.”

A lot of people have this idea in their head that hours worked equals dollars earned. This is NOT how to get ahead in life; not in here America and not anywhere else. Maybe if we lived forever, but in reality there’s just not enough time out there for any of us to get rich that way. So asking an advice guru how you can get a bump in pay from corporate, is in my opinion, asking the wrong question.

Instead, you need to start thinking more in terms of “what do people want, how much will they pay for it, and how can I provide this thing to as many of these people as possible?”

Yes, this takes time, research, and *gulp* W-O-R-K. But unlike a job where each day starts over from scratch (same $10, $20, $50 per hour today as yesterday), thinking like this will cause the work you do today to keep paying you that same money far into the future – whether you actually continue “working” or not.

There are all kinds of things people say to you every day that can corrupt your mind if you’re not careful.

One I hear in the business opportunity market a lot is when someone comes out with a new “money making system” of some kind (whether it be real estate, internet marketing, or whatever) there will be a handful of guys crawl outta the woodwork with a comment like this:

“Hey if he’s so successful doing this thing, and if he really made $2 million with it last year, then why does he need to sell his package to me for $XXX?”

I used to think this way, years ago. Do you know the answer? If this guy’s so successful and made $2 million last year, why is he selling this package on the internet or TV?

Simple. Because he wants to make $3 million this year.

See, when you get to a certain level, there isn’t some switch that goes off in your mind that says “Ok, I’m done with money now. I’m not worth any more than this right here.”

No. Hell no. Instead it’s more like, “I did $2 million last year. Awesome. Now I wonder if I have it in me to double that over the next 18 months? Of course I can! This is gonna be fun!”

Same goes for all those $100 million CEO “golden parachute” packages you hear demonized in the media. These guys don’t get fired and let go like janitors do because their decisions carry HUGE responsibility, shifting the tide of hundreds of millions of dollars, potentially directing billions just by talking to a few people in a 30 minute meeting. They alone determine the fates of thousands of people, and often they worked blood sweat and tears into getting where they are today, so why shouldn’t they get paid the most??

People also talk about how credit card companies and banks “take advantage” of a helpless public, “conning” them into debt, holding them hostage in monthly payments, “scamming” them out of their homes, and ultimately destroying their lives. I’ve watched 2 documentaries to this effect stitched together by some Michael Moore wannabe’s hoping to make a name for themselves by “exposing” the Great Credit Card Company Satan. They talk about how PayDay Loan shops pop up everywhere (especially around military bases) and milk innocents for insane amounts of cash. They talk about credit card companies making 51% net profit and how that’s just plain WRONG.

Well, they’re right about one thing: America HAS become way too reliant on financing to pay for stuff. And those PayDay Loan joints really ARE every-damn-where. But they’re NOT “scamming” anybody! And advertising and marketing does not wield some magic wand that “forces” people to buy things. People buy what they WANT. All advertising does is take existing desires within a person and show them how they might be fulfilled.

These companies are simply providing something people want (money) to fulfill some need of instant gratification and charging a price for it the customer is AGREEING to well in advance. That’s not a rip-off, that’s good business. If someone gives you money to buy a house, they’re giving you today’s money (value) in exchange for some future profit that might or might not happen. There’s a risk to that, which is why they get paid interest (at a rate that’s clearly indicated in the agreement). And it should come as no surprise to these people when the repo man drops by to yoink the 50-inch plasma screen or their house gets taken away because they can’t foot the bill for all the out of control spending; it was all right there in plain black & white from day one.

Some people just think there’s such a thing as “too much money” for other people – yet they spend on themselves like there’s no tomorrow.

The amount of money you’re comfortable with is the amount of money you have. “Enough” is whatever your subconscious says it is.

I remember back in high school when Jason got a well-paying job at the largest medical clinic in the area for what was relatively little physical work on his part. One day in the hall between classes, our friend Andrew heard the news of Jason’s good fortune. He threw his hand’s up in the air dismissively, and gasped, “Well, HE’S done.”

Done. Jason’s “done” now in Andrew’s eyes because he has a decent job with decent pay. No use playing anymore. Game over. Jason wins. Let’s go home.

This attitude of “enough” is silly and rooted in a poverty-based mindset. Thinking this way can and WILL keep you in the poor house if you let it. The truth is, you’re never really “done” with anything. There is no “grand destination” where you can finally say “Wow. I’ve finally arrived.” Life is always a work in progress and ends only when you die.

As your income goes up, so do your options and preferences. You wouldn’t keep eating out of dumpsters if you had the cash to buy some good food, would you? Well, the same is true for a lot of other things. I stopped eating tuna sandwiches and soup outta cans a long time ago. I stopped buying bad clothes that made me look like a fat loser years ago. Everything gets upgraded once you can afford more. Life isn’t the same ever again.

Some wealth haters profess “money does strange things to people” or “money corrupts.” I say money reveals your “true self.” Meaning, the “self” you secretly always wanted to be but hide from the rest of society out of fear and the lack of ability to fulfill it. For some people this is good and they become like Richard Branson. Others get downright evil.

Why is this? Because of social agreement.

When you really get right down to it, there’s only 3 ways to get somebody else to do something you want:
1. Give them something of value in exchange (like money)
2. Dazzle them with your personality and powers of persuasion, or…
3. Use brute force

Let’s hope you don’t really consider #3 a viable option to attain success. If you do, good luck, I’ll see you in prison or on the run from Feds. So really all that’s left for you to get what you want from others is money (or trade) and the power of your personal charms.

But last time I checked, the cute American Airlines girl at the ticket counter won’t give me a $1,200 round-trip ticket to Europe, no matter how successfully I flirt with her. She’ll lose her job. And since we’re not in Biblical times anymore, no one will take my herd of goats as payment either.

Well damn. I guess that only leaves me with my money.

The point is this: as you increase in wealth, your ability to bypass this social system of agreement goes up as well. And when it does, that’s when people unleash their true desires to buy the $5,000 bottles of wine, the personal “life assistant” who makes $70k a year doing your errands, the 90 room houses, and the $19 million dollar yachts and private planes all while donating to their favorite charity; you just don’t want to deal with all of life’s bullshit anymore. And even better, you don’t have to. Life’s too precious to waste on little indignities. When you reach a certain level, TIME is what really matters; it’s the only thing we all have the same amount of no matter what. So why spend it waiting in line at the metal detector in some airport?

I’ll say it again: money bypasses agreement like nothing else in the world. People who were more or less “good” before they got rich get even better and become shining examples to the world, and the scum of society get even creepier. That doesn’t make money good or bad; it’s just something that is.

I believe there are certain mental money “levels” – kinda like how there are levels in a video game. And just like in the video game, if you make the right moves, you can skip a few at a time.

Here’s what I mean:

Let’s say you’re like I was when I was first starting out, making a simple $100 per week. Wasn’t much, but it was awesome to a kid who was used to having nothing at all.

When you’re used to a bank balance of ZERO – anything sounds fantastic. But here’s the funny thing about money: when you’re used to zero, then once you get anything MORE than zero, something inside you feels “weird” – uncomfortable just holding on to it – you feel compelled to spend it as soon as possible on something you think you want. And pretty soon, that $100 is long gone and you’re back to zero… which is where your mind says you belong.

This is the basic theme of how poor people stay poor, and how you can even give a man $1 million in Lucky-Lotto winnings only to find his life worse off 2 years later than how it was when you left him. By giving him the huge influx of cash, you skipped too many mental money levels than what he was used to (or could handle), sending his mind into a tailspin resulting in reckless spending on a bunch of crap that doesn’t benefit him for any length of time.

The same holds true for $1,000 , $10,000 , $20,000 , $50k, $100k, a million, all the way up to infinity. Whatever you believe you’re “supposed” to have is how much you actually will have when it’s all said and done. Each one of these steps is a level.

So how do you get to the next level?

Well… I don’t know about other people but for me, it was always borne out of strict personal discipline. One time when I was making a lot of money selling Oreck air purifiers nationwide, for the first time in my life I could afford expensive things. For one, I wanted a Bow-Flex so I could do all kinds of exercises at home and wouldn’t have to trek to the gym every day.

I almost bought one… but I didn’t. I resisted the urge. I said to myself “damnit Greg, if you do that, what will you have left? Don’t you wanna actually BUILD something with your money this time?”

Yes, I did. So I made the decision and (except for the new Dell computer I bought my girlfriend at the time to thank her for helping me) held back on any expense that wasn’t absolutely necessary.

And it paid off. Soon, the amount of money that used to drive me crazy wanting to spend, became normal to me. When a certain amount of money becomes NORMAL to you, that’s when you’ve moved to the next level. If it’s not normal for you, keep it awhile, hold on to it and let it grow on you. Eventually the money you have and the income you’re experiencing will feel “normal.” Now you’re really moving forward.

So to a guy like Picasso in the example I gave at the beginning, he was a guy who KNEW what he was worth, was COMFORTABLE asking for the price, and could look you in the eye and honestly make YOU believe it too. There was no problem. Success was assumed. It was normal.

Just because something took 5 minutes on a paper napkin doesn’t make it crap; it could be a famous drawing or a multi-million dollar business model. Just because it took me 2 days to write a report that’s made over $200,000 and helped thousands of people doesn’t somehow make it a bad thing.

There is no “fairness.” You do not get what you “deserve.” Time does not equal money.

VALUE equals money. Go create some. Give people what they want and they will pay you handsomely for it.

Your customers will certainly treat you with more fairness than any employer ever would.

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