Hindsight is 20/20 or so they say. This is one major reason why doing things like reading the books of people who have accomplished what you want to accomplish can make your success so much quicker. Many people will spend years going in the same unproductive circles and going down the same unproductive paths before something smacks them upside the head and they realize what they were doing wrong.
Unfortunately this doesn’t happen to everyone and some people spend their entire lives spinning their wheels going nowhere. But I’m getting off topic here. Reading about the mistakes of others helps you to avoid those mistakes yourself. And here I’m going to share on of the biggest and longest mistakes that I made in business so that you don’t have to.
Right Heart, Wrong Mind
I like to think of myself as a tough minded person. One who is no nonsense and doesn’t let things like emotions or soft heartedness get in my way. I know this isn’t entirely true but I like to think it’s true more often than not. However one place where I didn’t realize this was holding my back was in my business. You see for the longest time I subscribed to the nonsense spouted by the B.S. gurus of give value and you’ll get money.
Meaning you simply have to give enough value and then batta-bing batta-boom you’ll be drowning in the benjamins before you know it. However this is complete and utter horseshit. Don’t get me wrong this sounds good on paper and there is sort of a truth to it, but as far as taking it at face value goes it’s complete B.S., you see while value does play a role in business (a pretty big one) it’s not the number one thing.
Scam Artist Vs. Good Samaritan
Let’s look at two “archetypes” for lack of a better word. Let’s look at a swindler like Bernie Madoff and a good Samaritan like…well let’s be honest other than 10 seconds on the local news you’ll never hear about a true good Samaritan. Let’s use a guy who runs a free blog sharing everything he knows with the public as an example. One gives no value but understands sales and make millions while the other gives tremendous value and yet barely makes pennies.
This is just one example. My point with all of this is value does not translate to wealth. Rather charging people is what translates to wealth and then if you give value to them all the better and you’ll be able to stay in one spot for a longer length of time. As the very rich and successful speaker Robert Cavett once said “When they show up, bill them”. Money first and then you can give the real goods. I know plenty of gurus tell you to give it all away but unless this leads to charging people more it just doesn’t make sense.
What’s The Balance
Now you may wonder well what’s the balance? And I can’t tell you exactly but I can tell you this. You should lean more towards the charging people side than the giving them value side. Only after people have given you a high and consistent dollar amount do you want to give them everything that you have. Until then you should keep leading them to higher and higher dollar amounts.
Being indiscriminately generous will get you tired and poor. Being extremely selectively generous with those who have given you an arm and a leg however is how most guru type businesses are run. They may rationalize this in different ways but its the truth about making money. Charge first, charge upfront, and charge often and then provide value. Don’t get these mixed up.
If you have any questions you would like to see answered in a future post send them to me at charlessledge001 (at) gmail (dot) com. If you found value in this post then I would encourage you to share this site with someone who may need it as well as check out my books here. I appreciate it.
-Charles Sledge
