Making a boring subject a lot more interesting

Making a boring subject a lot more interesting

I'm going to take a step back from my blog post last weekend to do something a little unusual. To explain a concept I surfaced in a little more detail.

And to do that, we're going back to college. Specifically Econ 101.

That class where your professor, dressed in his corduroy blazer, would pace back and forth droning on and on about the most boring concepts you could imagine. Things like supply and demand equilibrium, demand elasticity, and capital flows...

OK, I hear you groaning already. But hear me out. Because I've got an entirely different take on business economics 101 from anything your college prof likely taught you.

Seriously...

Being in business is about making money.

But here's the economic truth about that. One most entrepreneurs don't understand.

Money = Value

Economically, money is nothing more than a representation of VALUE. I wrote about this some years back. Let me quickly summarize it for you.

The only purpose of money, is to make the exchange of value more efficient. Think about living in the days before money. When business was done via a system of bartering or trading.

Say I had a farm and I grew corn. If I wanted go out and get some meat for the family, I'd take some of my corn to the cattle rancher to trade. But maybe he had all the corn he needed. Instead he needed some lumber to fix his barn. In that case I'd have to take my corn to the lumber market and find someone to trade their lumber for my corn. Then I'd take the lumber back to the cattle rancher and then trade.

Very inefficient.

Money eliminates those headaches by making the process of transacting business much more efficient.

But THAT'S ALL it

You see, money is not an end. It's not a goal. It is a representation. Of VALUE. Of the value that you offer your customers. And wealth (having a lot of money in the bank) is simply a representation of stored value - how much value you have to offer.

Once you begin to look at the equation like that, you get a remarkably different perspective of how to succeed in business and get wealthy.

You go from the opportunistic outlook of "selling stuff" to obtain money, to the strategic outlook of offering value to grow wealthy.

It's a big difference. One that has been lost on a lot of entrepreneurs these days. Entrepreneurs who unknowingly cling to a disjointed definition of marketing that means to "sell stuff."

Here's another eye-opener for you.

Back when I wrote the Internet Business Manifesto, I walked my readers through a rather shocking exercise that laid out something that nearly none of them were aware of...

How much money their time was worth. (If you haven't done the exercise yourself, I strongly recommend you do.)

A lot of entrepreneurs who did the exercise were shocked at the number they came up with. And many scratched their heads wondering how they could ever earn the kind of money per day, or even per hour, they felt their time was worth.

But...

When you think about the equation I shared with you above, you come up with a completely different question. One that's far more important for building a business and ultimately growing wealthy. (And one that's far easier to answer.)

Do you know what it is? Let's find out.

Click the links at the side bar, and tell me what you think about the money making sites.

And I'm going to share one more thought about being rich beyond your wildest dreams. Please visit the make money sites at the sidebar links.

To higher profits and beyond,
 
Edward