What does it mean? It means exactly how it sounds, regardless of what you might think you deserve to be paid. It is a rule of income and nobody can do anything about it.
Last week I was a guest speaker at the local summit of entrepreneurs and senior executives and when I mentioned this basic principle of income, one young gentleman, a senior executive in a local company, challenged me, claiming how this rule makes no sense since he is obviously not being paid according to the value he’s bringing to the market.
It was clear that he didn’t understand the concept.
I asked him how many people directly depends on his services; his value. He answered 500 hundred directly plus 45 clients in 36 European countries. All in all, several thousand, maybe spanning to twenty thousand if we are considering end users/customers.
That seems a lot, doesn’t it?
Do you think Bill Gates would make his fortune if only 10,000 people would depend on his product; his value?
Yes. Same as that young executive, you are now having a clearer image of the concept – of the role of income.
First 10,000 copies of Windows did generate great income for Microsoft but that was only a pocket money considering current sales.
A natural question comes to your mind now. How to expand my influence? How to overwhelm the World with my solution?
Well, if you’ve answered WHY you want to do it, HOW is definitely the next in line. But fail to understand your reasons and you’ll never expand. Because if you don’t understand why are you doing something, how you’ll explain the others and persuade them to buy your dream?
You want to make more money? OK, you will, but only on a short run. Your product/solution will soon disappear from the market. The market will start cooling off and move to another new hot stuff.
So how do you keep the fire going?
With the clear vision, large masses can understand and identify with.
People are tattooing the Harley Davidson logo on their shoulders. Why? Because the company sent the powerful message decades ago and never deviated from it. They kept producing more powerful and more iconic bikes, year after year.
It’s a product, nothing more. It’s a bike. Many others are making almost identical models, so why there are no their logos on people’s shoulders?
They didn’t make the effort to provide people with the reason to identify with them. Harley did it.
From the emergence of the first version of Windows and only a few thousands of sold copies, Gates kept improving his solution every two years.
Apple is a company with the largest portfolio of patents.
L. James didn’t stop on 50 Shades of Grey even though she could easily retire with over of billion in royalties. She challenged the status quo and wrote 4 additional sequels.
With the first novel, she has sent the powerful message to the women across the Globe: We need real men! We need protectors, providers, and caregivers! We need men willing to do anything to make us happy!
And women responded to that message and identified with it.
James didn’t want to disappoint close to billion women so she invested additional efforts to provide more, and more, and more. Will she stop now? Probably not.
What did you do with your solution in the last couple of years? Did you even think about the “message”?
Of course, you didn’t, since you don’t really know why you want to do it.
Understand this: the only way you’ll ever become a billionaire or get paid more than now is to keep solving bigger and bigger problems.
Bigger the problem, larger the market, ergo more you’ll get paid for your efforts. It’s simple as that.
Take Ballz Magazine for example. You are reading this sentence because you can identify with our message. You can identify with our mission. You can clearly see our vision. Our message is you and you are our message. We are one. We are a singularity.
You are recognizing the unbelievable effort to bring you more value with each given piece of content. You feel it. You are well aware that whatever you read in this magazine, you will benefit from it in a certain way.
It’s all about challenging status quo day after day, hour after hour until the very last breathe. Do that, and there are no limits.
