Hello, my friends. Welcome to a very special week on the podcast. It's the What's Possible special series.
This is the first half of a book I wrote a few years ago, and it will include the 10 truths extraordinarily successful women know. I will offer two of these truths per day over the next five days. If you want coaching on these topics, make sure you join me for What's Possible Coach Week starting soon.
You can go to the lifecoachschool.com board slash possible to find out more. Three, we know that creating value is what creates money, and we know how to create value. Money is something we made up to represent value.
It's literally a piece of paper that we all agreed means something. That's really it. If you think about it, most money simply resides on a computer screen and not even in paper form.
So the computer number represents the paper money, which represents the value we've all agreed to assign to it. This is an important thing to understand and to spend some time thinking about. Money represents value, but notice that value is a very subjective thing.
What people value is different. One person may value a diamond so much they're willing to spend $200,000 for it, and another person might value an education more and would rather spend their $200,000 getting a master's degree. The money is the exact same, but the value of what that money buys is very subjective and personal.
When you're thinking about creating value in order to create money, you have to remember that what people think about is going to determine whether or not what you are offering is a value to them and how much they value the money, the representation of value, versus how much they value the result you are offering them. Take the example of being an employee for a large company. You will get paid based on the value the manager or owner believes you will bring to the company.
The value you are able to offer the company will be worth what your end result delivers to them. Unfortunately, this is not how most people think about making money. They think that the job's worth a certain salary and that the salary is predetermined by some law.
It's not. It's completely and totally arbitrary. It doesn't matter what decisions were previously made in any company or any job description for that matter.
If you can show and prove that you can provide tremendous value for a company, they would be willing to pay you for that value if it gives them the result they want. If I walk into a job interview for administrative job and the pay they're offering is $75,000 a year, I might be tempted to think the job is only worth that to me and only worth that to them. I might think that the only thing possible in that job is $75,000 worth of value and $75,000 worth of money.
But if I was able to show the hiring manager that my value of working there would help the business make an additional $1 million and save the CEO 10 hours of time per week, you can be sure they would be willing to listen and most likely hire me to add that much value to their company. The hours we work for ourselves and for another company are not what is valued. One hour isn't worth a certain amount of money to any business.
It's what we produce in that hour that we are being paid for creating. We create the valuable result and they pay us for that result. If I'm a designer, I get paid for my designs.
If I'm a waitress, I get paid for creating a Fed customer who then pays for that value. If I'm an entrepreneur, I get paid for getting my customers a result they value. This is how money will always work.
So the question I usually get next is, how do I create more value so I can create more money? It's the best question I think more people need to be asking themselves. Too many people ask themselves how they can go and get more money, or how they can ask for more money, or what jobs pay more money, or how to make more money per hour of time, when really that leaves us depending on the world to pay us more from a very expectant stance.
The much better question is, how can I create more value? And even better, how can I create extraordinary value to have extraordinary success? Don't try to start big when answering this question.
Start small. Think about your current job right now. Think about the value you are providing and the money you're getting paid.
You are getting paid for the exact value that you are recognized for providing. Now, you may argue that you should get paid more for the value you provide, but that's irrelevant. The value is always determined by the person paying, not by the person creating the value.
This is actually very good news and not something to get upset about. If you can find the right person who values the right thing you offer, you can create extraordinary value for money. Too often, we have a mismatch of value being offered to the wrong person for not enough money.
For example, imagine you are a five-star chef and you take a job at a high school cafeteria. You can spend ten years there trying to prove your value to the principal and working long hours and talking to the students and trying to get a raise. But you will always be limited because you are not offering the right value to the right people.
In fact, when what you have to offer is not valuable to them, it will only be worth what they are willing to pay. Take that same value and offer it to foodies in a beautiful restaurant and you will be able to create extraordinary success with the value you can offer. The person paying always determines the value.
So this means what you have to offer is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it. I once had someone offer me $50,000 to spend the day coaching with me. Now many people could argue that a day with me is not worth that much money.
I think my two teenage boys would be the first in line to agree that they would not pay that for a day with their mom. But this person needed my help with drinking. They wanted me to coach them through the process to help them stop over drinking, and they knew I could deliver.
To them, it was worth it to pay $50,000 to never over drink again. Side note, I did not accept this offer because I no longer do one-on-one coaching. But the point is always to remember that the value is in the eye of the customer and is therefore very important to create the right value for the right customer.
This applies to those of you who are working as employees and those of you who have your own businesses. I have found no limit to the value we can create. We can create a lot of value for a few people who are willing to pay us lots of money for it, or we can create value for a lot more people who pay us less, but there will be more of them paying.
It will always need to be a balance exchange in what you create a value and what will come back to you in success and money creation. The way I do this personally is by always over delivering. I realize that the value always comes back to me if I just keep creating it.
It doesn't always have to be immediate, but it always makes me more valuable of a contributor and therefore a more successful person. I have worked on this with clients who work as full-time employees and I've seen it with business owners. It works the exact same way for everyone.
I will have a client who's an employee who's working for a company and they will tell me that they want more money and ask if I can help them ask for a raise. I always start with asking them about the value they are creating. Ask them if they're creating the maximum amount of value for the position that they are capable of creating within their work week.
Astonishingly, most of them answer that they aren't. They usually admit that they could be doing so much more, but they don't think anyone would notice or that it won't matter. So they simply do only what is expected of them.
Others might say that they are busting their ass and working crazy long hours and showing up early and still their boss isn't recognizing their accomplishments. In both instances, I always sigh. They have completely missed the big picture in how value is created and paid for.
They have been misinformed or haven't even considered seeing the bigger picture. The first question is, what does the person paying you value? What is the most valuable thing you could do for them?
Do you even know? Unfortunately, most of you don't. How can you possibly ask for a raise if you don't even know what they would be excited to pay you for doing?
What do they find so valuable that if you did it, they would be thrilled to give you a raise or promote you or give you a bonus? The second question is, how do you want to provide value? What do you want your contribution to be?
Answer this question regardless if anyone sees you working or even acknowledges what you've done. At the end of each day, if you want to make a contribution with your work so you can be proud of the job you are in, what does that look like for you? I can tell you that it doesn't matter what job you put me in.
I'm going to aim to be the most valuable employee who has ever done that job. I will lay myself out to become more valuable to create the biggest contribution and to put my head on the pillow at night proud. I won't be proud because someone saw my work and said I was great, but because I did.
I know for sure that when I believe I'm valuable because of the contribution I'm making, then it's just a matter of time before I find the other person who will recognize me and my value and be willing to pay me for it. Extraordinarily successful women have all figured out how to create massive value that people are willing to pay for. We don't try to make money from nothing.
We get paid for creating value. There's no way around it. Often the value creation happens years before the success, but it always comes.
We know we are valuable in our ideas, our effort, our creations, and we act in accordance with this knowing, and we are paid when the value of what we offer is recognized by the person who is paying. It's our job to create the value and then find the person who values it.
We know that extraordinary success includes having a lot of money. Lots of money is my favorite. I wish I would have been told earlier how much fun it is to earn it and have it.
We are mostly taught how fun it is to spend it. Having it is a very different thing. Successful women understand that having money is one of the indicators that we have figured out our brains.
When money becomes easy, we can be sure we've gotten out of our own way. Often when I do the work with a student to increase possibility for what they can earn, they double their salaries within a few years. But despite doubling their salaries, they often end up having less money.
I believe this is because we are not taught how to have. We are taught how to under earn and to spend. This is why our country has a catastrophe of debt, way too much under earning and overspending.
Having money is a very different experience. It's when we earn money and then just have it. We become wealthy with money instead of cluttered with stuff.
There's something completely peaceful about having a large bank account with unspent money. But it's not as easy as it sounds. There is a pull to consume.
But I'm teaching that the pull to create the money can be so much better than the experience of spending, and that's why you need to flip it over. Instead of earning less and spending more, I want you to earn more and spend less. That is when you can create a pile of money just for fun.
I'm not talking about saving and investing money due to scarcity. I'm not talking about not buying yourself nice things. I'm talking about consciousness.
I'm talking about learning how to have money and be someone who has it. I don't want you to buy big houses and nice cars to let other people know you have money. If you want them to know, just tell them.
That's exactly what I do. I just talk about money with my mouth instead of with my belongings. Having lots of money is a wonderful thing.
Let's talk about what money can do. It can pay for you to stay home for a year if you need a break. It can pay for your kid's health care.
It can pay for a pool with a beach entry so your dogs can wait in and out at will. It can help your niece pay her rent when she is short. It can make interest and more money.
It can hire people and pay for their education and their insurance. It can advertise a life-saving service that people need to know about. It's also one way to keep score for yourself.
Most of us who love striving for success love to monitor our progress. Money does it beautifully. It's math.
It doesn't ever lie. As a group, we are also inspired by each other's numbers. I think women are less competitive with each other and more inspired by each other.
When one of us wins, we know we can win. We see the possibility. We know that not one of us is more valuable than the other.
We know we are all women alive at the same time, selling something priceless. We can all win, and so can you. Women who aren't successful, who want to be, have a lot of garbage in their brains about money.
They turn it into a zero-sum game and take all action from scarcity. They have beliefs that are so deeply ingrained, they can't even see them until I point them out. This results in chronic under earning for many women who have much more potential to earn more.
I define under earning as earning less than you want to earn and are capable of earning. I don't have a set amount that everyone should be earning and I don't believe that everyone should be earning more. The key component here is desire.
If you want to earn more and you can, then you might be under earning. I've had students who earn no money who are under earning, and I've had students who are earning one million who are under earning. Please note that under earning is not the same as overspending, yet they often go together.
Usually when I have a student who's under earning, they are compensating for it and enabling it by overspending and using credit cards and other forms of debt. You will know if this is you because you will always feel like you just don't have enough money at the end of the month. It's tempting to blame circumstances for under earning and overspending, but it's always an indication of something going on internally.
There are enough opportunities and possibilities to make more money. As long as we use our circumstances to explain our under earning, we won't be motivated to create those new possibilities and change. Thoughts have a way of doing this and we will take a deeper dive into how to undo all the defective programming later in this book.
But for now, here's what you need to know and feel. Feel deep in your bones. Being successful and making lots of money if you want to is very good.
It's very possible. Having money is just as important as earning it. Money won't make you a better person, but it will make it easier for you to make the decisions you most want to make.
Here's the bottom line. You need money to live. You're going to think about money and earning money regardless.
The only question I'm asking you to question is how much. The way we answer that question truly matters. Most typically, we don't even have a purposeful or intentional answer.
We simply go after a job and get what it pays or what it offers, or we have some amount in our head that seems reasonable, and we settle for that. But we can think bigger. We need to know that whatever we believe and decide is what will be the amount of money we ultimately earn and have in our lives.
It should be a conscious decision. The way I like to think about it is that we each have a potential for money within our lifetime. It's ours for the taking.
We can either claim it by being conscious about it, or it will sit there unused by us in our life. That potential for us to grow into that possibility and that belief system will be left unused. No one else will get the opportunity to have it.
It's just unused energy and potential and money. And that amount of money is big. It's way bigger than most of us are used to thinking.
We are severely limited by the programming of our childhoods and society to how much money is normal and appropriate to earn or have. It is my goal in this book to completely reset your belief on possibility. What you must know if you want to be an extra successful woman is that you have a belief ceiling on what is possible.
And that belief ceiling is only in your head. It's not a truth or reality that exists. It's a pretend bar that we are all incorrectly agreeing is true.
I absolutely know this from being a person who decides on salaries for my employees. Those amounts and numbers are completely made up. We are all looking at each other to see what we should pay.
It's not based on some economic law of what we're allowed or what we can afford. This is extremely important for you to understand as you go into the world looking to create value and earn money. It's an arbitrary choice.
And if you haven't made it consciously, you will end up under earning for no valid reason. Most importantly, you will need to make peace with large amounts of money. As humans, we like to be in groups of similar and like-minded people.
It's in our DNA to connect and belong. This is one of the main reasons that we all make very similar amounts of money and have very similar things. Please notice how normal it is to complain about not having enough money or how hard it is to be rich.
Notice how often we separate out the wealthy people from the middle class people. Often we complain about how the wealthy people are different and not like us. To step into possibility as it applies to making money, you are most likely going to need to be willing to stand alone and outside of the group.
Making lots of money is unfortunately and unnecessarily something that will cause you to be different. Please don't underestimate how difficult this might be. It's hard to imagine that having lots of money can be interpreted as a bad thing by your brain, but it is often the case.
Many of my students share that they feel shame and worry about people accepting them once they start making several hundred thousand or even millions of dollars per year. And the truth is, unfortunately, often they are right. Often the people around them start questioning their character and motives when they start making more money.
It seems too good to be true, and so they wonder if they're doing something shady or greedy or against the rules. This can be very uncomfortable and challenging to navigate through, so I like to warn you ahead of time that you need to practice having lots of money in your mind first. You need to prepare yourself for some of the challenges you might face.
Be very careful not to fall into the sabotage loop that I've seen some of my clients fall into. They will start overspending their money, buying things they don't value or need. They will hire unnecessary people in their business and even stop doing proper bookkeeping and tax planning to jeopardize and penalize themselves for having lots of money.
I know it might sound a bit crazy if you haven't experienced it, but it's absolutely real. Being with a lot of money in your bank account and being someone who has a lot of money takes time to get used to and manage. Be aware of this so it doesn't catch you off guard when you get there.
Extraordinarily successful women know that success includes having a lot of money. We need to get used to having it. If you've enjoyed listening to the What's Possible series, you must join me for our What's Possible Coach Week, where I will be coaching you live on all of these topics, on what's possible for you, and introducing you to the Possibility Formula, which is the second half of the book that I wrote that teaches you how to execute these truths in your life.
You can come to thelifecoachschool.com/possible in order to join us live. We'll see you then.
