I believe every individual can decide how they want to make money and how they don’t. I make money mainly by giving speeches, consulting, books and through my business partnership at Future Workplace. I don’t make money by exchanging my time to coach others on the art of personal branding, yet that channel has been available to me for nearly a decade. I used to do it but decided to move on years ago because I wanted to focus all of my attention on helping my generation succeed, and bridging the generational gap in the workplace. I still receive inquiries by those who find an old article, see my website in the Google search results for “personal branding”, or by word of mouth. Although, I’m overjoyed that people want my advice on the topic, it’s not how I personally want to make money anymore. I’ve turned down thousands of dollars because I would rather allocate that time and energy on projects that I’m passionate about. Sometimes you need to be fine leaving money on the table in order to focuses on what matters to you.
Instead of taking money, I leverage my personal branding expertise to create extremely valuable networking situations that end up supporting my business. For instance, upcoming authors reach out to me to ask how they can get their work noticed, which is a strength of mine. Instead of asking for compensation for my consulting, I give it for free without any strings attached. By doing this, that individual is more likely to recommend me to others, make introductions to people that can benefit from my business and stay in my network for the long term. You never know where they will be in their career journey in the future and if they could be a potential customer, friend or something else down the road. In this way, I’m using the way I don’t want to make money as a way to make a connection that could build my business.
You might be wondering why I don’t just monetize every aspect of my expertise and the reason is because it doesn’t feel natural or genuine for me to do that. Also, by monetizing everything, you are creating a barrier to business relationships that could be significantly more valuable to you throughout the course of your life. Why should I take a thousand dollars now when the relationship could turn into a ten thousand dollar one in three years? Since I have a mission in life, and a strong sense of my future, I’m able to make smarter short term decisions. The reason why people who do get rich quick schemes end up failing is because they are trying to get a few dollars today without looking at their entire future. By thinking about the bigger picture, you are more easily able to give up some cash today to invest in a relationship that could be much more beneficial to you in ten years.
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