How to Make More Money (Meaningfully)

So what do you do when you don't have no money? I get these emails once. And while Brandon, I ain't got no money. What do I do? Well, first and foremost, I get that, you know, we'll talk about money. But, you know, I've been through that challenge and that struggle. I grew up in a economically depressed Irish mining town, and there was a lot of struggle there. And I remember where I grew up, I mean, it was pretty tough town, pretty tough weather, pretty tough economy. I grew up in a small town in Montana, and I remember one time that the heater went out. And when the heater goes out in Montana in the winter, it is a dire situation. I mean, dire, because, you know, the wind chill can get 20 below zero, 30 below zero, 40 below zero. It's freezing. And we didn't have enough money to fix the heater. So my folks were waiting for the paycheck to come in at the end of two weeks to be able to fix this heat heater. You know, you got four kids in a house with no heat. When it's 20 below zero, what are you gonna do? Well, my mom, she goes out to the garage and she grabs our camping tent and our sleeping bags and, you know, every parka we got, every blanket we got, we bring him in the living room, and she sets up the tent, throws all those things in there, throws us kids in there. You know, the electricity goes out at some point. Like, we're cooking a little dinner on Bunsen burners and just waiting for this paycheck. But us kids, you know, my parents, they're so good. They were making it fun, you know, almost. It's like we'd walk to school as kids, and we walk into school, and we're like, what do you do last night, like, well, we're camping. We're camping in our living room. We had no idea the situation was so dire. So I grew up with nothing, but I grew up with total abundance. You know what I mean? Sometimes you don't have to have any money to make life fun or fulfilling or engaging. And sometimes even when you don't have money, you can do. Make things work out. You know, my parents work so hard. Between the two of them, I have no idea how they raised us. For kids, I honestly, I have no idea. It blows my mind. And I lucked out. Yeah, I lucked out on the parent train. But still, some people say, well, yeah, yeah, you had it so lucky. Later on, you know, later on, I went bankrupt, chasing my dream, trying to be a writer, trying to be a trainer, trying to do videos like this. Just went completely bankrupt, ass over tiquero. I mean total. Is that a saying? I don't know. Do people even say that anymore? But I was struggling, went bankrupt, and what do I do? How do you overcome that? Well, you begin with yourself, not your bank account. Because look, if your self worth is low, your value in the marketplace will always be as low. If you don't value yourself, no one else is going to value you. So you have to at first realize that you have something to contribute, even if you don't know what that contribution is yet. That if you're really going to go to another level of financial success in life, you have to get dialed in and own the reality. Okay? Whatever mess you're in or challenge you're in right now, it is your job. It is on your shoulders to fix it. You might need to get some help, you might need to get some training, you might need to get some support. But it's your job to right this ship. Nothing is going to suddenly emerge and you're not going to win the lottery. We're not going to get lucky at this. There's only two things that change your life. Either something new comes in. So yeah, maybe you win the lottery, you get an inheritance and things turn around. But the second thing that changes your life is something new comes from within. You get a greater hunger, a greater passion, a greater commitment to go out there and crush it again. You know, go add so much value that you can't help but get paid for it. A lot of people say, well, Brendan, I just want to make some money. I said, great, what do you have to sell? And they say, what? You can't make no money if you got nothing to sell, right? You got to have something to sell. So what is it you're offering? What are you selling? First and foremost, you're selling yourself. You are selling the ability for you to serve. You are selling your character, your ability to offer something valuable to the world. And when I say selling, obviously I don't mean you're selling out. I mean you're offering yourself. You're persuading the world that you have something to contribute, that you're a hard worker, that you care. You're gonna get it done. And if you can't do that, you can't grow, you can't invest, you can't build. You know, you have to find that power from yourself to be able to change things around. And once you find it from yourself, then you have to have something to offer, right? Do you have a product, a program, a service to offer to the world? If you're an entrepreneur or business owner, if you do, how well have you dialed in the offering of that product, program or service to the world? Is your messaging tight? Is your marketing world? Is your distribution, your capabilities, your customer service? All world class. Yet if not, keep dialing those in. As you dial those in, you bring in more money. What if you're an employee? Well, if you're an employee, it's time to look around again to check back into that company. What if you're going to get fired in five days and they're going to choose who's going to get fired based on who is willing to learn the most and who has been willing to contribute the most? You need to start contributing way outside of what, what is put on your desk every single day or what shows up in your inbox. You need to actually push away from your inbox, push away from your desk and think, how could I add more value here? And that has to be something you do every day. You have to be obsessed with serving. You have to be obsessed with contributing more than anybody else. You gotta bring more ideas to the table. People say, well, Brandon, what if I get shot down with my ideas? So what? At least you flew. At some point you have to make the decision to contribute if you're going to get fly. If you're going to fly, you're going to get shot down. Then you got shut down. At least you lived. You know, go contribute more at work. Look around. Who else could you help? Who else could contribute to? Who else could you mentor and bring up? How can you become the linchpin in the organization in some way or another to keep climbing and serving and adding value? You deserve that because at minimum, that's what makes employment or work fun. You know, taking care of people, adding value, giving new ideas. And if you're one of those people, you don't understand. I have this bad boss or I have. Look, I've had terrible bosses in my life too and got over it. Maybe you're in the wrong job. Some people are in, you know, they're busy at work, but their busy work isn't their life's work. They're doing the wrong thing. They knew they should have got out of there five years ago, but they never have the guts to face themselves in the mirror and say, today is my day, I make the decision to leave. So if you're in the wrong thing, face it at some point because you're never going to make a lot of money in the wrong thing. And if you do make a lot of money in the wrong thing, then you're more likely to start doing the wrong things. Makes sense, right? Because there's no meaning there. There's no significance there. There's no real contribution. You just. You made some money doing the wrong thing, so now you start turning into that character that just starts pursuing money just for the ends of money. Life should be incredibly valuable to you if you really value your days. Like, that day becomes valuable. So because your day is valuable, you get stuff done. You know why a lot of people end up feeling really broke is because they're not valuing their day. They're broke because they added no value to their day. They were reading celebrity gossip magazines, they were screwing around online. They were doing nothing that actually moved the needle in terms of their personal progress and their professional progress. So value this day. You want to make more money? Get serious about tomorrow. Value that day. Ask how you can add more value into the day. Really work the day. And as you do that over and over and over again, you ask, how can I serve? How can I contribute? How can I take it to the next level? You do that long enough, the breakthrough happens, the magic happens, and the money takes care of itself.