financial abundance

Foreign.

Daniel Moran here, and welcome to Freedom Fast Lane. Today I'm going to be talking to you about financial abundance. We're just coming back from a nice long holiday break and we've turned the page on another year and we look ahead to 2014. If you're like most people, then one of the intentions that you've set for this year has some something to do with money. If you're like most people, then you want to earn more money this year than you did last year. Now, if you haven't set your intentions for this year, your goals for this year, well, shame on you. I'm gonna show up at your house and pee on your lawn. I really believe that if you don't set your intentions, if you don't create the type of life you want to have, that life will give you whatever you get. But we can play a creat role in our lives and actually create the things that are happening in our lives. But we have to set that intention for most people. They want to earn more money this year than they did last year. And that's often part of the intention that gets set for New Year's resolutions or as part of the creation process of what you want your year or next few years to look like. And we're going to be talking about that today. And I hate it when the music ends. I love that music. Somebody posted on the Freedom Fastlane blog that they hated the music, and I really believe that that person did not have a soul. I love that opening music. I wish I could keep it going forever. Anyway, the reason I want to have this podcast today is because recent conversations that I've had with people on the Freedom Fastlane blog, with people who listen to the show, with people that I communicate with on Facebook, my friends and family in person, we've had a recurring conversation on this topic of financial abundance. And there is no place where this is more evident than in Washington, D.C. right now, there is a big push on both sides of the aisle to initiate some sort of policy in order to raise the overall financial abundance of people, specifically people at the lower end of the spectrum. And right now, as far as I know, the national minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. There's a big push that has a lot of support from people on both sides of the aisle. Where it should be 10, it should be 10, it should be ten. $7.25 isn't enough to feed a family, but $10.05, that'll do it. That'll really. That'll really affect poverty here in the states. There's also a big argument on this topic of income inequality. Recently, President Obama said that income inequality was the number one threat to the economy in the United States. Now, I understand the reasons that people have these opinions. I understand the compassion that goes into policies like this. I understand the motivation of wanting people to be treated fairly. I get it. I just happen to think that the way that we're going about it is based on bad thinking. And we're gonna be addressing that today. Let's start with this idea of what is wealth and how do you get wealthy? Well, listen, those dollars in your pocket, when you go spend them, it is simply a voluntary trade. You value what you're getting more than the dollars that you're spending. And in order to get wealthy, in order to get a lot of dollars, you have to provide value that other people exchange their dollars for. That is how you make money. That's why you go to a job, that's why you sell products. It's why people pay you for whatever it is that you get paid to do. It's because there is an exchange of value happening. And unless you are holding someone at gunpoint and taking their money, it is a voluntary exchange. That's how a marketplace works. So in order to make more money, you simply provide more value. That's how a marketplace economy works. So when there is this discussion being had about do we change things like the minimum wage? You know, that's a strategy. That is a strategy for someone boosting their income, fighting for a higher wage. Another example of this is going on strike. There, there's a strategy. You want to make more money. You can get together with all of your co workers and go on strike. That'll show them, that'll teach them. There's also another strategy. It's called providing more value. It's called giving more to the marketplace and getting rewarded for it. I had a conversation with a family member while I was home for the holidays. And this person said, ryan, you don't understand. There is nothing that I can do in my current job in order to make more money. And to that I called bs. If you work for a private for profit company, if you work for a company that exists to make a profit.

Then you're being paid for value. The way that you make more money in that organization, in that company, with your clients and customers. However, it is in whatever for profit industry that you're in, if you provide more value, you get paid more.

Now with this person, with this family member's current thinking, she was right. It would have been difficult for her to make more money. That's why it requires a different level of thinking. It requires asking different questions. Do you know why that family member couldn't make more money in the position that she was in? Because she kept saying, there's no way for me to make more money. The minute the conversation changes to, how can I make more money? Or better yet, how can I provide more value for my boss, for my clients and customers, for my coworkers? How can I do things more effectively? How can I raise sales here? How can I increase the customer experience so that they're willing to pay us more money? What value can I add to this customer's life so that they're willing to spend more on a bigger package or buy more product? Now the question the conversation starts to adjust and you're in control of it. You know, one thing I like to point out to people is your financial situation is your responsibility. It's not the Republican Party's responsibility. It's not Barack Obama's responsibility. It's not Obamacare's responsibility. It's yours. The reason why you're in the financial situation that you're in, whether it is good or bad, by your own assessment, is your own fault. Or if you're one of a very, very, very small percentage, it might be your daddy's fault because he left you some money. Otherwise, it's your fault. Good or bad, it was your responsibility to get where you are. So either congratulations or we have some changes that we have to make. And changes are fine as long as we're willing to make them. But to simply say that it is someone in Washington's responsibility to make sure that my employer sees me as valuable is ridiculous.

To require a group of politicians to set the standard for what you're worth, that's insulting to you. That is insulting to those at the bottom of the economic bottom barrel, to those who are not being rewarded in the marketplace, who or who aren't providing value for people in Washington to decide what you're worth. That's insulting and you should reject it, and it should make you sick to your stomach. The way that you determine how valuable you are in the marketplace is based on how much value you're providing to other people. This is the beauty of a marketplace system. It forces us to serve one another. So if you want to be rewarded more in the marketplace, give more, provide more value, help more people, find areas where you can contribute more than you're currently contributing. According to the marketplace. Now, of course, there's other ways that we value things. We might say that something is valuable for sentimental reasons or valuable in the eyes of God. But value in the marketplace is monetary. And if you work for a for profit party, or if you serve customers or you're an entrepreneur, then the amount of value that you provide and therefore the amount of money that you make is completely in your hands. There's one exception to this. Interestingly, it's government workers, people like police officers, teachers, people in the military. In those situations, we have removed all incentives because now you're paid according to experience, tenor or length of time in a certain position. We've removed the incentives in government programs, in government agencies, politicians, teachers. Anyone who works for a government and is paid as the result of taxation does not have the same incentives to provide more value to a marketplace. Now, I am not downing any of these positions. I owe much of where I am today to the result, to the influence of teachers, of policemen, and I'm extremely thankful for their contributions to my life and to the lives of every other person alive. I'm not arguing that these public sector jobs should be turned into private sector jobs or turned into for profit industries. I'm not arguing that. What I'm arguing is that anything that is the result of government has had its for profit incentives removed. So we have this argument about how much should they be paid and all of a sudden politicians are in charge of how much value you provide to other people. And I call that insulting. Now of course, the government has been so efficient at this that we've decided to do it in health care as well. And now we're removing all incentive in the health sector as well. Brilliant idea. Letting politicians decide what you're worth. How insulting is this? And we think that by changing things like the minimum wage, we're somehow going to change this. The only way for you to change your financial situation is for you to change the amount of value that you bring to the marketplace. How do you do this? You become more valuable. Again, no one is responsible for the value that you bring to the marketplace except for you.

Not Obamacare.

Not your side of the political aisle, not France, not Monsanto. You, you are the only one responsible for.

Most of the things in your life, but especially the amount of value that you provide to the marketplace.

Now, from a government perspective, these changes that we're seeing or that are being argued are often done to solve this question or this, quote, problem of income inequality. I've had this discussion with many people and I'm yet to hear anyone tell me why income, income inequality is a problem. Now, I've heard people say that it's not fair. I've heard people say that it's not. Actually, I went and saw President Obama speak before he was president. He was campaigning in my home state of Ohio. I went to hear him speak, and he argued that it was. First of all, he said, I believe in the invisible hand. I believe in a free market economy. And then he followed it up by saying, but I have a problem when a CEO can earn as much in five minutes as some hardworking Americans can earn in only a year or their lifetimes. And everybody applauded. And my question is, why is that a problem?

Because someone had to exchange value with that person. Someone had to find what that CEO or that other person.

Was providing to be more valuable than what they were paying him or her. If we look at the top 10 people who earned the most money in 2013, 100% of them did it by providing an immense amount of value to the marketplace by means of voluntary exchange. The CEO of Amazon, the founder of Microsoft, the founder of Facebook. We as a collective society, have given the money to these people voluntarily because of a service or a product that they provide. So when we look at the question of income inequality, all that is a reflection of is how much value we have put on what that person brings to the marketplace. So if someone is making a billion dollars a year, he or she had to have provided more value to the marketplace than that. And along the way, he or she hired thousands of people, affected people's lives by providing goods and services into the economy, things that have raised our standard of living, and we voluntarily gave it to them. So why is this issue of income inequality a problem? Because someone earning $50 million or $100 billion does not affect or harm your ability to raise your standard of living in the slightest. In fact, other people making a lot of money can increase your upward mobility in the marketplace. It can increase it. Other people having something in no way negatively affects your ability to improve your life at all. Does someone who's really healthy prevent you from getting more healthy? Do we have a health inequality problem in this country? Does the fact that someone's got a six pack and another person's 100 pounds overweight make you upset and feel like we should tax their six pack to provide a gastric bypass surgery for the overweight person? By no means, but yet we have this different measure for value in the marketplace, because someone provided a lot of value and got rewarded for it we think we should take from them and give to others. We call that being fair. We call that paying a fair share, taking more, we call that unfairness. Someone providing a bunch of value and getting rewarded by their customers. How dare those greedy entrepreneurs provide value and hire lots of people.

This idea of income inequality is a marketing ploy. There's nothing wrong with income inequality in a free market system. If it's being taken at gunpoint now we have a problem. If it's being done by voluntary exchange, one person giving money to another person in an exchange for a product or service, then we have no problems. Let the best people win. Let them be rewarded for changing the world. Let them be rewarded by creating jobs and creating value in a marketplace. Let them be an example for other people to provide more value and let them continue to create more opportunities for other people to advance their certain financial situation. Let them provide value to that organization. Let them provide products and services that continue the experience that have been blazed by someone else. For example, Apple. Apple created an entirely new industry and as a result, many people have gotten rich by developing iPhone apps, by selling accessories to Apple products.

That is contributing to an industry that was built by other people. It's further an exchange of value in a free marketplace. Of course we're getting less and less free as we turn over more and more power to government because the government is now telling us what our what we're worth. We should be insulted by this. We should be insulted that we're being told that the only way for you to become more valuable is if the government says that you're more valuable. We should be insulted when people think that they have to wait for something outside of themselves to change in order for their lives to change. If you are waiting for other things outside of you to change in order for your life to change, then you are a slave to other people. You are in control. You are in control of your health, you are in control of your financial abundance. In order to change them, you change the decisions that you make. We can start by changing the questions that we ask ourselves on a daily basis. If you've listened to the podcast I did with Matt Theriault, Matt made a bunch of money, lost all of it, and was making minimum wage.

And Matt was feeling pretty down about it until Matt started asking good questions like how can I change my financial situation? How can I provide more value so that I'm not making minimum wage anymore? Minimum wage is a starting point. An entry level job exists so that you can prove yourself to become more Valuable to develop skills that you can build upon and provide more value to the free market, to the marketplace. To say that other companies have to value at a certain point is ridiculous. I'm not passionate about this at all.

Anyway, Matt decided he was going to make some changes and he went out and he looked for opportunities to provide more value. He started asking the question, how can I provide more value? Rather than how can I get paid more for continuing to do the same thing that I'm doing?

And he became a real estate investor and an entrepreneur. He is now a millionaire. That's what happens when you provide value in a marketplace. I had an economics teacher changed my life. He said two things over and over again. One of them was economics is simply the process of taking things from where they are of lesser value and taking them to where they are of greater value. That is a marketplace, a reallocation of resources from where they are less valued to where they are more valuable. If I produce yoga mats, and I do, I have a company that does this, and I'll talk about this in a bit, and I produce a thousand yoga mats and they're sitting in my warehouse, they are of very little value to me. Each one to a yogi who wants a high value, a very high quality yoga mat at a good price. It is worth the $40 that they pay us for a yoga mat and we ship it to them. I want the $40 more than I want the additional yoga mat. We made a trade.

Their dollars were of lesser value. That $40 was of less value to them than the high quality yoga mat. My yoga mat was less, less value to me than the $40. So we made a trade. That's all dollars are. They're just an exchange of value. They're just a representation of how much you value something. They're votes. They mean nothing. They're backed by nothing. It's paper. It's simply an exchange of value.

So if you want to make more money, find out where you can provide more value. The second thing that my economics teacher taught me that had a big impact on me is he said, remember, this is a college professor speaking to a college class. He said, a lot of you wonder where your place in the world is. You wonder where the perfect place is for you to go and be happy. Well, guess what? God gave you a thing called the marketplace. The marketplace tells you where you will be of most value. This is played out in practical lives. When you see that you can make more money doing something else, that means someone values that activity or that product or service more than what you're currently doing. It's a signal to you. And you get to decide if you want to go get that value or not. The world is swimming in value. Whether the economy is up or down or left or right, whether it's gray outside or sunny, whether it's cold or hot, whether it's 2014 or 1900, people are spending money. No matter what, people are spending money and they are signals. They're signals of where there is value at that current time.

Value is being exchanged 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And in order for you to get value, you just have to give more of it, give more value in a private economy, a private for profit economy. Now, if you're not, if your job is not in a for profit.

System, if you work for the government and the government tells you what you're worth, first of all, that should make you sick. And second of all, if you want to increase your financial abundance, then you need to provide value for the private marketplace. That's like a side business or a side job or having clients on the side for something.

That's how you provide more value. It would have to be in addition to your public sector job. But the marketplace is everywhere. People are exchanging value all the time. And in order for you to make more money, all you have to do is reach out and grab some of it. The world swimming in money. All you have to do is go out in front of it by providing value. Again, you do this by changing the questions that you ask yourself on a daily basis. The reason my family member said that she couldn't make more money is because she kept saying, I can't make more money in my job. Well, what happens if she starts asking the question of how can I make more money in my job? How can I provide more value? Where are the opportunities where I can excel? Where can I become more valuable personally by developing new skills, by getting more education so that I can provide more value? Skills and education are simply primers for you to provide more value.

This is why you have a bunch of people in Occupy Wall street with degrees who are walking around saying, I have a master's degree. Why can't I get a job? Well, Nimrod, it's because you're not providing any value. Your piece of paper doesn't do anything until you can take it and show that it demonstrates value. That is when you're valuable to the marketplace and not because you have a piece of paper saying you're certified. When you can take your Certification and actually implement it so that it improves somebody else's life. That's when you're valuable. Not because you have a bunch of letters after your name. That's toilet paper. When you provide more value for someone else's life, that's when you're rewarded in the marketplace. That's when you deserve to have a job.

Not because the government says you're worth something, which is what that movement is demanding of the end of capitalism, the end of a free market economy, so that they don't have to provide value, so that everything is provided for them, so the government can tell them what they're worth. That's what that. That's what that movement pushes for. You can. You can read their list of demands if you want, is what it says. But I have a better idea for you. It'll work a lot faster than waiting for the government to change and chanting we are the 99%. I guarantee you it will work faster if you just find a way to provide value.

I promise you it works faster. And it's not that hard. It just requires you to think, that's all. And maybe think differently than people have thought before you.

Here's a question to get you thinking about it. What are you really freaking good at doing?

What are you so good at doing that people are willing to pay for it? Start there.

There's your first opportunity. Take that skill, take that strength, and take it to someone who's willing to pay for it because it provides even more value to them than what they're paying you for. For.

I'm an entrepreneur. I've had many times where things didn't go how I wanted it to or how I expected it to. Being an entrepreneur trains you very quickly that the only way that you can succeed is by providing value. Because the minute that you think that you can do it any other way, you fall flat on your face.

One of the times that I was in between things, in between successes, I had taken some risks. They didn't work out, and it was my own fault. And never for a moment did I blame anybody else but myself, because it was my fault for not providing what my customers wanted. Let me give you an example of a way that I do provide value now that makes me a lot of money. I take on a small handful of private clients. I do some of their email marketing for them. Now. I can very quickly provide an immense amount of value by changing a simple marketing campaign in an organization. I charge a minimum of $10,000 up front to write a marketing campaign and Then I take a percentage of the sales after that. So let's say I make $20,000 from a client. It takes me about four hours, maybe five hours to complete that marketing campaign. So as a result, my rate, if you will, I have earned approximately $4,000 an hour. Is that fair?

Is that right or wrong that somebody else is making 725? Soon it'll be 10:05 and everything will be okay. But is that fair that I can command that rate? Well, when we look at it and we see that the email promotion that I made.

For that company made them over $200,000 in new revenue in a few days. They're thrilled, I'm thrilled. Customers voluntarily bought their products and they're happy.

Who lost in this? Who lost in this exchange? What part's not fair?

There's a few thousand happy customers who got something of value that impacted their lives.

My client made a whole bunch of money. I did a little bit of work and got rewarded handsomely for it. Who lost?

Nobody. Everybody won.

There's no, there's no income inequality here because everybody's life is better. Everybody's. We had a three part mutual exchange. The company, me, the people who bought their product, everybody won. Everybody's life is better by their own assessment because they all entered into a voluntary exchange.

Where there is the unfairness, where's the inequality? What's not fair?

Now if I did a piss poor job, I wouldn't deserve that money and I wouldn't take the money.

And I would never get another client again.

That's how a marketplace works. So if you're not getting the results that you want, change something. It's not the employer's fault that you can't get a job. It is not your customers fault that they're not buying your products.

It is not the government's fault. It's your fault. It's your fault that you're rich or you're poor.

Start taking personal responsibility for the results that you're getting in your life. And if you're not getting the results that you want, change something, become more valuable. Do something that benefits somebody else. Where are your strengths? Where can those strengths be of use to someone else? I mentioned my yoga company earlier. A few companies. I have a yoga company, I have a supplement company, I have some clients on the side. I own a restaurant, I invest in real estate. Those are my primary sources of income.

The way that I started my yoga company was I simply did some market research and I found that there is basically two people who buy Yoga mats or at least two types of companies that are selling yoga mats. There's the person buying from Target who's getting an $8 yoga mat. And there is somebody going to Lululemon, which is a high end yoga store where they're spending $200 on a yoga mat. And what I discovered was no one was going after the average yoga buyer. No one was going after the median person and providing a high quality product at a reasonable price. In between those two extremes, there wasn't anybody standing out doing an excellent job at that. I've done yoga a handful of times, although I've been doing it more recently.

I'm not a yoga expert.

Now. I may partner with people who are, but that wasn't my strength. My strength was in identifying an opportunity, taking fast action to get the ball rolling, and finding good people.

To do excellent product development.

And.

Putting systems and processes in place. Well, I'm thinking about marketing. That's my strength. And I provided value to the company that I created. If I didn't create that company.

If I was working for someone else.

I would walk into a company, see where I could provide the most value and go provide a lot of it and ask for money in return. That's how you get a raise. That's how you change a company. Give your customers what they want. Is this fair? Is it fair that some people get rewarded in the marketplace and others don't?

Is it fair when people enter into mutual exchanges? Is that fair? I'll tell you what I think is unfair.

Getting something that you didn't earn, that's unfair.

Making demands to get more services on the backs of other people who have provided value, that's unfair.

That's unethical. Asking for more free things that other people pay for at gunpoint. You don't pay your taxes, you go to jail. Demanding that other people have to contribute against their will to you, that's unfair.

Expecting a raise when you haven't provided more value is not fair.

Providing value and getting rewarded for it, that's fair. Either by your current employer, your current customers, or someone else who sees the value that you're providing.

The way you start to change this is by asking the question, how can I provide more value? Looking for opportunities where you can provide more value and the way that you find them is by looking in the marketplace. Where is money flowing?

Those are your opportunities. Those, that's where value is being exchanged. And by looking at what the current strengths that you have and where they will be most valued. Your best strength. Who values it the most? Where can you provide the maximum amount of value in the shortest amount of time? That's how you change your financial situation, by answering that question and continuously looking for those opportunities where it will grow.

That's why there's all of these industries like day trading, real estate investing, Internet marketing. People are looking at places of value being exchanged and stepping in front of it. Anybody can do things like that. There's simple things. They're just getting in front of value.

That's why these. Those industries have popped up.

But they're everywhere and they're waiting for you to take them.

Do you agree? Do you disagree? Either way, this is how the world works. The world rewards value and you can wait for somebody else to label you as more valuable or you can make a change.

Whatever you want to do is okay. But the people who do the latter see results a lot faster. We can talk about ways to increase your content income all day long until I'm blue in the face. That's why I do private events. That's why I do coaching. That's why I have a blog@freedomfastlane.com but until you get this concept that your financial situation is a reflection of the value that you've brought to the marketplace, then you are forever a slave to what other people say your value is. And to me, I think you deserve better than that. I'm Ryan Daniel Moran. This is Freedom Fast Lane. And if you agree or disagree, I'd love to hear your thoughts@freedomfastlane.com or on Facebook. Find me under Freedom Fastlane. We'll speak to you next time.