Table of Contents
This book is dedicated to Tayah Waterhouse, Chelsea Frederick, and Julie Dominy, my friends and partners, whose ability to tap into their potentials and truly earn what they are really worth is a wonderful inspiration to all of us.
INTRODUCTION
You Have Chosen Your Current Income
Formulate and stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding. Hold this picture tenaciously. Never permit it to fade. Your mind will seek to develop the picture.... Do not build up obstacles in your imagination.
NORMAN VINCENT PEALE
You are earning today exactly the amount that you have decided to earn, no more and no less. You are where you are financially because you have chosen to be there. Only you. No one else.
What this means, in terms of income, is that whatever you are earning today is the amount that you have decided to earn. Not a penny more, not a penny less.
You have decided to earn this amount as a result of your actions and as a result of your inactions. There are specific actions you have taken to get your income to the point where it is today. And there are actions that you have failed to take that have caused your income to stay far below what you are truly capable of earning. Whatever you are earning today, you have decided to earn that amount.
When I first heard this idea, that I was determining my own income, I was shocked and angry. I denied it vigorously. Thats not true, I said. No one would choose to earn this amount, and worry about money all the time!
I blamed my low income on my parents, my education, my boss, my company, my industry, the competition, and the economy. Then I looked around me, and realized that there were hundreds and even thousands of people who had the same problems and limitations I did but who were earning far more than I was and living much better lives.
I finally accepted that I was where I was and what I was because of me. If I was not happy about my life and my income, there was only one person in the world who could change itme. As the song says, it was me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer. This awakening changed my life.
Five years later, I had increased my income ten times! I went from a rented apartment with rented furniture to my own home with my own dream car, a Mercedes-Benz SL350, parked in my spacious double garage. My whole life was different, and yours can be as well.
Your Earning Ability
Your most valuable financial asset is your earning ability, your ability to earn money. This can be defined as your ability to get results that people will pay you for. Unless you are already rich, your earning ability, or earning power, represents 80 to 90 percent of your financial value.
Properly applied to the marketplace, your earning ability is like a water well. By maximizing your earning ability through getting results that people will pay you for, you can pump tens of thousands of dollars a year into your pocket. All your knowledge, education, skills, and experience in life have contributed to the person you are today and to this ability to get results for which someone will pay good money.
Your earning ability is like farmlandif you dont take excellent care of it, if you dont fertilize it, and cultivate it, and water it on a regular basis, it soon loses its ability to produce the kind of harvest that you desire. Successful men and women are those who are extremely aware of the importance and value of their earning ability. They work every day to keep it increasing in productive value, and current with the demands of the marketplace.
An Appreciating Asset
Your earning ability, like any asset, can be either appreciating or depreciating. It can be regularly increasing in value, enabling you to earn more and more with each passing year. Or it can be a depreciating asset, losing value as the markets change and your skills become less and less in demand.
Here is the hard truth: if you are not becoming more and more valuable, by continuously and aggressively upgrading your skills, you are automatically falling behind. If your earning ability is not appreciating, it is automatically depreciating. There are millions of unemployed people today who have let their earning ability decline so far that no one will hire them to get the few results they are still capable of generating.
Make a Decision
What is the key to increasing your income? Make a decision! Make a decision, from this day forward, that you are going to earn the amount of money that you are truly capable of earning. Make a decision that you are going to take complete control of your career and your income so you can survive and thrive in any economy.
Make a decision today that you are going to double your income and then double it again. Make a decision that you are going to earn more and more until you fulfill your true potential as an earning machine.
In the pages ahead, I will give you a series of practical, proven strategies, methods, and techniques that you can use immediately to begin to earn what you are really worth. The best news is that the amount that you are truly worth is vastly higher than anything you have ever enjoyed up to the current day.
Remember, it doesnt matter where youre coming from; all that really matters is where youre going. And where youre going is only limited by your imagination.
Your very highest income lies in the future. Your very best accomplishments lie in the future. Your proudest achievements lie in the future. Your happiest moments lie in the future. The greatest successes of your life are still to come. This book will show you how to get them.
CHAPTER ONE
The New Normal
Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration. Accordingly, a genius is often merely a talented person who has done all of his or her homework.
THOMAS EDISON
Welcome to the new normal of work, employment, and career success.
We have moved in just a few years from an age of affluence, when the stock market was booming, the unemployment rate was below 5 percent, and people were becoming millionaires and billionaires all around us, to a new age of turbulence, when all bets are off. Today, the economic situation has changed completely, and it is not going to change back in our lifetimes.
We are going through a massive paradigm shift. When a shift like this in thinking or in society takes place, only a few people recognize that it is occurring. Most people are stuck in a comfort zone where they keep on doing the same old things in the same old way, simply assuming that the economic and financial meltdown of 20072010 was a bump in the road, and that everything will soon get back to normal.
They are right, but the definition of normal has changed. From this day forward, if you want to succeed and achieve everything that is possible for you, you are going to have to work smarter and more diligently than ever before. To move to the top of your field, you are going to have to start a little earlier, work a little harder, and stay a little later.
The Race Is On
The fact is that there is a race on, and you are in it. If you dont pick up the pace, other people will. Your competitors will increase the speed at which they are moving and leave you far behind.
