HOW TO MAKE CASH
BY
VICTOR IZUOGU
CONTENT:
Preface
Chapter 1:…………………….. Earning Mind-Sets
Chapter 2:…………………….. Making Money Consciously
Chapter 3:…………………….. Income and Expenses
Chapter 4:…………………….. How to Get out of Debt
Chapter 5:…………………….. Methods of Generating Money Fast
PREFACE
There are certain laws which govern the process of acquiring riches,and once these laws are learned and obeyed by anyone,that person will get rich with mathematical certainty.The ownership of money and property comes as a result of obeying these laws and poverty comes from violating the laws – no matter how hard the individuals work or how able they are – they remain poor for violating the laws of acquiring riches.
Whatever may be said in praise of poverty, the fact remains that it is not possible to live a really complete or successful life unless one is rich. No one can rise to his greatest possible height in life unless he has plenty of money. Everyone needs goods and services in order to live comfortably in the society. A person cannot live fully in body without good food, comfortable clothing, and warm shelter, and without freedom from excessive toil. Rest and recreation are also necessary to his physical life.
Studying the people who have gotten rich, we find that they are an average lot in all respects, having no greater educational background, talents and abilities than other people have. It is evident that they do not get rich because they possess the best education, talents and abilities that others do not have, but because they happen to adopt a particular lifestyle and they are disciplined enough to do things that poor people don’t do.
It takes work to get rich slowly. No one will take as much interest in your financial future as you will. Never trust anyone who promises to make you rich overnight.
Since there is no perfect e-book and no perfection in any human work, this remains an e-book in progress. If you find errors or points that are unclear, or any point you want me to include, please let me know through my blog: Perhaps your contributions will make subsequent editions of this e-book richer and better for those who follow behind you. I welcome your feedback. Because it is published on the Internet, it is easy to add or clarify points.
EARNING MIND-SETS
Since money is a social resource, earning money means acquiring more of that social resource. When you spend money, you convert money to value. But when you earn money, you convert value to money.
One way to earn money is to sell valuable possessions. Take an item that has value and sell it, and you will receive money for it. Another option is to acquire items at one price and turn around and sell them for more than your costs. Companies dig up resources all over the planet and sell them for a profit. For individuals this approach might take the form of buying objects, stocks, or bonds at one price and selling them at a higher price. Sometimes value is added in the process (which may just be added convenience), while other times the money earned comes from market inefficiencies.
Perhaps the most common way to earn money is to sell your time. Get a job and trade hours for money. The greater your ability to personally deliver a high social value, the greater your earnings potential. The difference between making $10/hour vs. $100/hour is that the latter work has much greater social value. This difference is not anyone’s “fault” — the difference is due to the social consensus about the value of certain work. Note the difference between absolute value and social value. We all know how much footballers are paid. They may not perform useful work in an absolute sense, but their compensation is based on the social value of their service, which is currently very high.
Another way to earn money is to create a system that earns money for you, such as a business. This is my personal favorite, since it can provide far more leverage than selling time. I also find it much less risky in the long run, since owning and controlling a money-generating system is more secure than trading hours for dollars at someone else’s discretion.
You can also earn money by selling money itself… that is, by investing it. By loaning your money or assets to someone else, you can earn interest and/or dividends. How you earn money depends on what you invest in. Investing in a new business is very different from investing in a criminal organization. One form of investing creates social value; the other steals it.
And of course a final option for making money is to steal it. Historically this has been a popular option, but I won’t give it serious consideration in this work. If you think about it, there are two basic ways to earn money:
(1) Make a social contribution, and receive payment commensurate with
the social value of your contribution.
(2) Take advantage of market inefficiencies to extract money without contributing any value.
Option (1) includes getting a job, running a business that provides products or services, reselling items with value added, or investing in any of these outlets. Option (2) includes reselling items without added value, gambling, mooching off others, crime, or investing in any of these.
Here’s another way of labeling these two strategies:
(i) Contribute.
(ii) Mooch.
Unless you have somehow opted out of the monetary system, you are using one or both of these two strategies right now. One strategy will likely be dominant in your life — either you are creating genuine social value and being paid for it, or you are mooching off the value created by others. According to the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, to mooch means to get money, food, etc from someone else instead of paying for it yourself.
Note that contributing value is essential for the monetary system to survive and thrive, but mooching is not. The only way moochers can survive is by extracting value from the contributors. But ultimately someone must contribute, or there can be no value for the moochers to extract.
Incidentally, Ayn Rand wrote a fascinating novel titled Atlas Shrugged. In that book, he imagined what would happen if the world’s contributors left to form their own society, leaving the moochers to fend for themselves. The contributor society became a paradise, while the moocher society fell to pieces. Rand suggested that a system that rewarded moochers at the expense of contributors was evil and that contributors should be free to decide how their work is used (and whether or not they will support any moochers).
Some degree of mooching is to be expected. Children mooch off their parents. Those who are unable to contribute mooch off those who can. Whenever we enjoy the fruits of someone else’s labor without paying for it, we are mooching. We all mooch off the hard work of our ancestors. But eventually we have to decide whether we are going to continue to mooch for the rest of our lives or begin making a genuine contribution. Will we remain moochers for life, or will we become contributors?
Obviously your life will include some contribution and some mooching, but what is your primary strategy for generating income today? Do you contribute social value? Or do you mooch off the value of other contributors?
Let us look at both possibilities.
The moocher mindset
Opting into mooch mode means you are extracting more social value than you are contributing. Your focus is on getting as opposed to giving, so you take more out of the system than you give back. The moocher mindset suggests you can always rely on others to pick up your slack. It is the mindset of unearned entitlement. Since you still need to extract value such as food, clothing, and shelter — value which others must provide for you – you live at the expense of others. Your burden may be shouldered by an individual such as a parent, or it may be shared by society at large, but either way you survive by suckling the social teat.
Sometimes mooching becomes so habitual it is easy to overlook. Many people who seemingly have contribution-based careers harbor an underlying moocher mindset. They aim to extract as much social value as possible while contributing as little as possible. They work to make money to the degree it is necessary, while mooching as much as they can get away with. Such people don’t have inspired careers because work is only seen as a means to an end, not an outlet for genuine contribution. Take a look around and see if you can identify the moochers in your life. Who is there to get rather than to give?
Another name for the moocher mindset is the scarcity mindset. Since you are not creating value of your own, the money you extract must come from someone else. It is a zero-sum game. Whatever you gain, someone else must lose.
The moocher mindset makes the attainment of financial abundance very difficult because in order to succeed financially with this mindset, you must embrace certain values that most people would consider negative. Your gain is someone else’s loss, so getting rich requires taking advantage of more people. In order to gain by mooching, someone else must cover your extraction with real value. So the more wealth you accumulate, the more you steal from others.
Most people cannot handle the thought of becoming wealthy at the expense of others, so usually the moocher mindset gives rise to self-sabotage instead. If you fall into this pattern, you will experience a love/hate relationship with money. On the one hand, you may want more money, but on the other hand, you may feel disinclined to make too much, since you know that the more money you get, the more someone else has to pay for it. For example, if you make a living as a professional gambler, then you know that the more you earn, the more money others have to lose… not the best motivation for a highly conscious person to achieve financial abundance.
Some people are able to bypass this problem of financial self-sabotage by lowering their consciousness. They learn to make money without rationally considering the consequences of how they are earning it. They invent justifications to explain their actions while keeping their conscience from getting in the way. Ultimately this is the mindset of criminals.
The more you align yourself with the moocher mindset, the more difficult it will be for you to experience financial abundance and remain conscious. Ultimately you have to choose one or the other: be conscious or be wealthy. You cannot have both if you subscribe to the moocher mindset. If you find yourself stuck at a certain level of income and unable to go any higher, an underlying moocher mindset is probably the culprit. This is the mindset that leads you to ask, “How can I get more money?” instead of, “How can I contribute more value?” It is also the mindset that says it is a bad idea to earn more money, since your gain is someone else’s pain.
The contributor mindset
Now let us consider the contributor mindset. This mindset recognizes that the best way to make money is to provide fair value in exchange. Create genuine social value, and receive payment commensurate with that value. Due to market inefficiencies, sometimes you will be underpaid, and sometimes you will be overpaid, but the basic idea is that you earn money by contributing.
If you want to earn income as a contributor, you must contribute social value, not personal value. Many would-be contributors get stuck on this concept. Personal value is whatever you say it is — you are free to decide what has value to you personally, and it doesn’t matter if no one agrees with you. Social value, however, is assigned by social consensus. If you believe your work has tremendous value, but virtually no one else does, then your work has high personal value but little or no social value. Here is the key point: your income depends on the social value of your work, not the personal value.
If you want to generate income from creative work, then your work must have social value. There is no getting around that. No social value, no income. If your skills and hard work are not in alignment with the creation of social value, then you will not be able to generate income as a contributor.
This is not an unfair system — it is just how the monetary system works. Since money is a social resource backed by social value, it makes sense that you would not get paid much for providing something of little or no social value. The saying “Find a need and fill it” certainly rings true, assuming we are referring to a social need or desire.
Another name for the contributor mindset is the abundance mindset. This mindset says that wealth can be created from ideas and action. Your gain is a reflection of the social gain you have contributed. If you want to earn a high income, you must contribute a lot of social value. The more social value you create, the more money you can earn. This is a win-win mindset because you are putting value into the system for the benefit of others.
Under the contributor mindset, you receive money as payment for your social service. The money you earn is society’s way of saying, “In exchange for your valued contribution, you are hereby granted the right to extract $X of value from society at a time of your choosing.” This is a beautiful thing!
The only real limit on your income is how much social value you can create. If you want to earn more money, then develop your skills and talents to facilitate the creation of lots of social value. The best way to increase your income is to figure out how to deliver more social value. Focus on giving, and the getting will largely take care of itself. The systems to reward social service are already in place, so all you need to do is plug your service into the existing marketplace.
Generating income from social contribution is a very positive experience. Consequently, it would not lower your conscience like the moocher mindset. With the contributor mindset, wealth and conscience are not in conflict. In fact, they synergize extremely well, especially if you reinvest some of your income into expanding your contribution.
If you adopt the contributor mindset, just be aware that members of the moocher mindset will sometimes mistakenly count you among them. As you work to increase your social contribution and thereby earn a higher income, moochers will project their values onto you, concluding you have become greedy and must be taking advantage of others for personal gain. Don’t let moochers dissuade you from your path though. Let your inspiration come from the desire to provide even more social value. It would be less honorable to withhold your value just because others misinterpret your motives.
Free contribution
Under the contributor model, you always have the option of making a contribution for free. You don’t have to receive the full social value for your work if you don’t want to.
I like having this option because it means I can make my work accessible even to those who cannot afford it. Money is social credit, so when you decline to receive money for your work, you decline the social credit you have earned. While it is perfectly fine to decline the social credit you have earned, be sure to consider what you could do with that social credit if you choose to receive it. Could you re-invest it to make a bigger or better contribution? If so, then paid work makes more sense than free work, since you can use the money to expand your mission and serve even more people. Money makes you more of who you already are, so if you are already a contributor, more money can allow you to expand your contribution.
You can also aim for a nice balance between paid work and free work. It does not have to be either-or.
Making money consciously
Contributing social value is the primary strategy for making money consciously, but by itself it is still not enough. The problem with social value is that your personal values won’t perfectly align with the social consensus. I am sure that if everyone on earth were like you, the demand for certain products and services would shift dramatically. For example, if everyone were like me, fresh fruits and vegetables would have even higher social value, while cigarettes would have none whatsoever.
When you attempt to provide social value without achieving congruence with your personal values, your motivation will be very weak. You would not be inspired because you will be doing what you feel you should do, but not what you want to do. Alternatively, when you attempt to satisfy your personal values without providing any real social value, you get the starving artist syndrome. You may be inspired by work that totally fulfills you, but it won’t pay the bills. Please don’t do this to yourself either. The solution is to find an area of overlap between your personal values and social values, and work within that area of overlap. This will allow you to do what you love and create something that others value as well. Don’t force yourself to choose between your integrity and your income — choose both!
Congruent contribution
Two simple realizations can help you achieve a congruent mindset about money and push beyond limiting financial beliefs. First, you must consciously adopt the contributor mindset and abandon the moocher mindset. And secondly, you must find a way to contribute social value while achieving alignment with your personal values. Once you have internalized those two mindsets, you will be in a position to generate abundant income while serving the greater good.
If you want to generate income without lowering your conscience, you have to get your limiting beliefs out of your way. Holding yourself back from earning more money does not serve anyone. Limiting your income only limits your contribution. The conscious reason to earn more money is that you can put those social credits to good use. Use them to expand your service to others. If you are living an honorable life, then it is a good thing for you to receive more money. You will be a good custodian for it. The more money that flows through your life, the more resources you can invest into your life purpose.
The Law of Demand and Supply in making money
It is important to note that you can also make money by using and applying the law of supply and demand to your advantage. Most of us are familiar with the law of supply and demand – the more supply, the cheaper the price; conversely, the rarer the product or service, the more expensive it is. However, we don’t really apply the law of supply and demand to our own lives – particularly our careers. For example, if you are aspiring to do something that many, many other people want to do (so much so that they do it for free, as a hobby) then it will be far more challenging for you to make money doing it. On the other hand, if you do something that most people don’t want to do, or if you get very good at doing something most people don’t do all that well, then you can make a whole lot more money. The starting point is to adopt a positive earning mindset as discussed in this chapter. When you have the right earning mindset, you would begin to focus on how to create wealth consciously…..
To download the full version of this e-Book, please the following link: http://store.payloadz.com/go?id=259619
Victor Izuogu –
About the Author:
Web: http://victor-creatingwealth.blogspot.com
Telephone: +2348033407086, +2348098196809
Mailing Address: Global Interchange Ventures, P.O. Box 1291, Mile 1,
Diobu, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria.