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A Different Kind of Blueprint

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By this point, we can talk for days about our money blueprint, yes?

It’s that program we created, or way of being that we’ve grown accustomed to, in relation to money—mostly without us being aware of it. Our money blueprint manifests our financial reality. Like the blueprint of a physical structure, it’s either going to be drawn up big or small—to accommodate a lot of money, or little.

That kind of blueprint is about the mental game of money, but let’s take a look at a different kind of blueprint—the one that encompasses the machine, the vehicle that will build your wealth—that is, your business.

A lot of people start their businesses without any blueprints. They say, “Well, I’ve got a couple of clients. Then I’ll figure out all the marketing stuff and get some more clients.”

That actually could work, but the downside of that kind of success—without a system in place that can handle the new volume—could lead to having so many customers that you literally don’t know what to do with them. You could end up losing as many potential repeat customers as you will the additional word-of-mouth customers those lost repeaters could have served up for you.

Designing a basic blueprint for your business allows you to get the lay of the land for your enterprise and understand how your business is organized. Maybe even more importantly, your business blueprint can show you those critical success factors that aren’t in your business. Enjoying the fruits of owning your business is much different when you can take a six-month vacation from it, yet it’s still running the way it should when you get back.

No matter what the business, there are four basic blocks that need to be included in the foundation of your business’ blueprint:

  • Leadership. This is the part that provides vision, inspiration and makes most of those key, highest-level decisions about how things should be run.
  • Business development. This is mostly marketing and sales. That’s where all the business comes from. These are the team members—and the processes in place—who find those prospects that want your product or service. Business development is where your promises are made and disseminated.
  • Delivery. Once those promises are made, somebody’s got to do the work, yes? In manufacturing, those are the people who create the product. In other businesses, it’ll be those people who provide the service. Those are the fulfillment people, those who deliver on the promises.
  • Administration. These are the often unheralded (don’t take them for granted, though!) people behind it all: accounting, legal, payroll, etc. It’s a separate yet very important group because that’s exactly where a lot of systems and processes often go awry.

Again, no matter what the business, every one of them is going to have these four essential components.

Similar to our psychological blueprints, what’s under the ground creates what’s above the ground. So many of the obstacles we come across in business can be tracked to structure and systems. As intensely as we work on the mind game of money, so to we need to pay special attention to the actual structure of our money making machine.

What do you think? We want to hear your comments and stories!!!

How to Be Good and Rich At the Same Time

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moneykeysmallWhat’s the root of all evil? Money, right? Wrong!

 

You’d be amazed how many people think being rich will make their lives worse, like they won’t be judged for who they are but for their money. So even though they want to be rich, they shirk it at the same time.

 

This subtle yet profound fear keeps people from the truth: it’s good to be rich! Not just for the lifestyle, but because in the end, being rich makes us into better people.

 

I can hear someone screaming, “What about the rich jerk who doesn’t tip even though the service was great? How’s money made him a better person?” Here’s a clue: whoever you are, money will make you more of that. If you are a kind, generous person who attracted like-minded people before being rich, you’ll continue to do so after because now you’ll be able to be even more generous on a larger scale.

 

It’s our duty to become rich if we can. We have an obligation to grow to our greatest potential, developing the character that can achieve and care about other people at the same time. This is the growth that will ultimately make us into better people.

 

So what is the root of all evil? It’s not stacks of paper. Fear is at the root of our thoughts that tell us becoming rich will make things worse and take us away from being loved, accepted, and well-thought of.

 

If we don’t accept that being rich can be a good thing for ourselves and for others, fear and doubt creates envy. Envy says, “I can’t have that, and I resent those that do.” Acceptance of what you really want says, “I can have that, and I will be a better person because of it.”

 

So instead of secretly despising rich people, we should affirm them, even if they’re frickin jerks. We’re not affirming who they are as people—we’re affirming the idea that it’s okay to be rich. You can make a choice not to be selfish, arrogant, and thoughtless. Fear and envy negate thoughts of wealth and result in feelings and actions that take you away from it, even when you’re not aware of it.

 

Here’s a simple exercise in overcoming fear. Think of something that you’ve always wanted to do but never got around to, and just do it (Don’t break any laws, though!). Even if you end up not wanting to do it again, at least you know instead of just holding back for whatever reason. You’ve broken through something, and other breakthroughs become easier. It’s the only way we’ll ever grow.

 

This is not just about being rich, although that is one of the goals. This is about growing ourselves to become bigger than the obstacles we’ll face in life. The more wonder we experience and challenges we face, the more we expand to be able to take in more; the good and the bad; the money and the problems that come with it. In the end, striving toward becoming rich can only serve you, and if you choose it, serve others as well. How’s that a bad thing?

 

 

Money is Not the Answer

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That’s got to sound ironic coming from someone who believes whole-heartedly in the benefits of being rich. Forget about getting out of debt, paying bills, buying nice things, etc. That stuff’s great, but at the end of it all you’re not going to give a damn about your credit rating. Money’s the last thing on your mind in that moment, I would imagine.

Money can reduce the stress of living, but it can bring just as much if not more anxiety. I’ve gone through my cycles of accumulating and losing money, getting more and losing it again. The money wasn’t burning a hole in my pocket. I just had a big hole in my pocket and didn’t bother to sew it up. That hole represented something in my mental blueprint that kept me from being stable with money. There was nothing wrong with the money.

On the other hand, people without money often think if they just had enough to do this or that, then things would be better. While that may be true, what happens when the mind goes into ‘Only if …’ consistently? That’s exactly what you get … ‘only if.’

‘This will only happen if…’

All of a sudden nothing’s happening and you don’t even know or remember that rule you created. In business that thinking often translates into “It takes money to make money.” No! If you have money it can certainly grow more money, but it doesn’t take money to make money. It takes creativity to make money.

Throwing money at a problem is disaster! In business there’s no such thing as a money problem. That problem grew out of somewhere else. You want to fix the root of the problem. If you throw money at a business problem, you’ll have the same business problem for the rest of your life and no money. Creativity and knowledge are the answers, not money.

It’s also not logical to blame money for people’s shortcomings, or the world’s for that matter. Obviously there are people that are rich and greedy, but there are poor people who are greedy and there are middle class people who are greedy. There are rich, poor, and middle-class people who are generous. There are rich, poor and average income people who can be both generous and greedy, depending on the stress they’re going through at any given time.

To say rich people are greedy as a blanket statement is just as unfair as saying poor people are lazy. I’ve met many a hard-working poor person who just hadn’t yet turned the corner on working smarter instead of just harder.

Money can’t be the root of all evil. Envy, jealousy, and greed—all based on fear of not having or getting enough of something we want—pre-dated currency (think about the story of Cain and Able). It’s a part of what it means for us to be human.

If money isn’t the cause of all that’s wrong, it’s not going to be the cure either. It’s not the answer. It’s the fruit of our expansion—or lack thereof—beyond ourselves and of the impact we’re having on the world. What we choose to do with that is a result of who we choose to be, not because of money.

Anger

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Of all of the negative emotions we have to deal with, the most debilitating of them is anger. Anger sometimes runs and can often ruin lives.

I was angry at my dad for years. When I was a kid, I had this coin collection that I was really proud of, and I kept the coins in this piggy bank. My dad knew where I kept it as well, and one day it was just gone. My prized collection that—in my mind at least—I worked so hard for, just disappeared. Eventually, the piggy bank reappeared, but when I angrily accused my father of stealing … let’s just say he responded pretty angrily, too.

I thought of it as one of those things that ‘just happens,’ and you move on, yes?

Throughout my adult years I never re-examined that incident. I never considered his side of the story. My perspective was, ‘I’m right and that’s that!’ Fine and swell except for one problem: I unconsciously decided that men weren’t to be trusted with money or anything else. The anger and distrust was holding me back, not him. Think that had an effect on my long-term success and happiness?

Most of us are run by our past circumstances. We play the victim role based on an idea that it’s all our parents’ fault for how they raised us. ‘This is what happened, this is the conclusion, and now this is what I do.’

‘You want me to be a success? I’ll be a failure just to show you what a lousy parent you were!’

The most important thing to the conditioned mind is to be right. And when we’re angry, it’s usually about not getting what we want, and we feel justified in our position for the reason of the moment. So we retaliate by not giving the person that we’re angry with what they want. Meanwhile, we’re often going down the drain with or without them, true or true?

So … five different cities, 12 different businesses, 14 different jobs and 35 years later, I learned my dad was actually showing my prized coins to his poker buddies, and he didn’t want to confuse my coin collection with the poker pot so he just kind of stashed it away and forgot to put it back where I kept it. He was proud and protective, not a thief. Only when I became aware of why I wasn’t settled down—as a form of rebellion, anger and retaliation—I was able to make a new choice and build lasting success in life.

Anger and resentment only hurts you! You feel it, not whoever you’re angry at. It gets stuck in the cells of your body, not theirs. It makes you sick, not them. Even worse, sometimes that anger might actually be totally unwarranted, a simple misunderstanding. It’s not worth hanging on to.

Search your past for an emotional incident that resulted in your getting angry about something that concerned money and/or at least one other person. The idea is to simply re-look at a past or childhood situation from your current and (possibly) more mature point of view, and consider revising it so that it doesn’t haunt you anymore. What’s your story? We want to hear from you!

Be Right or Be Happy

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If you’ve ever related to another human being, you’ve probably experienced this.

You’re having a discussion with someone, and he or she says something you know as a matter of fact to be absolutely false. You can politely challenge this person’s inaccuracy, but most people don’t want to be wrong, and many others have a hard time admitting it. It’s human nature, our inner-fear mechanism adapted to today’s insecurities rather than the old “fight or flight” days. But depending on who you’re talking to, proving to somebody that they are wrong can get awkward if the people involved take it too personally.

Even when all evidence points to them being wrong, some people will stubbornly hang on to their views because they’d rather be right and comfortable in being wrong rather than risk the discomfort of having to assimilate new information into their worldview.

As a matter of fact, the people who are the most righteous are usually the most miserable people on this earth anyway, aren’t they? The ones who always have to be right are usually just taking their insecurities and unhappiness out on others, yes or yes?

Being right doesn’t always mean being happy, but if we’re happy it doesn’t really matter who’s right or wrong. Being right isn’t as important a consideration when you’re secure and focused. The only thing that’s important is: will the experience move me toward a result that I believe will support my happiness? That will mean being wrong sometimes, but we have to experience this in order to learn how to get it right, and then get happier.

Be right or be happy. Now replace the word “rich” with “happy.” Does that change the meaning of the phrase any? Not one bit! You can be right or you can be rich; it’s still a choice. Being right could mean holding on to old ways that aren’t supportive of being rich; unconscious blueprints, programming and conditioning that links negative thoughts to money. The more you decide that you want to be right, the more you’ve decided that you can pretty well kiss away being rich, not just financially but emotionally, spiritually, and mentally too. You can be right or you can be rich.

Money is a really blessed thing, and if you have the where-with-all to be able to earn or have a lot of it, you have an advantage over a situation; a gift, talent, skill or way of being that is actually a little different than most people out there. At that point, who needs to be right?!? The quality of your life is all the proof you need.

That doesn’t mean compromising your good sense to someone because of their inflexibility, but happy people don’t need to prove anything. They figured out that along the way, you have to be wrong at least occasionally in order to learn how to get it right. I’d rather be wrong and learn something that will benefit me later than “right” and learn nothing—and maybe get someone PO’d at me for being a smart-ass!

Do you have any stories of something that seemed like a disaster but actually turned out to be one of the greatest gifts you’ve ever received? An occasion where you were actually glad that you were wrong? We want to hear from you!

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