The Top 3 Rules for Making Money!

"In any business, there are jobs that are productive and sometimes confrontational, for they test you. And then there is all the other work, none of which earns any money.”

 — Stuart Wilde

If you are in business for yourself, it is easy to let work fill every waking hour of your life. The problem is it becomes a habit. It’s what your mind tells you is necessary for your business survival. Then fear of financial insecurity runs your business and your business starts running you.

But that isn’t what you want! You want time to play, to paint, play golf, enjoy your children, have fabulous vacations!

You can have all that and here’s how: spend your time on the money-making activities of your business and outsource all the administrivia.

There are three rules for making money in business:

1. Do what makes money now. Can you pick up the phone today, make a call, make a sale and get money right now? Can you have a discount sale this weekend and have cash that day? Actual time working with a client falls under this category, along with sales.

2. Do what makes money soon. These are marketing activities that don’t directly produce income now, but produce contacts that will produce money soon. These are networking activities, newsletters, and emails that are going to produce money eventually, but not necessarily today. (Please note: marketing is not selling. See number 1.)

3. Do what makes money later. Some of your bigger sales will take longer to close. Big ships sail slower. Corporate sales may take months to close whereas you can close an individual client in a day. It took four years from my first idea before “The Wealthy Spirit” was published. I had to make sure I still did #1 activities while I was writing.

But in any case—do what makes money first!

Every other business activity is administrivia and can be put off, delegated, boiler-plated, streamlined, and otherwise made efficient and fast.

Administrivia is the biggest time waster. The real reason—the hidden reason—we love to shuffle our papers is because it makes us feel like we are working, when really we are avoiding.

So the way we spend our work time actually breaks down like this:

A. Time spent doing things that make money

B. Time spent doing things that cost money

C. Time spent doing things that make you feel like you’re working but are really an avoidance of A.

What we are avoiding is the real work of the business—no, not the delivery of the product or service—we adore that part! That’s what we’re in business to do and why we started our business in the first place.

But we won’t have anyone to serve unless we do the most difficult and confrontational part of the business: We have to find prospects and sell them our products or services.

Sales is the hard part—the confrontational part—of business. We don’t always like that so much. But that’s where the money is.

Chellie Campbell, Financial Stress Reduction Expert, is the author of bestselling books The Wealthy Spirit, Zero to Zillionaire, and From Worry to Wealthy: A Woman’s Guide to Financial Success Without the Stress. She has been treating Money Disorders like Spending Bulimia and Income Anorexia in her Financial Stress Reduction® Workshops for over 25 years and is still speaking, writing, and teaching workshops—now as Zoom classes and The Wealthy Spirit Group on Facebook—with participants from all over the world. Website: www.chellie.com.