I like to say my best learning opportunities have come from the mistakes I’ve made and the struggles that I’ve had. Because even though I’ve never made as much money as I’d like to, I’ve also never worked as hard at it as I have over the last few years.
Two of the biggest things I’ve learned are:
1) The less you spend the more you can make.
You just have to be creative in figuring out how to make your money lasts as long as possible. I’ve found that in this game it’s never a good idea to start your hobby and get a $10,000+ head start and then find yourself waiting on the market for the newest computer that costs $2,000.
If you want to play this game the right way you can’t do this. A lot of people assume that they can make a lot of money quickly by getting lucky and flipping houses. But if you’re working hard every day and doing everything you can to make your business work and your cash flow work and get a lot of clients in the door you can see a lot more money go in than out, and then you’ll see the money come right back in overtime. I’ve always had a problem with this idea in my head. I just assumed that when it came to the simple things you just worked harder.
But I know a lot of people who make far more money doing the exact same things I do. My favorite examples are all about personal trainers. If you’re a personal trainer and you’re starting a new business, but you only make $10,000 per year then guess what? You’re not making a lot of money at all. And if you’re like most people who want to start a business then you spend all your time and money trying to figure out how to make $20,000 per year, just to survive. It’s never a good idea to spend money and effort on that kind of long-term plan. You have to spend time on growing your business, and when you do, your income will slowly increase. You just have to be smart about the small things that make all the difference.
2) Money really is a commodity. It’s like a barrel of oil.
Some people might read this and think, “Mike, you’re an entrepreneur, how can you say money is like oil?” Well, think about it. If you have a barrel of oil, and the price of oil spikes a couple of dollars from the $30 or $40 it cost a few weeks ago, then your business might not do very well. But oil isn’t something you can create, it’s something that’s naturally available. It doesn’t cost a lot of money to produce, but if there’s too much of it in the world the price will start to go down. So if you’re selling a product like cars or t-shirts or furniture that people need to survive and thrive, and the price of oil spikes a couple of dollars, your business will probably suffer. But oil is something you can’t control. All you can do is work to make sure you’re getting your value for the oil you have.
But the same is true for money. And in this case, the price of money in terms of how much money it can buy is determined by the supply and demand of demand. You need a lot of people willing to do business with different taught.
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