Advanced Steps: What You Need to Succeed

Here's the third part of this series: some extra things you can do to become more successful than you ever dreamed.

• Work smarter, not harder. I'll never forget the story of a guy who was selling used cars. It was a slow and not very lucrative job until he noticed that people kept calling to see where they could buy specific parts to fix their used cars. That gave him an idea to start a junk yard. Now instead of selling one car at a time, he has hundreds of cars in the back 40 and lets people go out and get the pieces that they need. He sits in the shop and takes their money for these items while each car is earning him more money in parts than he would have earned selling it whole. How can you double your productivity with the lest amount of effort?
• Use the efforts of others to make you a success. This is how businesses grow. One kid mowing a lawn will only earn a set amount of money for a given amount of time. If that same kid can use his time to round up ten jobs then have his ten friends mow ten yards at the same time while he gets a cut of each job, he can then can spend his time seeking other jobs to give his friends. He has basically increased his earning exponentially while doing little actual grunt work.
• Use your money to make you money. How would you like to be on perma-vacation while your bank account continues to increase every day? The more money you save and invest, the less actual work you have to do. The magic of compounding interest in just that, magical.
• Think spin-offs. Dave Ramsey started from where he was--broke. He then learned about personal finance to get himself out of debt, when this worked out, he counseled others on how to increase their financial freedom, he then decided to write a book, then he put together a radio show...get the picture? Each of his additional streams of income is now earning him exponentially what one single work task would; however the core ideas and education are all the same--he was able to use what he knows to basically set up a financial tree with each branch earning him an income. How can what you do be taken in another direction to benefit your bottom line? We'll go back to the food storage idea. Say you want to have a year's worth of food in storage. You can purchase just for yourself but decide to expand on that idea. How about if you purchase ten times what you need then sell the excess at a small profit to others you know who would like to store food as well? Others benefit and you get the food you need to store basically paid for by others. Next you think others may benefit from your food storage experience so you write a book about food storage. Next comes a website, public demonstrations of your craft, maybe you teach classes on the art of food storage, and become a consultant for companies that make food for long term storage.