We earn exactly as much money as we're useful to other people. The key to growing your income is deep, systematic work on yourself.
How can you meaningfully increase your income?
In a lot of families, conflict happens specifically around money. Sometimes the reason is unwise spending; sometimes it’s that there simply isn’t enough of it.
To meaningfully grow your income, you need to be in a position to actually influence it. If you work somewhere for a fixed salary, try to move closer to the money and directly influence the end result. In most businesses and organizations, if you interact directly with customers, that’s the spot closest to the money. At that point, it makes sense to talk about a percentage of profit or some kind of performance-based pay.
Once you can influence your own income, the main principle becomes: “Money is honest, accurate feedback from the market in exchange for the value we provide.”
I know that sounds a bit abstract, so in even simpler terms: we earn as much money as we are useful to other people.
The good news is that we’re the ones who control our own level of usefulness to others. Not our employer, not a business partner, not our parents, not the person we love, not the president — literally no one else can affect how useful we are to other people.
We are 100% responsible for where and how we direct our attention.
We make that choice every day: learn a useful new skill, or scroll social media; get better at selling, or watch Netflix; learn English, or aimlessly watch YouTube; create something, or just watch other people live their lives.
What our life looks like a few years from now depends on the choices we make every single day. So to meaningfully grow your income, you need to start investing much more in yourself and in raising your value to customers and the market.
It never works out that we’re worth $2,000 to the market but only take home $200.
That’s why the key to growing your income is deep, systematic work on yourself.
Three years ago, I could have been just as useful to just as many people as I am now. But back then I didn’t have a blog, I wasn’t sharing my thoughts on camera. A few hundred people knew I existed, and I made my money doing work I didn’t love (marketing), while teaching people was more of a hobby that brought in a modest income.
When I did some inner work on myself, figured out how social media actually works, and started actively filming and posting content — everything changed. I didn’t start working more. I started working in a completely different way. My income grew significantly, because now millions of people see my videos in their feed and know I exist. For many of them, my content is genuinely useful — it’s the new value I bring to the market.
The more people you can be useful to, the better your finances will do. I’m not telling everyone to go start actively blogging (though it is an incredible opportunity) — I’m making the case that we should all look for ways to help as many people as possible.
My online school, New Lifestyle, is actively growing, and now we have the ability to run free seminars for anyone who wants to join.
Do you agree that we earn from the market exactly as much value as we bring to other people?