What are some ways to make more money?
What opportunities are you not taking advantage of?
If you are looking for more ways to make money in your business, you will want to tune in!
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Chris Miles Bio
Chris Miles, the “Cash Flow Expert,” is a leading authority showing entrepreneurs and their spouses how to quickly free up and create cash flow and lasting wealth TODAY spending time doing what they love most! He has been featured in US News, CNN Money, Bankrate.com, interviewed internationally on TV & radio, and has a high reputation with his company, Money Ripples (https://www.moneyripples.com/) getting his clients fast, life-altering financial results.
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Listen to the podcast here
How To Make More Money In Your Business
This is Chris Miles here, cashflow expert and the financial advocate for the entrepreneur, teaching you how to free up cashflow to be able to have greater freedom and prosperity now and in the future, while enjoying a greater quality of life for those that you love around you. I’m so excited to be here with you. We got a fun show. We will be talking about how to make more money in your business. This is a great and wonderful topic that I love.
Before we get into that, I would love to ask you a favor or two. Please share this with others. If you think the show is valuable and you’re getting good information here, share this with other people. Share this with your friends, the people you work with, clients of yours or whoever they might be. Please spread the word. This show is all about how to help you create greater freedom and prosperity now.
Unlike anybody else, this is all about how to create wealth doing what you love that others also love you doing. I want to make sure that this is something that we get out there. We make this as big of a mission as possible because I know I can’t do it alone. I can’t do it without you guys. I appreciate that. Secondly as well, feel free to check out my website, MoneyRipples.com for more information. You don’t have to always wait to get this stuff. I give plenty of information through blogs. I give plenty of great content. I’m in lots of different interviews and whatnot. There are plenty of ways to be able to get more without having to necessarily pay more. If you want to do that too, I don’t mind that either.
Let’s talk about how to earn more money in your business. This is one that used to stump me like crazy. I used to have the hardest time trying to figure out how to make money. Especially when I was a financial planner or a financial advisor in scarcity. It was so hard to figure out how to make money. It seems so mysterious and crazy. Once I start to understand a few of these principles and some of these strategies or ideas that I’m going to give you here, everything became easier. It became simpler. I want you to pay attention and see how you can apply this in your own life.
These are ideas that I’ve done myself. These are ideas I’ve had my clients do and things like that. It’s always different for everybody. There are so many limitless ways that this can happen. It’s a short show because I want to give you as much of a powerful punch as possible. I’m going to give you a few ideas to get the creative juices flowing for you. This is going to be great.
Dollars Follow Value
Let’s start talking about first the principle of what usually stops people from making more money. Most people are usually caught in scarcity. Most people believe that in business, you’ve got to be somehow immoral or unethical or you got to steal your way to wealth. Even people that are like, “No, that’s not necessarily true,” still because of what has been taught to us in the media or what has been taught to us in entertainment, if you watch any movie, who was always the bad guy? It’s always some rich greedy person trying to take advantage of somebody. It’s always like that. You never see a person that’s a broke middle-class person that’s the evil villain, do you? Very rarely do you see that thing. It’s always about some rich greedy person.
The only way you can truly make good sustainable lasting wealth is to be a person of great moral and ethical strength of character. You cannot lie, cheat and steal your way at the top because eventually people are going to find you out. Click To TweetWe got to defeat that viewpoint that somehow business is bad, especially making money in business. I see this happen a lot, especially in the State of Utah where there’s a difference in culture about making money and being a good person. Sometimes they feel like it’s at odds and that’s not true. The only way you can truly make good sustainable lasting wealth is to be a person of great moral and ethical strength of character. That’s it. You cannot lie, cheat and steal your way to the top because eventually, people are going to find you out. People won’t trust you and it will be a very difficult way to get there.
I’m not saying it’s not possible but it’s a much harder and scarier path to take. If you lie, cheat and steal your way to money and wealth, you would always be watching your back. You would always wonder if somebody else would do it back to you. What kind of life is that anyway? Why would anybody want that life? That’s ridiculous.
We’re talking about how to do this morally and ethically. I’m not saying legally because there are a few cases where just because something is legal doesn’t necessarily make it moral or ethical. I’m talking about how to do this morally and ethically. We got to understand that you can be moral and ethical. You can be an amazing person. You’ll be a person of great integrity and value and become successful with that. That’s not everything but that’s a great starting point. It will be a lot easier for you to make money as you move forward through business.
Please understand that business is purely based on one principle. That one principle is this. When you want to make more money, the best, easiest and surest way to make more money is to understand that dollars follow value. Dollars follow the value that you create for other people. The only way to make more money is to convince people of what you have to offer. Whether it’s a product or service or even if you’re an employee with a company and you work at a normal wage or a salary, you have to provide value that’s sufficient enough that’s more valuable to them than what they pay you.
If you got a job that pays you $70,000 a year, you want to make sure that the employer is able to justify more value for you than $70,000 a year. If not, it’s guaranteed you’ll get laid off. In business, it’s usually a little bit more real-time. If you can’t show value immediately, you don’t get paid at all. If you do get paid, eventually, you’re going to have people that are going to be upset with you. It’s going to tarnish your reputation. It’s much harder to hold back your reputation from doing something wrong than doing something right. You have to be cautious of that. You have to make sure you stand in integrity.
There are times that I’ve turned away business because I knew I would be out of integrity to take that business on or certain type of people I knew I could not stand working with regardless if they had the money. There’s something to be said for doing business with people that you like as well. It’s not just people knowing, liking and trusting you. That’s essential too but I think you also got to like them too. Otherwise, your passion, your dream and your business are no longer something you love to do regardless of the money. Now, it becomes a job. If that’s the case, you might as well go back and work from 9:00 to 5:00 and do something you don’t like. I don’t recommend that.
You have to understand that dollars follow value. You got to give people some value that’s worth more to them than the dollars they have in their pocket. If you want to have more of those dollars, you can do two things. There are two variables there. One, you find ways to increase the value that you’re giving. How can you do something more valuable? Two, how do you create a lot more value for more people or create that certain amount of value for more people?
It’s either you increase the value of what you offer or you increase the number of people you offer that value to. Those are the two variables you can control. The preferred method is how you can create more value for more people. If you can do that and increase your influence and create more value, it’s great. You don’t have to create value for thousands or even millions of people to make a lot of money. For example, what if what you had offered in their minds was worth more than $100,000? Whatever that product or service might be.
If you want to make $1 million, you only have to provide value for ten people and that’s it. Plain and simple. If it’s $10,000, you have to figure out how to provide that value for 100 people. If it’s $1,000, it’s for 1,000 people. If it’s $100, it’s for 10,000 people and so on. It’s $1, it’s got to be a million people. However you do that, it’s up to you. It’s not that complex when it comes to that. For me, this is a big shift because I always thought that somehow, I had to be a good slick salesperson. I had to know how to speak well or I know how to influence people in a way that they want to do stuff with me or I had to be smarter and more educated.
I study like crazy as a financial advisor trying to learn everything I possibly could to become an expert. What I realized, all the knowledge I was getting wasn’t helping people trust me anymore. It went so much deeper than that. It had to go back to my motives of why I am doing this. Am I in it to help me or is it a way that I’m trying to find that win-win? How do I create value for those people? How am I able to add value to their lives that they want me in it because I’m indispensable? I guess nobody’s totally indispensable, but as close to indispensable as possible that they truly value saying, “My life is so much better having Chris in my life than not.”
The same thing goes for you. It’s funny how you can be invaluable to people in a way that they don’t want to lose you. They want to keep you in their lives because they know that you’re providing great value for them and they’re better off with you than without you. That’s the key. That’s what’s underneath the surface. If you don’t understand this key point that I discussed here, none of these strategies will work for you. You’ll come back and say, “Chris, that didn’t work for me because I tried it and it didn’t work at all.” Did you try it? Did you provide great value? Did you do it long enough? Did you do it in a way that didn’t come off as being scarce? Did you do it from a mindset of abundance? We can go on for hours on that.
Find simple little ways to serve people and give them what they want. And you'll be amazed at what will happen. Click To TweetI’ve already done a few shows regarding scarcity and abundance that help with that situation. Make sure you go to past episodes that I’ve done because there’s some amazing content prior to this. Let’s talk about this because I’ve got about nineteen minutes here to make sure I get you great value. I’ve got about five ideas here that will help you increase your income in your business. This can also work if you’re an employee but this is more catered to those of you that are business owners.
Add Products Or Services
Number one, add products or services. I know this seems simple but making money is simple. People make it to complexes where they don’t make more money. It’s adding services or products. Don’t just add or create products or services for the heck of it and hope that you’ll make money. Don’t do that at all. Find what people truly want and need. Start listening to people. Ask people questions. Start pulling people.
I read a great book, Acres of Diamonds. He talked about being in the mercantile business. He said that the best way to learn how to do this is by owning a general store. He said that as a teenager, he would sit in that store. People would walk in and say, “Do you have a jackknife?” He would say, “No, we don’t sell jackknives.” He would go on his merry way whistling a merry tune. He walks out of the store and therefore, walks out without a jackknife. The second person comes in and says, “Do you have a jackknife?” “No, we don’t have a jackknife. I just told somebody else that.” He goes on whistling a tune and that person walks out.
The third person comes in and says, “Do you have a Jackknife?” “Why do people keep asking me if I have a jackknife? Don’t you understand? We don’t have a jackknife. No, we don’t have it.” They walk out of the store and the store clerk goes on his merry way. The point of that is if you truly understand what is good, after the first person, you might have started waking up saying, “We don’t have a jackknife. Who else wants a Jackknife? Is there anybody else that may want that?” You start to understand that, “There is value here. Maybe there’s something that people want and need. How can I give it to them?”
You hear that phrase all the time and has been repeated so many times that you would swear that people can say it in their sleep. Unfortunately, they don’t do it when they’re awake. That phrase is, “Give people what they want and they’ll give you what you want.” That’s how there’s a win-win. The best and easiest thing to do is to figure out how you can create more value. I started asking the question, what can I do to provide more value? How can I create a win-win here where people want to exchange money? Not everything or every activity I did would exchange money but it would at least get me in the habit of providing value.
If you want a great way to practice to be able to create value and make more money, do it outside of your business too. Don’t just do it inside your business. If you think that your life can be separate, it’s not. Our life is one big whole. Our business life and our personal life are all part of the same thing. Just as our physical health and our spiritual health are closely intertwined, so is everything else with money or our relationships. Everything is connected.
Make sure that you’re going in and trying to create value for other people outside of your business. Even when it pays you nothing, try it anyways. Get in the habit to where it becomes a part of who you are. People ask me so many times to say, “Chris, this is great. How do I stay in abundance?” It’s one thing to know what scarcity and abundance are, but how do I stay there? It’s one thing to know about creating value but how do I do it? Do it when you’re not getting paid all the time. Find simple little ways to serve people and give them what they want. You’ll be amazed at what’s happening. You’ll be amazed too because it will naturally happen in your business as well. If you got nothing else from this interview, that was probably worth it right there.
Ask for services or products that matter or that people truly want, not just creating something out of the blue. Some of you, and I would add this too, may need to remove services and products. You may need to simplify and dumb it down. You might need to remove some things instead and focus on the ones that do help people and get rid of the ones that don’t because it’s taking up time and energy away from your life. The one precious resource you have, even more precious than money, is time and energy. You cannot get that back. Find ways to add services or products that will help enhance people’s lives.
Increase Your Prices
Number two, increase your prices. I know that’s brilliant but it’s such a hard thing to do. In reality, applying this is a hard thing to do because most people will say, “I don’t know if I can increase prices.” I’m not saying increase prices for the sake of increasing prices. Let me add some context behind this so you know how and when it’s a great time to increase prices. One way you know it’s a good time to increase prices is when people are not telling no.
If everybody is telling you yes, it’s probably because no one has the guts to tell you because their self-interest will tell them otherwise. They don’t have the guts to tell you to raise your prices. That’s a big one. I’ve never had anybody I have known tell somebody, “You should increase your prices.” Usually, it’s only my clients that I purchased from as well. I’ll tell them after I purchase it, “By the way, I bought your stuff. It’s worth it. You should increase your prices.”
People will say, “How do we know when it’s too high?” You pretty much know when it’s too high when people stopped saying yes. If nobody says yes or very few people say yes, it’s too high. If the majority of people will say yes but some people will say no, you’re probably at a pretty good place now. Maybe that’s not an option or maybe you raise your prices and some people are saying no and some people are saying yes. The other thing too is to make sure you’re selling the value of what it means to them and what it costs them not to have your product or service in their life. Appealing to people’s self-interest is big. You want to help people know what’s in it for them. Although that’s a selfish way to look at it, it’s a big one there. Look for ways to add value there.
Secondly, when you’re looking at doing this, you can add other ways for value too. How can we add more value? How can we add and increase some things here? Find additional ways. How can we add more value? Adding more value is going to be a big thing here. How can we add more to that? Sometimes it doesn’t always require more time. I would ask that when you add value, don’t try to find ways to increase a lot more time because that is something that’s very precious. It should be the highest charge of all things. If something takes a lot of your time, it should be the highest charge. If it doesn’t then it doesn’t. That comes to my point after this.
The third point is you can decrease prices to make more money. I know this sounds a little counterintuitive to what I was saying, but a decrease in price can do that as well. For example, as I got started, I was focused on how to do some more on doing personal one-on-one consulting. I did a little bit with events but I mostly did consulting. Very few things I had were priced point beneath $100. I started creating products that were lower in price. Things that other people could afford to do but it couldn’t require a ton of my own personal time.
Make sure you're selling the value of what your product or service really means to people and what it costs them not to have it in their life. Click To TweetIt had to be something that was more automated. It’s something that has a system behind it that allows me to not have to be there all the time. I created CDs. On my website, MoneyRipples.com, I have a book Entrepreneur on Fire, in there. We’ve got different types of CDs. One is a one-disc and the other one is a six-disc set. I’ve got all kinds of products. I’ve also got group coaching. I’ve got things where people can get an automated system of calls that are recorded. That’s more of an application of those 66-CD set. I have something like that. I got live events that I do.
It’s all those things to help with that. I even got some free things as you notice on my site. You might notice I’m doing free radio. I’m not charging you for this. All those things that I’m doing are part of that. It’s all part of that big whole. As you start to find ways to do that, it’s amazing. One of my friends decided to stop doing live events at her home. She decided to go more online with it. She even did a little bit with group calls and things like that. What ended up happening is she lowered her prices. She did hers as a monthly type price. It’s similar to what I have with one of my group programs. She does a monthly fee. What was amazing is she tripled her revenue.
Even though she would charge for her personal time, she would charge pretty well. She didn’t charge a lot but she charged an okay amount. When all of a sudden, she went to a lower fee and she started to create systems to where it didn’t require a lot more of her time, she tripled her income without necessarily having to increase their time a whole lot. That is powerful.
Sometimes decreasing prices is good. Do not decrease prices because you feel you’re not worth it. Most people usually charge prices based on what they feel they’re worth, not so much based on the value of what other people think you’re worth or what they think your products or services are worth. The key thing is it doesn’t matter what you think is valuable. It’s what others think is valuable. You go based on their value, not your own. That applies if maybe you value yourself too much. That also applies to most people who are not that way where most people don’t value themselves enough.
Especially if you’re like me. Unlike a lot of other people I’ve known, a lot of people will charge less because they know that they’ll do it regardless of the money. I know that’s the same thing with me. Here’s the thing. I do care if I get paid money if it’s going to take the time away from my family or from other things that I could be doing. I charge for that but it’s not something that you feel like you have to necessarily be stuck there. You don’t have to always be stuck doing that. You want to make sure that you get paid well for doing something that other people love you doing and that you love too.
Affiliate With Others
The fourth thing, affiliate with others. This is an interesting one that many people forget about. Most people work in their business with blinders on. They put their heads down and they get to work. They just work and they feel like they’re all alone like they are all in it for themselves. If you would take those blinders off and look to your left and your right and all around you, you’ll see there are tons of other people that have great value to offer as well, people that could enhance your life and other people’s lives that you know.
If there’s somebody that you know provides something that’s valuable, share it. Tell people about it. I did a post for my friend JC Hewlett, who was a professional entertainer and comedian. One of the funniest guys I’ve ever known. He’s incredible. I know some of you might know him. If you don’t know who JC Hewlett is, check out his site, JCHewlett.com. Incredible stuff. I just got his DVD and we’ve watched it twice already. My kids love it. I even got my wife and my in-laws. They watched it and they loved it. Where else can you find entertainment that everybody loves? Their faces start hurting from laughing so much and smiling so much.
That’s the power that he has. I told him, “I love to share that. Yes, I’ll give you a testimonial.” Now I don’t get compensated for that. There’s no money that I get increased from that. The thing is I would do it regardless of the money. That’s the attitude you should have. The cool thing is that there are people out there in their businesses that are saying, “Can you send me a referral? I would love to pay your money.”
Here’s another thing too. They probably do it better than what you would try to do on your own. Don’t try to do everything yourself. That’s insane. Don’t try to do that. I had a friend who had an a-ha because she was talking with another friend and me. She realized, “That person pays affiliates.” I said, “Yes.” Even though she had all the abilities to do the same thing. She didn’t always have necessarily the same passion that person had. I told her, “That’s what I do. I referred onto her and I get compensated every single month for people that do her program.”
It’s not a huge amount of money but it’s great because I get to use my relationships that make a huge win-win-win transaction. It’s a win for the person I send the referral to because they get more business. It’s a win for the person that I referred because they get something that’s greater value and probably a better value than I can give them myself in that particular arena. Three, I get a win out of it too. How awesome would this world be if we focused on trying to get a win-win-win type of transaction where everybody wins?
Focus
When you’re trying to find a way to affiliate with others and try to offer value that way, it’s so cool to see what can happen. Find ways to do that. That’s probably almost an entire show by itself. The last thing I’ll add here is focus. You can create multiple streams of income but I would add that you need to focus. Find ways to focus on doing more with less. There was one time I got excited about all the businesses I could possibly create. I was in a very creative mode. I started five businesses all around the same time. Some of them were already running. Others were brand new businesses.
To give you an example, I had a business that I was doing where I was doing coaching. It’s very similar to what I do now. I also was selling life insurance. On top of that, I was also doing events. I also joined a network marketing company because I wanted to do some things with them. The fifth thing is I did a dinner and dance company where I catered dinner and teach dance instruction like ballroom dancing or social dancing. I did all of those things at the same time.
It doesn't matter what you think is valuable. It's what others think is valuable. Click To TweetWhat happened is I watched my income decrease. Even though I had different streams of income all coming in, my income decreased. When I said, “I’m going to cut out the dinner and dance. As much as I love it, I’m going to cut it out,” plus it was a little bit of a pain to organize. I cut that one out. I cut the network marketing company that I was a part of. I eventually even cut out the life insurance piece too. I focused primarily on coaching and live events. What was amazing is that my income increased. It went up because of that.
That was the power. Focus is much more powerful than diversification. If you’re going to have multiple streams of income, make sure that they’re all aligned with what you’re already doing because they don’t require a ton more time and focus. Do things that are much easier to do and much more natural to add to what you’re doing. Focus is key.
Q&A
You’ll be much more effective in putting out a fire with a fire hose than with the garden sprinkler. It could be the same amount of water. It could be pumping out but you’re going to put out fires better when you’re focused. Now I’m going to bring a caller on the line here and be able to have questions We got about three minutes left. Go ahead and ask your question.
Chris, this is Kevin. How are you?
Hey, Kevin. It’s good to hear you.
Quick question on value. If you are an entrepreneur and you constantly have people pulling on your time and asking for value from you but they don’t want to pay you. How do you distinguish which ones to take and which ones to leave alone?
Give me a more specific example.
A specific example for me may be being on a board of directors of a nonprofit or something like that. I do grant writing also and they want me to write grants for the organization but they don’t want to compensate me for it. It’s something like that. How do you distinguish what? You were talking about adding value and sometimes they wouldn’t pay for it. How do you turn that into a win-win?
When I was thinking about that, I’m thinking of service and other aspects to it and that could be part of it. For example, I love to shovel people’s driveways. I could probably charge people $5 every time we shovel snow in people’s driveways or something like that, but I do it purely out of service because it makes me feel good. It gives me extra power in my own business and my life. It’s not a big commitment. I can turn it on and off however I want, plus it doesn’t snow every day, which is nice.
It’s things like that or I might serve in my church. I serve several hours a week in my church but I don’t accept any payment for it. I figured that’s just part of what I wanted to do. That’s what I want to offer and tie my time. In a situation like that, if it’s too labor intensive and it’s something that maybe in the priority scale is hard for you to do, you might cut out completely being on a board of directors if you can. I’m presuming you’re not the president.
You may even bring up a win-win if that’s the case. I don’t know your situation in-depth, but if there’s too little and you’re going overboard, I would probably say, “To hire somebody to do this would be X amount of dollars. I would be willing to do it for this. I can save you money. It’s a win for you but it would be a win for me at least to be able to focus on my time because I’ve got to cut out a few activities here and it might be this one based on my priorities.”
I appreciate it.
You bet. Thanks for the question. I think we’ll be coming back to this topic again here in the future. There’s so much we could do in this sphere. Many people will tell you that it’s not what you make, it’s what you keep. I would also add on top of that. It’s not what you make but it is what you keep, and then make on top of it that makes all the difference. It’s not just about keeping more money. It’s about making more money too.
Find ways to increase your income and it’s so much fun when you can increase your income in various ways. Remember, focus on the dollars follow the value that you offer. You make sure you do this morally and ethically, and add services or products if it makes sense. Increase your prices or decrease your prices. Find ways to affiliate with others and be able to create value for them in a way that can create a huge win-win or even a win-win-win transaction. Most importantly is focus. Focus on getting the biggest amount of time and effort to be able to create more.
This is an amazing way to do it. Remember, you can only cut expenses so far. You can only be so cheap but income is limitless. This is Chris Miles here. I appreciate you being on. Check out our website, MoneyRipples.com. We’ll be back and get some other great stuff. I appreciate your time and have a very prosperous day and week.