So Much Passion, So Much Purpose….So What!

Have you ever heard, “Do what you love, and the money will follow?”

What a lie!

In this episode, I’m going to teach why there are so many broke yet passionate people out there and how you can actually make money living your passions.

Be sure to listen in!

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Listen to the podcast here

So Much Passion, So Much Purpose….So What!

I’m going to show you how to free up more cashflow, have greater freedom and prosperity, and be able to invest more money in your business right now, and be able to make more cashflow. You’re not waiting 20, 30 or 40 years for those results to show up. It’s all about the cashflow. It’s all about the money. At the same time, it’s also about the wealth and prosperity in your life and the true quality of life. How we can better live off, not just rice and beans, but be able to enjoy life and the fullness and the richness of it. It’s all about creating value and real wealth now and not waiting 30 or 40 years from now for that to happen.

I’m excited. This is going to be a fun show. First off, it’s probably one of the last shows, at least for a while where you’ll see me as being solo. Starting next episode, we’re going to have guests like Kevin Clayson, Dino Watt, Amy Walker and Tiffany Peterson, Leslie Householder is coming up in a while too. Be sure to keep tuning in each episode because we’re going to be giving you some great stuff here.

Be sure to go visit our website, www.MoneyRipples.com. Check out any blogs and podcasts that we put on, as well as the different events that we put on. I love to have you join us, whether it’s a webinar, a live event, whatever it might be. It’s fun to be with you guys. I love to meet you one-on-one, face-to-face, or at least virtually. That’s going to be something I want you to check out. Be sure you visit and get some great value from as well to keep that value and that growth going.

Do What You Love That Others Love You Doing

I want to talk about a very fun topic. It might be a little bit in-your-face for some people. It might be a little bit sensitive. For others, you might say, “Amen.” I’m cool with that too. The topic of this show is, “So much passion, so much purpose, so what?” There’s a very popular phrase that’s being said all over the place, especially if you’ve been in the self-help world, you’ve gone to events and other motivational type of events and things like that.

They’ll say, “Do what you love and the money will follow.” Have you ever heard that before? That’s a bunch of bull. If that were so true, doing what you love and that’s all you had to do to be able to make a lot of money, why are there many broke, passionate people out there? I know lots of passionate people out there that love what they do, and they think it’s saving the world, but they’re not making a dime from it. They’re making very little money doing it. No one cares how passionate you are, but they do care how it helps them.

Don’t get me wrong. Passion is very important. You will even ask people like Steve Jobs when he was alive, he would say things like, “Passion is vital in business because it will never last those up and down times.” I would like to rephrase that statement a different way because I don’t believe that doing what you love and money will follow would be right. If that were the case, I know a lot of people out there who love to sit on a beach and drink piña coladas or whatever, and somehow still make money. That’s not the case.

No one cares how passionate you are, but they do care how it helps them. Click To Tweet

You don’t ever get paid for sitting on a beach or watching TV or playing video games like some people would say. You don’t get paid for that stuff or hanging out with your family. You don’t get paid money for doing things that you love. If I were to change the phrase to be more accurate, I would say, “Do what you love that others love you doing, and the money can follow.” That is the key.

What do I mean by this? People don’t care about you being passionate about something. They care about how it helps and serves them. If you remember a common concept that I teach time and time again, is that dollars follow value that you create for other people. You cannot expect to get paid if people don’t feel like it’s creating any value or they don’t feel like it’s solving a problem for them, or it’s something worthwhile to them. They have to value it in order to exchange money with you. You might think it’s the best thing in the world, but if someone values it very little or very few people value it, then it’s going to be difficult to be able to make a lot of money.

Do not confuse this with you have to become a generalist or you have to become somebody who appeases to all markets or all people. That’s not what I’m saying either. What I am saying is it’s got to be something that’s valuable to someone and valuable in a certain way. I’ll give you an example. Somebody might say, “Mine is valuable to the general public.” That’s great. I would imagine this is probably not true because not everybody wants what you have. Who does want what you have?

You have to become very clear about who is it serving, or is it serving anyone? If something that you do doesn’t produce the results people want, they may not want it. Let me give you an example. Back in 2007, 2008, this was when I came out of retirement and decided to do the same line of work. My whole focus at time was about getting out of the rat race. It was all about how to set up streams of income so you can retire and not have to work. You only work because you love it or want to, not because you have to. That was my whole focus was all about getting out of the rat race.

I noticed something was wrong because I’m thinking, “There are ways to do it.” I was trying to find a one-size-fits-all for people. It wasn’t working, which made it more difficult to coach. Eventually, we realized that as times got rough and we went to that recession, people stopped worrying about that. They said, “Honestly, I love to get out of the rat race, but now I want to survive. I want to be able to make ends meet.

Essentially, that’s where I learned from my own experience because I was in the whole $16,000 a month at one point during that period of time. I thought, “I’ve got to find a way to get out of this.” By getting creative myself, I was able to do so. A lot of those cashflow tips that you get from the eBook that you get from our website or things you may have heard on these shows here, those are the kinds of things that I did among many others.

As I did that, I started to realize, “This is great for me.” What was interesting is for me personally, when people started to say, “Chris, I would love to work with you, but I can’t find the money to do it.” My perspective was, “Are you kidding me? You’re in a better financial position than I was in.” Some people were even better position that I was in at that moment. I said, “I’ll find the money, trust me. I can find it.” That’s what I started doing. That’s how the cashflow process started to develop and grow.

By 2009, it was a normal part of the program that we were using at that time. That’s the beauty of that. I got paid way more money when I gave something of value to more people and something that worked too. It was something I was passionate about, which obviously I was because of something that was deep down in my heart. I felt that experience for me, that trial that I had to go through was a gift that I could share with others that was able to bless their lives.

I know many of you reading to this feel the same way about what you do as well. You have to understand that it’s not about being passionate about it. That is a good first step, and that’s what you should be with anything you do to earn money. It also has to serve people in a way where they want to exchange dollars. Remember the original path that I was training people on wasn’t exactly what people wanted. It wasn’t like that next step. Some people wanted this, but in reality, it attracted the wrong people. It attracted people that wanted to be lazy, that didn’t want to go out and create value.

As a result, they didn’t get any value back in return. It violated the very principle it was based upon, especially when you consider principles like the Law of the Harvest, where you reap what you sow. I had to make sure things were in line with principle. It worked out well where cashflow became not only a thing that was a great value, but it’s something so unique that people haven’t been doing and still don’t do. Even people that claim to be financial people still understand how to do those things, how to find money now. Maybe they try to help you make more money, but not how to keep it and make more of it on top of that.

Ask What People Want

It’s a very unique thing. It has been a great niche for me as well. That’s the thing you have to look for in yourself is what niche do you offer? What value do you have that you can give to other people that they value? Think from their perspective. Sometimes I’ll hear artists say, “I do this artwork for myself. This is the way I express myself.” That’s great, express yourself. Do what you’re passionate about, but ask people what they want.

If you are an artist, ask them, “What do you want? What are some things that you would like to see? What touches you?” On the same note, it might be heartfelt for you, but it may not be what you need, or it may not be what people want. Growing up in the art world, my mother is an artist. She would see this firsthand. It was amazing. She made this amazing masterpiece, beautiful art, and she still does amazing artwork.

Do what you love that others love you doing, and then the money can follow. Click To Tweet

You’ll see that artwork come out. She’ll work for weeks on this masterpiece and come out with it. She’ll get somebody interested in it. What will always be ironic is she’d almost be frustrated a little bit and say, “I painted this quick little painting for a three-hour class.” It’s a tutorial class that she would teach other students to do. She would do that painting and they go and try to sell it. It sold immediately. She spent very little time or effort on that painting, but that would be the one that’s sold the most. It wasn’t about her trying to always put additional value. In fact, the ones that she put a lot of time and effort into, sometimes they paid off, but other times they didn’t.

A lot of times, she knows that the simplest of paintings were the ones that attracted the most attention and she would make the most money on. That’s a great lesson for all of us. If you think about where you have to always be asking people, “What do they want? How can I solve their problems?” Listen to their problems. You can’t do this without listening to what’s going on with people. Find out what’s going on.

In fact, this is why I’m doing a webinar here pretty quick called Ask Chris. It’s about time to produce the topics from commonly asked questions or should be asked questions. I started thinking, “It would be interesting to see what questions people have for me.” I’m doing a webinar called Ask Chris because I want to know. You never know what kind of topics people keep asking, and never maybe get an answer to that you could provide that answer, or maybe can provide that service or that value that nobody else can, or nobody else is addressing now.

That’s how Apple got to be so popular is they were good at addressing what people wanted. They said, “This is ridiculous. Do you see how this works? Why is this so complicated? Why don’t we make it simpler? Why don’t we make it better?” As a result, Apple has exploded because of that innovation. The same thing applies to you as well. Do what you love that others love you doing, and the money can follow.

Do Something You Love Regardless Of Money

I’ll give you an example here. I had a client who’s passionate about model trains. If you think about the passion behind this and the mission, the father and mother and the kids, you can almost imagine around the Christmas tree where instead of playing that Nintendo or the PlayStation or something like that, instead they’re playing with these model trains like they used to in the old days. It’s bringing back that tradition of bringing families together, that real beautiful passion. I loved it.

The only problem is, is that what people want? Think about it. Even in your own life, would you want that model train and watch it go around in circles or through a tunnel or two? Are you going to say, “I’m going to play with my kids and play on the Wii. I’m going to do Dance Revolution or whatever it might be.” Which one are you going to likely do? You’re going to say, “I’m probably going to end up playing the video games.” We had to address that.

At one point, he’s almost going to open up a store for it. He was about to put a lot of money into it and had a couple of partners that they were letting him put all the money into it. Luckily, as we discussed it, and he went through some of the tools they gave him, he realized, “That’s going to be $30,000 down the drain. Why don’t I keep this as a passion?” He still does. Even to this day, he still go to conferences and conventions and whatnot, but he goes and does other things for people that does create value. For example, he develops websites and things like that, which is a huge value, especially for those of us that are business owners. We know how valuable that is. He’s doing that now, but he still has that passion.

I had another client, same thing. He wanted to make money from his passion. His passion was to help young men like teenagers, those that are in high school age, for example. He wanted to help them become men and teach them good lessons. For him, his best expression was through baseball. In fact, even though he didn’t coach the high school baseball team, he did coach the summer league that they would all play on. What was amazing is that they would go further with him than they did with their own high school baseball team. They ended up winning state and things like that or their region, and having a lot of fun and enjoying it.

I remember we had several discussions of, “How do we go and monetize this?” He was like, “I guess I can coach baseball. Maybe I could provide lessons or whatever, but obviously I want to coach boys and the team atmosphere. Coaching baseball is probably your best bet.” I was like, “Unless you’re coaching a big team, you’re not going to make much money off it. You’re not going to make a living off of that.” Eventually, after a few months of this back and forth, we came to realization. I said, “Let me ask you this question. We know that you love this. Are you in a better mood during baseball season than when it’s off season?” He said, “Yeah, I think so.” I asked his wife, “Is that true?” She said, “Yes. He’s amazing how he shows up. He’s a better husband and father, better at work. He’s loving life during baseball season.”

I said, “Let’s play with this. In this case for you, let’s keep coaching baseball on the side. Let’s make this a hobby. You should be grateful that your job allows you to do this,” because his job did allow for flexible hours. “You can travel with the team and take time off work.” How many jobs do people have where they can very easily take time off for the baseball season, especially when he’s winning and traveling everywhere?

I said, “This job is a blessing for you. This is a dream come true. This job allows you to do what you love. Why not keep focusing on this career and this job that you have, and get better there? At the same time also, let’s keep this hobby going. Let’s keep baseball going in your life. Even if you don’t get paid a dime, it makes your life richer to where it’s worthwhile it. Does it not?” He’s like, “Yeah, that’s true.” I said, “Let’s do that.”

Amazingly though, a few years ago, I followed up and found out that he started coaching the high school baseball team. They ended up bringing them on eventually. He’s getting paid for that as well. He’s also still working a job, but now he’s at least getting paid to coach, doing something he would love regardless of the money. I think everybody should do something that they love regardless of the money. It doesn’t mean that you don’t charge money. Even when I was retired, I realized that when I started charging people money, they value it more. It gave me a better reason why I wasn’t spending that time with my family. There’s got to be a cost to that.

Dollars follow the value that you create for other people. Click To Tweet

Obviously, I love what I do and I would do the stuff for free. I do these radio shows for free. I don’t get paid a dime to do these radio shows, but I do it because I know it’s a labor of love and I love doing it. It excites my day. It makes my day better. I show up better. I love life more because I’m adding value and serving each of you in a way that I know very few can. That’s the thing that’s so amazing about what we do. Remember, do what you love that others love you doing.

How do they value it? It could be very few people. My client could have easily gone in that model train business. I told him, “For this to work, you might have to become either a national or international name in this field in order to make a lot of money, because the people are very spread out. You have to have a great online presence where you attract all the hobbyists, the people like that. It would take a lot of effort to find those people and become that person because it is such a small group, but you could do it.” Each of you could do that too. If it’s such a small narrow niche that very few people have, you could be the expert in that field where people all over the country or all over the world come to you. You can make a lot of money being that person.

You don’t have to be a celebrity on TV to make a lot of money. There are some very successful people that I know that no one knows other than the people that are specific for that field or that niche. They’ll know him for sure, but very few people outside of that will ever know or hear that person’s name, if at all, during their lifetime. You don’t have to be on TV or world famous, but you do have to be great at your specialty or your niche. Do what you love that others love you doing.

Have The Skills And Ability To Keep Your Business Going

I have that third part of this too. Do what you love that others love you doing, then money can follow. I say ‘can’ because I see people that are 1) Very passionate about what they do. 2) People love what they do, but 3) They don’t have the business skills to be able to be successful in business. Maybe they don’t have the business or the finance skills to make that happen. This is why a lot of people come to me who say, “I do great work. I’m awesome in my field,” whether they are in a coaching type of industry or a speaker or trainer, or whether they’re in network marketing or whatever entrepreneur or small business that they have.

They’ll say, “I do great work. I make decent money, but honestly, I can’t even keep it. I don’t know how to manage it. I’ve got this stuff going on growing like crazy, but I don’t know how to keep my business going because honestly, it’s growing faster than I am. I can’t handle the growth.” That’s a big warning sign because a lot of good people have gone out of business, even though they create a great value. If you can’t stay in business providing and serving people in such a beautiful way, but you can’t keep your business going. People are losing out because they don’t have you in their lives.

Our whole goal is to make sure that people’s lives are more valuable having us in them than not at all. My whole goal at least is to make sure that people’s lives, each of your lives, are better because I’m in it. I’m not taking value. I’m adding value to your lives and making your life better, each of my client’s lives better. Everybody that I talk to want that to be better. I believe that’s the true creator, that steward mentality of always trying to make things greater and better than how you first came to see it. It’s always about improving upon the world that you enter into.

One thing I heard, and I’ve never found the actual quote but I love it, it’s where Steve Jobs would say his whole goal was to leave a footprint on this planet. I truly believe that we’re here to do that. I truly believe that each of us are here to have that calling, that ability to truly leave that mark on this planet to bless people’s lives. That’s the best way to live because their lives are blessed for it, our lives are blessed for it, and it’s the perfect way to live life in my opinion.

I want you to be passionate about what you do. I want you to love what you do, but you have to understand that the first, it’s got to be something that’s valuable to other people. Second, it’s got to be something with the right skillsets, the right business and financial that you could keep your business going, and let it grow and expand your stewardship to be able to serve more people. What I want you to do is find those ways to do that one great way to find out what people value. Ask people. Ask them plain and simple, “What is that you want? What are some problems you are facing right now regarding blank?”

If you’re in health and wellness, “What are some concerns you have about your health? What are some things that you hear out there that drive you nuts? Are there pet peeves?” This might be something you ask yourself, “What are pet peeves or things that are taught by everybody that’s driving you nuts?” For example, I’m bringing up a pet peeve right now about do what you love and money will follow. That’s a pet peeve because I know it’s not fully true.

Other pet peeves I have too is when people tell you to save for the long haul. How long is the long haul? Will you make it to the long haul? What about now? What about people that tell you to live off rice and beans, but they never show you how to truly prosper and love life? Even when you do have the money, you’re never truly allowed to enjoy it because you’ve developed habits of scarcity.

How do we keep scarcity out of money? Telling you to diversify when you should be focusing more on your own business. Telling you to invest in things that are outside of your business, which is ridiculous. I’m not saying you don’t use financial things outside of your business, but when they say that your whole goal to financial freedom, your hope to financial freedom is to use their products, it’s a bunch of bull. It’s not true. It’s a lie.

We know that investing in yourself and your education and in your business to be able to grow and expand and serve more people is the truest and safest way to create wealth. That is the real way to create wealth, not from investing in financial products that you hope and pray make a 5% to 7% rate of return. That’s not the way to create wealth and real value in the world. If anything, they’re teaching how to take value out of the world by stripping your resources, taking your money away from you, and out of your control into their control. You don’t have the ability to use that to bless more lives.

Everybody should really do something that they love regardless of the money. Click To Tweet

Start Speaking Your Client’s Language

Those are the kinds of things. When you have passion and you have talents and skills and abilities, how do you use those things in a way to serve people? Ask your own clients of what is the greatest value they’ve got. I used to ignore when people would tell me that, “Chris, we love freeing up so much cash. We love to save $3,000 or $4,000 a month. In our cashflow, that was great. Honestly, Chris, the fact that my spouse and I are able to get together on the same page and we’re able to not fight about money but talk about it in a very abundant way, in a way that’s enjoyable to where money is a positive conversation, not a negative one, that saved our marriage. That has been valuable to us.”

I used to ignore that value and say, “Cool. Can you come back to that $3,000 or 4,000 a month? That’s awesome.” One of them even told me, “That is great but still, Chris, for us, our marriage is invaluable. That is important to us.” Why don’t I stop looking at the numbers to show people I can get real results, but also the real results that show up more than the money. It’s about how you live your life and the quality of life that happens. Having more peace as a couple where you’re not fighting about money as much, if at all. It makes it a much more positive conversation.

I love to hear a couple that say, “I love the fact that for the first time in 30 years of marriage, we can finally talk about money where we used to ignore it. In fact, we wouldn’t talk to each other that much for that matter.” That stuff is rewarding for me to hear. Look for those things for you as well. What are the things that your own clients or customers are saying about your stuff? Start speaking their language instead of what you think is valuable. Ask them what they think is valuable. Ask others what they think is valuable. What is it that others want? What are some problems that aren’t being solved? Now, there are more problems in the world than ever.

This should mean that there’s more opportunity for you than ever to create great wealth in your life and create great value for them. In fact, the only way you create wealth is because you create value for them. You cannot make money unless people think that whatever you offer is greater of value to them than the money they have. That’s it. That’s a simple answer, but it’s also the more complex answer is that it comes right down to that value.

What is that value that people see as valuable, not you, and make sure you have the right skillsets to be able to increase your stewardship in your business. You make sure your business keeps growing. You have to hire people. How do you make sure that keeps going? There are great people I’m going to have on this show as guests that will give you some of those tips as well to help with those skillsets too. I am not the end-all be-all person for all these topics. There are a lot of things that many of you in business especially need to know, things like sales and how you overcome that.

Next episode, we’re talking about gratitude, and how important gratitude is in the success of your business, even with your money. That’s a big one that I’ve never addressed on a show, but at least not for maybe many years, but definitely you want to make sure we address it too. There are all these kinds of topics, things from being able to create, grow, and expand your stewardship, all kinds of amazing topics that we have coming up here in the next several episodes.

Those are the kinds of things that you need to be doing yourself is how we find ways to add more value people’s lives, solve problems for them, give them answers, give them solutions to their problems. People will pay you all day long for that. Make sure you market it well and make sure that people can know where to find that resource.

Remember, you can’t be amazingly good at what you do and very passionate. You also have to make sure that people know about you too. They have to be able to understand what you do and how you serve them. Marketing is another skill that you need to have. As I said at the very beginning, do what you love that others love you doing, and the money can follow. No more do what you love and the money will follow. Erase that from your mind, it’s not true. It’s do what you love that others love you doing, and the money can follow.

I appreciate the time to be on the show with you guys. Next episode, my guest is going to be Kevin Clayson. He considers himself the Chief Officer of Awesomeness, a very inspirational guy. He’s my brother from another mother. We’re going to talk about gratitude because I’ll tell you, gratitude is so essential for wealth. Even if you have a lot of money, you’ll never be wealthy without this. We’re going to talk about some good tools and ways to protect that especially when times are rough. You’re never truly an abundant person unless you choose abundance in the face of scarcity. Make sure you join us next episode. Live prosperously today so you can also live prosperously in the future. We’ll see you.