What do you want in life?
What do you want to get? What do you want to have?
How rich do you want to become?
Have you ever thought about — really focused on — how you can get all those things your heart desires? How you can get all the stuff you want?
STOP.
No, there’s nothing wrong with getting. With having things. With accumulating wealth.
With buying toys, and paying for adventures.
There’s nothing wrong with any of that.
In fact, it’s my goal to accumulate wealth as fast as I possibly can (in ways I feel good about), and use at least part of it to live a comfortable and interesting life.
But the secret — if there is one — is NOT in focusing on what you want to take from life, but what you can give.
In the long run, what you’ll find is…
The world gives to the givers, and takes from the takers.
Which means that if you’re focused on what you can take out of the world, you’ll always find the world taking it back.
On the other hand, if you’re focused on what you can give, you’ll find the world is eager to give back to you.
Zig Ziglar famously said, “You can have everything you want in life, if you just help enough other people get what they want.”
You create value. You put it out into the world.
You focus on your contribution first, and your compensation will follow.
It’s easy to point your finger at someone rich and say they took from the world…
John D. Rockefeller — the world’s first billionaire — was eventually demonized as a “robber baron.” Monopoly laws in the U.S. were created specifically to break up the massive business empire he created.
And competitors in the oil industry hated him, because he took over 90% of the industry, and put many of them out of business.
And yet, he did all of this in fulfillment of one great goal: to provide the best, at the lowest price.
Because of these demonized business practices, the price of oil dropped from $0.58 to $0.08 per gallon.
That’s right: every gallon of oil was over 82% cheaper for everyday folks like you and me because of Rockefeller’s focus on his one defining goal.
This was HUGE for the world. It made the use of fuel economical for many applications.
Not just industry.
Prior to Rockefeller, whale oil was the preferred fuel for lamps. When Kerosene became affordable, whale hunting dropped dramatically while more people could light their homes and businesses.
Rockefeller’s cheap oil also made internal combustion engines possible and economical. He’s part of why we can travel the world so easily today.
Plus oil-related products helped replace coal-fired power, starting around that time.
There were so many add-on benefits to Rockefeller’s obsession with delivering the value of cheap oil. It touched every aspect of our lives — and continues to do so today.
You have to wonder if the people who were lining up to complain about his success were going to volunteer to pay more than 7-times as much for all their oil products.
And as if he didn’t already give enough value to the world, through his business, Rockefeller gave away more than $550,000,000.
It all came by first focusing on the value he could offer the marketplace…
Jeff Bezos, of Amazon, is turning into a modern-day Rockefeller.
And he gets demonized often for Amazon’s business practices.
Honestly, I don’t love all of them, either.
But he’s creating a TREMENDOUS value for you and me.
Never before in the history of the world have you had such easy access to so many products, readily-available to you at incredibly affordable prices.
Now, I don’t just buy things because they’re cheap.
But I do truly appreciate a bargain, and making sure my dollars go far.
And there are so many times where I could criss-cross town looking for just the right item. And if I found it — that’s a big if — it would still be 50% or more higher-priced than what I could get it for on Amazon.
Not only that, on Amazon I have a ton of comparable products to choose from.
AND I have customer reviews, so I can get a good sense of whether the product will perform to expectations.
I could go on. And retail is one of many businesses at this point.
This didn’t happen by accident. And it didn’t happen by Bezos trying to take all he could take. It happened because of his relentless desire to deliver products faster and at a better price, with more convenience and more trust than all the other options available to consumers.
These are two huge examples, of many…
It may not be obvious today how some rich people got that way by delivering value.
But in a voluntary economy — aka capitalism — it’s pretty much always the case that the people who get rich and stay that way do so by putting out an offer that is valuable to a certain group of people, their market.
They find a way to create value.
They solve problems.
They fulfill desires.
They turn things that are less valuable into things that are more valuable. Or they turn things that are more expensive into things that are less expensive (in other words, making their customers’ money in their pockets more valuable).
They create value first.
They work hard to share that value with the world.
And in the end, they get the value of compensation in return.
What value will you create today?
How much can you GIVE to the world?
What will be your contribution?
Run towards that — and you will find your breakthroughs.
Yours for bigger breakthroughs,
Roy Furr
PS: This also applies to marketing — and is a principle I follow. Check out The Value-First Funnel Strategy to learn more.
