When was the last time you saw your income grow?
My income didn’t grow for years. I even believed I’d reached my earning peak and that was that.
I believed this until we found ourselves in a lot of debt.
Then I realised three important things:
- You can get far by making your money go further;
- You can get far by making more money; and
- You can get so much further by making more money and making your money go further.
In fact, by doing this you can go all the way to building serious wealth, and fast.
I believe that anyone can make a living and make their income grow.
We did it and by the end of our debt-paying journey, our income was about 25% higher than when we started. I’m still watching my income grow!
And university professors are not supposed to hustle like street traders.
You can increase your income as well: you just need to follow some – or all – of these seven steps and watch your income grow.
(You can check out the steps to debt freedom.)
Step One: Get Yourself Good Education
Some will say that ‘ignorance is bliss’. I say BS!
Ignorance is an affliction and education is the cure.
And I’m saying ‘education’ not a ‘degree’. My students’ main concern is what marks they will get; they care about their degrees not their education.
And they are making a big mistake Huge!
How you do in life (and labour markets) depends on your education not your degree. Even more importantly, it depends on how ready you are to learn and how you use different opportunities to do it.
What will get you beyond minimum wage jobs (if you’d like to break away from it, of course) is getting educated; learning new skills and competencies.
Step Two: Stop Selling Time, Sell Reputation
Okay, you can work harder or you can work smarter: it’s your choice.
Working hard is about selling time and time is a limited resource.
Working smart is about selling reputation and reputation knows no limits.
These are the main differences between ‘selling time’ and ‘selling reputation’.
| Selling time | Selling reputation |
| Being technically good
(A good seamstress can make you a black cocktail dress.) |
Being an artist
(Coco Chanel created THE little black dress.) |
| You are in the realm of the replaceable
(Your competencies and skill are easy to replicate and there are many who can take you place/job. Copy writers, for instance, even good ones are easy to replace.) |
You are in the realm of the unique
(You have gone beyond the reproducible and your competencies are unique; there is no replacement. No one can replace Kurt Vonnegut.)
|
| Replication
(You are likely to be replicate things and your ‘products’ are for the mass market.) |
Creation
(You create something new and unique; you are not part of a trend, you are creating trends.) |
| Being found
(It is likely that people find you when searching for the product or service you offer; in other words, you rely on ‘passing trade’.) |
Being sought
(People look for what you offer.) |
One can switch from ‘selling time’ to ‘selling reputation’ in any occupation.
You just have to decide to become ‘the best’; or at least to get to the top ten percent in your fireld.
Step Three: Learn to Negotiate
This is a bit more technical point but a very important one. Whether you sell time or reputation, whether you have a job or are building your own business you have to learn how to ask for what you want and get the maximum you can.
There are not fast and cut rules about learning to negotiate (there is some guidance around the Web but situations are very different). I believe, negotiating is a craft and as any craft is learned through trial and practice.
Step Four: Learn to Write
Whenever I mention this people have this vision of me asking them to become the next Jane Austin or James Joyce.
All I’m saying is that the advent of the network economy means many businesses move on the Internet and business success is becoming traffic dependent. What gets traffic is epic writing.
So, learn to write. Write anything, practice with persistence and focus. I won’t expect you to win a Nobel for Literature but this will certainly help you grow your income.
Step Five: Learn to Blog
Are you asking yourself what’s the difference?
After all, writing, building a website and blogging are often used interchangeably these days.
These may well be, but they are very different and blogging is the broader competence. Blogging is the cross-road between writing, technical understanding of websites and the ability to interact and build healthy communities.
Blogging is not a business; it is however the shop window of many businesses. Including unexpected ones. Did I mention that learning to blog helped me increase my reach and influence not simple as an academic researcher but also as a public intellectual?
So here you go!
Step Six: Learn to Spot Opportunities
Tim Ferris calls this ‘finding a MUSE’.
I believe that creating opportunities starts with a problem.
Many a time it is a problem you have or something that’s bugging you.
If many people share this problem and you offer a solution you’ve created an awesome passive income business opportunity. And this is going to help you grow your income.
Step Seven: Focus on Value not Money
What I’ve found through experience is that when I focus on making money things don’t go well.
When I focus on value, on making someone’s life better/easier/fuller, money may be a by-product but it comes easy.
Try it; focus on value and see the money flow.
Finally…
Do you want to know which ones worked for me?
Two, four and five! I’m working on mastering six.
photo credit: Nesster via photopin cc
Which one of steps have you tried? Have y
Yes, you’re very correct. Even economics textbooks teach it as such where changes to your REAL income are the changes you see in your paycheck corrected for inflation. So few of us see that preventing inflation can be as easy as keeping our expenses low 🙂
@Mario: Keeping expenses low is not a bad idea. Even better is to create the conditions for your income to grow. I have learned not to waste and I’ve learned to control my wants: this is how I save. Frugality is not for me. I put a lot of thought and energy in how to increase my/our income.
I love how you always use the phrase “sell your reputation” – so empowering/motivating!
@J. Money: Glad you love it and find it empowering. There is logic behind this particular madness: when you sell labour you de facto sell time. Becoming one of the best around in something is about reputation and once you have it you sell quality (and you can name your price). Thing is that becoming the best has a taste of becoming an expert and I think that the time of experts has ended – and the time of mavericks is coming.
I have been able to save so much because of the ability to negotiate. It ranges from 30-50% savings on big and small dollar items
@Krant: You’ll have to teach me how to do this one because I am not very good at it. Having said that, I did watch my Omani PhD student negotiating at the suk – now this was something to see. Probably should ask her to write a manual :).
#4 (learn to write) is hugely important. I’m a software engineer by training, but my income is predicated on my ability to _communicate_ the technical bits verbally and in writing.
Great list!
@Jean: Yep, it is very important. Problem is so many people are really scared of writing and really suck at it. Did I tell you that I have a site called Rotund Writer (have not done much on it for a very long time now but may bring it back to life).
These are really great tips! I never thought of selling your reputation, but that makes sense. I am in debt and I have been the most creative at growing my income now. I’m always devising new ways of making an extra buck!
@Melanie: Melanie, glad you mentioned this: this make me feel less as a freak. I always say that being in so much debt is a very good thing that happened to me. If we didn’t have that, I would have continued to live a very ‘expert’ and very boring life. As it is, I developed new sets of skills, I experiment with things and learned to hustle like a pro and because we paid off the debt so fast my confidence has increased a lot. No meek, middle aged lady for me; no way. I am on fire and people around me know it :).
Keep going at the debt.
Great post!! I like how you differentiate between education and a degree. They are not the same thing. I feel that you should always be learning and growing. Technology changes at a fast pace today and you always have to be on top of things, otherwise you will be left behind.
@Jon: Thanks, Jon; glad you like the distinction. I believe it’s very important – I see my students wasting their time and money focusing on getting a degree and missing the whole point of getting education.
Thanks for sharing. Getting an education is key. Learning now is so easy. Or accessible.
I am practicing negotiations and blogging. I need to learn to spot opportunity and focus on value.
@The Roamer: Good luck with all this.
Terrific post! And I love your chart, it’s so true. It’s so much more comfortable to be on the selling time side, until you realize it’s actually not at all and the discomfort from switching over to selling reputation is way more worth it.
In all honesty I don’t know if I agree in the education piece of things just because it implies some kind of degree or credential once you’ve finished high school. Between MOOCs and Youtube, you can probably pick up 75 percent of what you’ll need to be successful and the other 25 percent requires a mentor.
Haha! I did put it in big letters and people still miss it. I did say ‘education’ – education can come from many directions and MOOCs and Youtube are two of them. What you understood about degrees is a different matter entirely and while not a bad idea it is secondary to education: there are many people with degrees I meet who have no education to speak off.
“Ignorance is an affliction and education is the cure.” Love this! Too many people go through life using ignorance as an excuse to why they can’t make head way financially. I totally agree- keep on learning!
There are not fast and cut rules about learning to negotiate (there is some guidance around the Web but situations are very different). I believe, negotiating is a craft and as any craft is learned through trial and practice.
Did I mention that learning to blog helped me increase my reach and influence not simple as an academic researcher but also as a public intellectual?