An excerpt from Chapter 10 of
Generation BIG – The Rising Tide of Dreams to Action

The Greatest Generation was not about personal reinvention and dream fulfillment. They went to war and then went to work – at the automobile factory, at IBM, for the professional agency, for decades, until they retired. They dutifully earned their income, paid a chunk to the IRS, saved enough to take some vacations, purchased a club membership, and lived comfortably and quietly until the end. Is that your plan? Probably not, if you’ve read this far.

In the previous chapter, we noted you must have an innovative, unified financial plan to achieve your BIG goals. That chapter focused mostly on how to manage the money you’ve already earned – how to shrink your tax bill and protect your assets.

But what if you don’t earn enough or you want to earn more? Your grandparents might answer like this: Word harder, take a second job, put in more hours, find more clients. That’s the world in which they’ve lived, the 9-to-5, hoursfor-dollars work world. It’s still the world in which most people toil. That’s fine for people who don’t want to pursue BIG dreams. But it’s not fine for people who must defer their BIG dreams because they don’t have enough time or money to pursue them. If you’re in this boat but you’re serious about finding ways to achieve your BIG dreams, you have some alternatives – especially if you have unique expertise.

The examples below can also apply to anyone who wants to discover new, innovative ways to connect their expertise to new income streams.

Dreams, Money and Time

I know a brilliant musician and song writer who earns most of his money teaching others how to play guitar. It’s enjoyable work, but it’s grueling – long hours working with each client and more hours wooing new ones. He has dreams – BIG ones, in fact. But they’re on hold. He thinks he has no time to pursue his dreams because he believes that he can earn dollars only by spending hourswith students.

If he wants to earn more, he thinks he must spend more time with more students. He’s wrong, though, and with guidance from BIG business advisors he’s going to escape the hours-for-dollars cage, increase his income without significantly increasing his workload, and ultimately have the resources – both time and money – to pursue his BIG dreams.

Would you accept a job with a $2 million salary if you had to work 90 hours a week? I wouldn’t because I value that time – to spend with my family, enjoy a good movie, eat a leisurely meal, read a book, walk the dog, sleep like a baby, and pursue my BIG dreams. Time is a valuable asset. Trading time for money is a zerosum game, especially if it’s the only business model you have.

There is a Market for Your Expertise If a budding musician who lives down the street values your knowledge about guitars and songwriting, there’s a budding musician 1,000 miles away who would value your expertise, too, who might purchase videos of you demonstrating scales or workbooks that you write once and sell often. You could organize a song-writing seminar that many people pay to attend at one time, then take video of the seminar and include it in a package that you sell online – as part of a physical package of discs or as part of a membersonly web site.

The possibilities are endless. You simply need to be bold and innovative – bold enough to say you can escape the hours-for-dollars cage and innovative enough to find ways to do it. You have some unique expertise. It may be directly related to your current job, or it may be related to your hobby. But either way, you can connect with people who need your expertise – and those people don’t have to live down the street or meet with you in person to purchase what you’re selling. The world is flat. The internet and other technologies allow us to connect with one another in ways previous generations never could have imagined.

There’s much more about monetizing your expertise in the book which you can buy online.

Posted in BIG Blog, Excerpts, Guidance, Lifestyle & Time Management, The Book