How to Merge Money and Service
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I’ve asked myself this question over and over again…
“If I just keep giving my services away, will the money eventually come?”
But the ruthlessly honest answer is that you can give and give… and give until you’ve given yourself all away. But the money may never come.
We are people who truly want to make a difference, make an impact and genuinely influence people’s lives. We WOULD give all our services away for free – for absolutely no money – and sometimes we even feel like we SHOULD.
That is exactly why it is so important, imperative and necessary for you to realize (and follow) the 3 important rules if you want to be in service and still make money.
I promise, you CAN create an alignment in yourself around money and service, even though these are two seemingly opposing energies. And you can – and should – create a level of financial abundance for yourself.
So watch the entire Big Vision Show and discover exactly why you shouldn’t give your services away for free.
So you can develop a harmony within yourself and build your business in a way that will bring you abundance.
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How do you merge MONEY & SERVICE?
Transcript of this episode:
Hi there my name is Max Simon and welcome to The Big Vision Show. This is all about how you can reach more people and thrive financially. In today’s episode, Melissa asks, “How do you balance that desire to make money with the desire to help people? If I just keep giving, will the money come?” Oh Melissa, oh how many times have I asked myself this same question and I have some very important news to share with you. You see, I’m sure that we are just alike and that we are in business primarily to make an impact, make a difference and genuinely influence people’s lives. But I’d like to be extremely, ruthlessly honest with you for a second. Money and service can play together but they definitely don’t have to meaning you can give and give and give and give and give until you have given yourself all away and the money won’t necessarily come. So it’s important, it’s imperative, it’s necessary that you follow three important rules if you want to genuinely be in service and create a level of financial abundance for yourself.
Point number 1 is to realize that people who are interested in transforming become invested in transforming. You see, everybody always wants free help or they want advice or they want free information but think about it for a moment. How many times do they actually use that free information? How many times are people committed to doing the work with free? The answer is almost none. The reality is that people who really, genuinely want to change become invested in changing. They’re willing to put their money down, they’re 2illing to put their energy all in and by doing that, and they’ll stick with it through the challenging parts to actually shift their life. So if you are truly committed to helping other people, you’ll realize that requiring them to make an investment is actually in their best interest because it will make them committed to doing the work.
The second point is to realize that you are not being a good model if you’re broke. Ooh, that one’s probably going to sting a little. You see, so many of us want to be this representative of consciousness, this representative of service, this representative of doing something great in the world but we can like barely keep our bills paid and we can’t go on any trips, we can’t do anything that we really, truly love so we’re constricted. What kind of good model is that for the world? How is that showcasing what’s possible for other people and that actually is an out of balance equation? So if you truly want to impact millions of people, you must become a beautiful, powerful representative of what’s possible; which is not only about impact but it’s also about abundance and freedom.
And the third point is I don’t know if you’re aware of this but to reach a lot of people, it requires a massive amount of funds. You need to fund the personnel who will help you; you can put money into technology so that it has the infrastructure to get out. You have to actually fund the vehicle of your service and love. And if you’re not making money, if you’re not designing a business that’s bringing in money all the time, if you’re not asking for money when you speak to clients, if you’re not generating wealth, your vehicle is going to stay very teeny tiny and not really have any opportunity to actually become this well oiled machine that can reach millions of people. So if you genuinely and truly do want to be of massive service to the world, you’ll realize that money is just the tool to help you create the machine that makes it happen.
So, that’s it for today’s episode of the Big Vision Show, I hope you loved it and if you did, hit the Like button, share it all over the interwebs.
Today’s Big Vision question of the day is: How do you merge money and service? What are some of the things that you’ve done to really create an alignment in yourself around these two seemingly opposing energies? Please share your comment below, me and the rest of the tribe would love to hear it.
Thanks so much for your time. I hope you enjoyed this episode and I’ll see you in the next one. Much love.
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READ THE COMMENTS OR ADD YOURS
Max, I work within an academic field that stresses the importance of critical thinking. That entails never taking any statement at face value and looking for nuances that are either being ignored or presumed. I know that in the self-empowerment field, there is an emphasis on helping people figure out the relationship between money and service to others. Since money is a fact of life in every economy, then it follows that our work, much of the time, has something to do with money. However, many of the statements of “success teachers” make an assumption that alignment between money and service almost always means becoming wealthy. Achieving a high level of wealth is seen as a key goal, rather than asking the question “What real resources do I need to be of service?” There are forms of service that do not require a person to be wealthy or to be focused on continually achieving more material wealth. I feel that your three points in this article have fallen prey, in part, to the “service must always lead to high levels of wealth” bias.
In your first point you state that people need to feel “invested” in transformation (i.e., paying for it), and that getting information or training “for free” means that people will not commit to changing their lives. I think it is true that for many people inertia and taking the path of least resistance is common, i.e., it is easy to give up on something, and that money (price) is sometimes the motivator to keep people moving forward and getting them to actually do something. However, that line of reasoning is not universally true. Children attend school “for free”; in any given classroom there will be children who slack off, children who do what is required to get by, and children who put their heart and soul into learning and who are keen to learn and progress. It’s not money that determines which children will be the most committed; rather it’s character and values and to a large degree natural temperament. University students who receive scholarships do not usually slack off, at least not in my experience. I am currently in a PhD program; my program of study is fully funded through scholarships for both me and several of my classmates. All of us are hugely committed to our PhD pursuits; we’re not “slacking off”, even though for all intents and purposes we are receiving “free” post-grad education through the beneficence of scholarships. At the undergraduate level, it is the scholarship students who most frequently are the most intensely committed to doing well. In places of employment, companies who provide professional development opportunities for their employees in the form of seminars, workshops, etc. do not normally charge their employees money for doing so. Many employees embrace these opportunities wholeheartedly. They don’t say, “Oh I didn’t have to pay for this from my own pocket, so I don’t really care about it.” They way, “Great, I can use this information to advance my career, strengthen my creativity, advance in the company, etc.” Again, it’s not paying money that is the motivator; it’s character and temperament. Several Ivy League universities such as Harvard and MIT and others are putting some of their courses online for free, and the response to this has been enormous world-wide. In short, paying money does not guarantee that a person will take self-transformation seriously. Conversely, if information is available “for free” this does not mean that everyone who accesses the information will just blow it off as not important. Quite frankly, the assumption that “you will only take seriously that which you have to directly pay for” is flawed reasoning.
In your second point, you say that “being broke” is not a good role model for the world. OK, fair enough. We want to have a world where it is possible for people to break out of poverty. No one should have to suffer from lack of food, inadequate shelter, and lack of access to opportunities. And when wealthier people do something to help others access opportunities, that’s a good thing. But saying that getting rich is a great motivator and example for other people to get rich misses the mark, in my opinion. First of all, one cannot ignore societal structural issues that create systemic poverty. Getting individuals motivated to improve economically is only half the battle; the other half is to address the systemic issues that keep people down. Systemic issues are not personal problems; they are societal problems. Also, the advice to people to become wealthy begs the question of “what is wealthy” and even more importantly, the moral question of “what is enough.” Motivating people to pursue more and more levels of material wealth, so that they can count themselves as among the wealthy begs the question of how well we use the resources of the earth. Sure, it might be cool to have a 7 million dollar house on acres of land, but what is the carbon and environmental footprint of that? The axiom that “I can help the world best by getting really rich myself” is inadequate to address real questions of human flourishing, human economic stability, the stewardship of resources, social justice, and dealing with questions such as “what is right livelihood”.
Your third point is that it costs a lot of money to reach millions of people via websites, mailing lists, travel, hiring staff, etc. Indeed such things can be highly expensive. However, your statement is premised upon the assumption that all entrepreneurs or service providers want to reach “millions of people.” Is this really true? Many businesses prefer to have a primarily regional focus; some want only to deal with a select clientele. Some are more interested in Voltaire’s idea of “bloom where you are planted” and cultivating one’s own “garden” rather than trying to dig in other people’s gardens. Not everyone is in agreement with “bigger is better.” In my own case, I work with emerging new talented authors by giving them one on one intensive attention, and I teach a writing class that is restricted to a small number of people, as my “signature service” involves giving each writer the time and attention they need to develop as writers. Referrals come to me by word of mouth. My classes are always sold out before they are even announced. I have no need to attempt to reach millions of people because if I did that, I would no longer be able to do what I love most which is to personally mentor budding new talented authors. I don’t need to spend thousands of dollars on continual high end communications strategies. Not every solo entrepreneur wants to expand to the point where he or she needs to hire numerous staff or conduct massive advertising campaigns. Many are very content with being successful in more modest terms. Playing bigger in the sense of getting the attention of millions has a price attached to it not just of money, but of energy and quality of life. I know one life coach in my home community who has successfully built herself a seven figure coaching business which she runs online by offering programs (most of which I find are not worth the high price she charges, but that’s another matter). She spends most of her time living out of a suitcase, as public speaking is a big part of her marketing. She has no family life; no close relationships, her “friends” are all work-related. She says she thrives on this, and so for her it may be good, but for someone like me and for many of my colleagues, such a nomadic high-pressured lifestyle holds no attraction whatsoever. She may be making seven figures, but in my opinion I have a much higher quality of life than her because I have loving relationships, a sense of community, work I love doing, a first class university’s academic resources, time for contemplation, time to spend quietly in nature. What she has is work she loves doing and lots of money, but in the absence of good relationships and even time just to sit down and breathe, what good is all that money? I would never trade my lifestyle for hers.
I’m not saying that your points are wrong, just that they are incomplete and are based on assumptions about what you think “most people” want. Many people say they want “more wealth” because we’ve been taught in this society that being rich means you’re important or worthwhile. Money has become unhealhily attached to self-esteem and self-respect, and as such, people often tell themselves the story that they want to be hugely rich to the detriment of even more important human values such as relationships, solitude for contemplation, relaxation, time within nature to enjoy beauty, integrity, humility, lovingkindness, etc. I do not dispute your contention that we need money to do our work, that people need to be paid for their services, and that we should not undervalue ourselves. All of that is true. However, I also think there needs to be a much wider discussion of what “right livelihood” is, so that it becomes more distributive and less acquisitive. When livelihood becomes distributive and not acquisitive, that’s where real transformation will take place, both in people’s personal lives and in the wider world around them. I hope I have not offended you, for that is not my intent. I seek only to raise issues that might add more nuance to discussions of what being “successful” in life really means.