Maximize the Value of You

Wealth Accumulation Driver #2: Maximize the Value of You (How to Advance Your Career Like A First Generation Millionaire)

At Millionaire Foundry, we believe driver #1 of wealth accumulation is to Lower Your Burn Rate.

In keeping your expenses – what we call your Burn Rate — lower than your income, you generate excess cash we call Personal Profit, which builds the foundation of your wealth.

As your Personal Profit is invested, it throws off even more cash.

Income from your career is the ‘wage lever’ you have to increase your Personal Profit.

Provided you don’t increase your Burn Rate at the same speed that your income rises, your Personal Profit will increase.

And that will help you build wealth more quickly.

The reason Lower Your Burn Rate is driver #1 is that you reap the benefits instantly for every dollar of spending you cut today.

And it’s a tax-free dollar, unlike wages.

Increasing your income from your career or business is usually a longer horizon strategy.

But the great news is that the sky’s the limit when it comes to your income.

Your Burn Rate can only be lowered so far because you have to cover basic living expenses.

As long as you can master control of your Burn Rate, ideally keeping it well below your income, you can move on to the longer-term wealth generating pursuits.

If you want to rapidly grow your wealth AND expand your lifestyle somewhat, increasing your income is that next pursuit.

Because your career efforts generate income, You are your most valuable wealth creating asset, especially if you’re in the early steps of your wealth building journey.

And because you’re such a valuable asset, there’s great advantage to maximize your value.

Whether you’re an employee or own a business, you generate income only because you give someone else a product or service they need, for which they are willing and able to pay you.

You can Maximize the Value of You by finding a way to deliver increasing value to your customer which, if you have a job, is first and foremost your employer.

As a result, your income will rise, if not immediately, then eventually.

Maximization is achieved by both formal education — high school, college, vocational training — and professional education — on-the-job, continued reading, research, seminars, online courses, and self-directed learning in your chosen area of career expertise.

Your education should be focused on increasing the quality AND quantity of the value you create.

If you stop increasing the quality and quantity of your output, the amount of income you generate from your profession can plateau or even decline.

If the demand for your skills falls, and you don’t redevelop yourself to meet the new needs of your customer and marketplace, or find new ones, your ability to generate income may disappear altogether.

As harsh as this reality sounds, nearly all wage rates are set by the marketplace based on the value of a position’s contribution to a company’s profit, and the rarity and complexity of the skill set required.

That’s why cardiac surgeons are compensated more highly than the surgery room scheduler, even though both contributions are incredibly important to running a successful surgery center.

In working to create value for others you spend what we call your life’s currency, also known as time.

The great news is that we are equal to billionaires Warren Buffet, Richard Branson, Bill Gates, and Oprah Winfrey in one very important way: we all operate within a 24-hour day.

No amount power or wealth can change that, nor can it change the fact we have a limited number of days on earth, and we all live with the uncertainly of when our days will run out.

Now, some major differences.

First, those who create the results they desire — which can also be non-financial, like raising great kids, helping the needy, finding the cure for a disease, or living up to the full potential of one’s spiritual beliefs — use their time very differently than those who aren’t creating the results they want.

Successful people focus their life’s currency on increasing their ability, individually and/or through the organizations they’ve built, to deliver steadily increasing value to someone.

That someone may be an employer, customer, owner, or other stakeholder.

Second, they tend to focus on a narrow area of expertise that creates great value.

For example, Warren Buffet’s skill set, simply stated, is focused on being one of the great stock pickers of our time.

Third, they find a marketplace that’s willing and able to pay handsomely for the value they create.

The key to successfully serving a need is to deliver the right product or service, at the right time and place, for the right price.

Timing is often the make or break ingredient.

For instance, Bill Gates’ ability to develop an affordable operating system for personal computers had absolutely no value in the 1850s.

And fourth, at some point, they took complete charge of their time.

They alone decided how and where to spend their life currency, driven by their burning passion to bring their vision to reality, and their focus on creating massive value for a marketplace that was willing to reward them.

The decision to take command of their lives often came well ahead of the point their wealth allowed them that freedom of choice, meaning they assumed significant risk of failure.

And many, who are now rich, failed several times until they reached their goals.

Just like a future billionaire, you are your own most important asset in creating wealth, because your time and effort, properly focused, creates value.

Value is created when you focus your skills, abilities, and time to give someone something they want and value.

In return, they give you something that you want, usually in the form of monetary compensation.

The only way you can reliably generate personal income is to deliver value to someone who’s willing to pay for it.

Wealth books that promote the idea you just have to “think wealthy thoughts and the universe will deliver” completely miss the principle of the value-for-income exchange.

In the employee-employer relationship, you are providing your time and skills to create some form of value for your employer. They, in return, provide you compensation in the form of wages, benefits, and the chance to develop and hone your professional skills to further grow your career.

That’s the basic employee-employer deal.

The idea of You as your greatest asset can also extend beyond your career or business.

As you build wealth and therefore have more investible cash, you can provide value by lending money, and potentially your expertise, to help someone else create additional value. You can then be compensated through interest income, a share of a business’s profits, or both.

In certain situations, you may put your cash at risk of loss, in order to recognize a higher return. Ideally your expertise will help reduce some or most of that risk.

Early in your career and wealth journey, prior to having excess cash to invest, your time and skills are your main raw materials for creating value.

Your output may take the form of primarily physical labor such as painting a house or running a cash register.

It can be strictly sharing your expertise or ideas, as with professional consultants.

Or it can be a blend, like a sales manager who expends labor and intellectual capital to generate revenue and profit for an employer, by matching customers’ needs to the company’s goods or services.

Many who work for an employer mistakenly believe they cannot build meaningful wealth through their career efforts.

Thinking that they must start their own business to get rich, they put their wealth accumulation dreams on hold while they go to work to pay their bills.

Or they set their wealth accumulation targets much lower than their real potential.

While starting or owning a business is one path to financial freedom, many millionaires created value for an employer and reaped the financial benefits.

As I was seeking answers during the early part of my wealth accumulation journey, I was frustrated by the advice I read that told me that to get rich I absolutely had to start my own business, flip real estate, become a landlord, or trade foreign currencies.

While I knew those things could work for others, at the time, they weren’t practical for me.

I was managing a full-time career during the day, and earning my undergrad and then graduate degree at night, and simply didn’t have the bandwidth.

So I wanted someone to tell me how I could get rich by keeping a day job. At the time, I couldn’t find that mentor.

Through trial and error, I eventually discovered that it was possible to get rich while keeping my job.

But I learned that using my career to get rich required a deep commitment to continually increasing the value I created for my employers. Both my income growth and career advancement depended on it.

I took on the hard projects no one else wanted. I committed to delivering results under difficult circumstances. I seized the chance to do new things. I re-earned my job many times as the companies I worked for had frequent executive turnover, as well as multiple ownership changes.

All of which helped me build my skill base and expertise, and therefore create more value for my employers.

The wage increases and promotions followed.

To be clear, the results weren’t always immediate. Sometimes I had to deliver months or years in advance before the rewards came.

Occasionally I needed to leave for a new company who would provide more opportunity and higher compensation.

But the approach we discuss to Maximize the Value of You is a proven principle. I benefited from it as my job became a key component of my successful wealth accumulation journey.

And even if you’re in job you hate, one that you see no future with but are unable to leave in the short term, there’s still an option. It’s your side hustle, which I’ll cover in the future.

In the coming months, here at Millionaire Foundry, we’ll discuss ways for you to maximize the value you create for others.

It’s an old but true saying: When we first give others what they want and need, they will eventually give us what we want.

Commit to advancing your career like A First Generation Millionaire, and your wealth will benefit.

I hope you’ll stick around to learn more.

Wealth is Freedom!

A First Generation Millionaire