“I don’t need money. I only need my mouth.”
This is something I said to my father a few years ago when he was asking me how things were going financially shortly after buying our farm in Maui. Cash flow had gotten tight with the sudden rise in expenses both at home and in the business and so he was checking in.
I’d never said that before. It just kind of came out as an expression of how I was feeling at that moment.
It was an expression of both my sense of resourcefulness in that moment and also the simplicity with which I relate to the creation of all that I need through speaking.
When I first created my training ‘Being a Client Magnet’, the original title was actually ‘Unsinkable Financial Ship’. Ultimately I changed it because it didn’t speak as clearly to the context of what I teach in it, but the idea is still at the heart of the program.
Once you develop the ability to speak with your self and others in ways that bring what you value into being, then your capacity to create value and money makes you financially unsinkable.
Last week I was speaking with a gentleman in the real estate profession who is beginning his career as a coach. He mentioned how a friend challenged him not to move into a business in which you ‘trade your time for money’.
This was actually a concern of mine when I first started as well. Having a background in real estate myself, I was sold on the ideal of generating leveraged and/or ‘passive’ income by developing and investing in assets.
At that point I’d already experienced building leveraged business and passive real estate income, so I knew what it felt like to own something I’d created that was providing income for myself.
It didn’t feel as good as I’d thought it would. Sure it was nice to have some rental income coming in and it was a powerful feeling to have people around the world writing code for a client’s website project while I was hanging out with friends, but there was also a loss in that approach.
The loss was deeper in that my orientation in the world had become one of building things that set me free from the response-ability to serve people directly. What I couldn’t see at the time was that it was a kind of running away from the weight of the grown-up world. Not only that, but it was a desire that lived within the confines of circumstances as the source of freedom.
The irony of a concept like ‘Financial Freedom’ is that it tricks you into believing freedom can come through finances. A lot of the wealthiest people I have met are by far the least free.
Ultimately, I chose to go into coaching and ‘trade my time for money’ because I had become disenchanted with chasing the ideal of liberation through income. Not with the challenge of making money, but with the hollowing out that occurs through the endeavor. The hollowing out is the spending of time doing things that aren’t immediately fulfilling in service of some supposed end that will make it all worthwhile.
Those who have spent time in conversation with me know how radical of a stance I take on only doing what I love. It can look immature and even impossible at first, but the paradox is that an unwillingness to do anything but that which is loved gives one much inner strength and yields great outer reward.
As my coaching profession grew out of my hobby as a performing magician, I had only to continue on the path of creating magic for people, but in more meaningful and life-altering ways. As the years passed, and as I traded my time for money, that money I was trading my time for continued to increase.
In the beginning I was paid around $20/hour and now, fifteen years later, I am paid between $1500 to $3000 or more for an hour of conversation.
In conversation with the gentleman in real estate last week, I remembered one of the things I share with people who are considering using debt to hire a coach or attend a personal development event.
I explain to them that if they spend the borrowed money with worry or concern as to whether they will make it back or not, then they are essentially spending borrowed money on a liability. This is because they are being a liability by putting the power of a return outside of them.
Instead, if they spend the borrowed money with the commitment and certainty that that will not only make it back, but generate a high return, then they are investing the borrowed money on an asset. In this case, I say to them, “You are an asset.”
It is a bold declaration, like saying “I am an unsinkable financial ship.”
What I saw in that conversation last week, upon remembering the idea and power of ‘being an asset’ is that when I decided to change my focus on building up financial assets in real estate and business and instead ‘trade my time for money’, I didn’t actually make the change I thought I did.
In fact, I had continued to build a financial asset – the asset of myself.
I am a much more valuable financial asset to myself and the people I love and provide for than I was fifteen years ago.
So I haven’t been trading time for money, I’ve been building an asset that, unless I die, nobody can ever take away from me.
You can drop me in any country in the world with nothing but my ears, eyes and mouth and I will create enough value for people that all of my needs will be met and, within a short time, financial wealth will return as well. Not only that, but I’ll enjoy every minute of it too.
This is not an ability I was born with. It was trained, cultivated and created by spending time with the most conscious, loving and powerfully producing people I have discovered.
At the highest level, I love helping people to have the power to create whatever they want. The reality is though, the power to create money is where this conversation is focused most of the time.
Helping you be free, loving, and powerful in the creation of income is at the heart of what I love to do.
If you would like help with this, then do whatever you have to do (that isn’t illegal) to get yourself to my upcoming intensive in London.
I’ll be flying nearly halfway around the world with my family to be there.
Wherever you are on this planet, if you see yourself as an asset, then your investment of time and money with me will yield great returns.
If you see yourself as a liability, however, then I can’t promise you much. Probably best to just stay put in that case.
This is the power you have: the simple power of deciding who you are and what you will create.
Grasp it, tightly at first, until you know it so deeply that it comes out of you spontaneously when those closest to you ask how you’re doing financially.
If you stay with me in conversation, a day will come when you will know that you will always be able to create everything you need for the rest of your life.
See you in London!
Loving us all, JPM
PS – If you know you want to join me in London – and you are ready to commit to being an asset – then go here and reserve your seat right now. If you have questions, just reach out and let me help you.
