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Do you Leverage your Time?

My UK friend Bethany Johnson has this post on her interesting Blog
which I thought you MUST read

Why is it that some people earn £20,000pa and others earn 5 times that, £100,000pa and more? Do they have extra hours in their day? Do they have a secret access to an extra day or two in their week than we do?

So why do they earn more money than the rest of us? The answer is they know how to leverage their time. So HOW do we do this? Wealth is created by money working for us or people working for us, we are leveraging off their efforts. So if we have money to invest it will generate income for us without us having to do very much but if we haven’t got that money in the first place then we need people to do it for us!

So as Women in Business how many people do you employ? Can you afford to do this and if you did would they eventually leave you when you have trained and shown them all aspects of your business, would they set up shop down the road and perhaps be in competition with you?

The reason I am writing about leverage is that I had to re-educate myself and learn new methods of acquiring income.
As an Intermediary to the Corporate world with clients repeatedly being targeted by larger competitors, I was constantly reducing margins to maintain the business until eventually clients were taken at a loss from me by a large Corporate determined to have a stake-hold in the UK market place. How can one compete with that? There is no loyalty in the Corporate world. I came across Professor Charles King who received a Doctorate at Harvard Business School, now Professor of Marketing at Illinois University and who realised you can have a business without much Money and without Employees. As with many universities around the world, Network Marketing is now a professional business model taught at University Business Schools.

Three basic Principals to this intelligent methodology to be critically considered.
      
1. Expanding Markets. The business must be within a huge expanding market with the focus on a product or service category that will be global.
2. Unique and Consumable. If the product/service is not consumable you will be unemployed until the next sale. For example telephone calls or electricity provide repeating commissions that pay multiple times for one initial effort.
3. Timing & Trends critical for financial wellbeing. In all cycles there are people making money and people losing money. For example during times of recession chocolate sales reach record highs as it is a consumable comfort food in times of stress. Consider what creates trends, for example the ‘baby-boomers’ born after World II after 1946. In the USA 76 million babies were born at this time. It was predicted that baby food would be a great business, then children’s shoes and toys. Then these same people in the 1970’s wanted houses and this became the Real Estate boom, then in the late 1980’s the baby-boomers having bought their homes the sector began a slow downward slide. The trick is to identify the coming wave whilst it is a trickle of water not yet a stream, on its way to the river eventually to the sea to build to the wave. So right now what are those same baby-boomers worried about?

So we could employ others? You can leverage off people by getting them to work for you. You take a portion of their earnings. However, this is difficult to do as they don’t work as hard for you, remember how do you treat a Hired Car? You need to create a situation where everyone gains.
An example from the Real Estate sector. Bob the Broker engages Robert as an Agent to sell buildings to earn 3% commission on the sale of the building. Bob the broker earns 3% as he trained Robert, as he advertised for the properties etc. As Robert is an agent working for himself…. It is in his interest to work hard…..Bob the Broker hires more agents…Bob the Broker has leverage…..but the agents do not have leverage and that creates a conflict……so Robert the Agent will cut away and leave…..and start a business down the road. The Broker loses an income source. If Robert shifts from being an Agent to being a Broker with Bob receiving a smaller commission and Bob continues to help Robert to do well, Bob will also do well…….working and sharing everything…a Win Win situation. Robert does not then become a competitor and Bob having trained him well will continue to benefit. This is how Network Marketing works.