Life is tough.

Deep down, most of us long for a world like our mother’s womb, where, as babies, we were cradled in comfort and fed constantly through our mother’s umbilical cord. As soon as we enter the world, we’re rudely slapped on the rear to get us to take our first crying breath. Some of us have been crying ever since.

As soon as we’re old enough, we get thrown out of the nest and are on our own to fend for ourselves. Many of us are unconsciously looking for another mothership where we can plug back in our umbilical cords and go back to being fed. We’re programmed from birth that the most respectable, stable, safe way to earn money and support a family is to find a job and work on someone else’s mothership.

Working for someone else is an honorable way to earn a living. Billions of people do it every day. However, a few of us chafe at the thought of working for someone else. We know we were destined for something grander. We don’t want to work on someone’s mothership. We want to own a mothership.

The difference between owning the mothership and working on the mothership is huge.

There are two radically different mindsets. Employees on the mothership usually work on the “hourly” plan. They earn X dollars per every hour of work. They punch in at the beginning of the day and punch out at the end of the day. The apparent advantage to this kind of lifestyle is that it offers a person a steady salary with benefits. By the way, the word salary comes from the Latin root word salarium, which means “salt allowance.” Centuries ago, Roman soldiers were paid part of their wages in salt. This gave rise to the expression, “not worth his salt.”

Do you want to work for salt money?

Working on someone’s mothership is a security discussion — salary, benefits, stability.
Owning a mothership is a freedom discussion — sales, profits, risk. There are two doors in life: The door marked Security and the door marked Freedom. If you choose the door marked Security, you lose both.

The security game is an illusion. There is no such thing. You might rent yourself out to work on someone’s mothership for a while, but the safest path is to own your stream of income. Most people trade their time for dollars. You need to trade your time for profits. This is a very different mindset. The entrepreneurial mindset. Are you an entrepreneur? Entrepreneurs don’t “have” traditional jobs. Their job is to “create” jobs.

If you long for the freedom of the entrepreneurial lifestyle, get ready to make your break — but not until you’ve figured out how to replace your steady flow of salary checks with a stream of profit checks.

There are only 168 hours in a single week. You direct some of these hours toward earning money. Suppose your dream would to be earning $100,000 a year. At $10 an hour, you’d have to work every single hour of every single day for the entire year. At this rate, you’d work yourself to death for a hundred grand a year. If you worked the normal 40-hour work week, to earn the same $100,000, your hourly salary would need to be at least FIFTY DOLLARS AN HOUR. This is how salary people think when they talk about money. They rent themselves out by the hour.

 

How much did you earn on your VERY first job? A dollar an hour? Then, when did you graduate to $10 per hour? Eventually, your skills increase and your pay goes up. You scale up to a higher salary. Have you broken $20 an hour? $30 an hour? $50 an hour? Fifty dollars an hour at 40 hours a week times 50 weeks, that’s about $100,000 per year. In the salary world, it’s hard to crack that number.

Profit people talk about money in an entirely different way. They generally talk about profit per unit. Or profit per deal. Or profit per transaction. Since there are more than 7 billion people on planet earth, there are a potential 7 billion customers. And new customers are being born every day. The possibilities are limitless.

There is an Ashley Brilliant cartoon that explains this perfectly. The caption reads, “I’m not greedy: I’d be quite satisfied with just one dollar from every person in the country.” At a dollar profit, you’d need to sell 100,000 “widgets” this year. At $10 profit, you’d need to sell 10,000 widgets. At a hundred dollars profit, you’d need to sell only a thousand widgets. Making $100,000 a year in the entrepreneurial world, although not easy, is certainly doable. It could be as simple as doing one great real estate deal. Or marketing a $5,000 yearly coaching program to 20 people. I’ve actually earned a hundred thousand dollars in a single hour! Of course, it took me 30 years to figure out how to do it.

The first shift you need to make is shifting from hours to profits. Then, you ask yourself, how can I create some product, service, idea, or experience that generates a consistent profit?

There are at least three major paths to prosperity. Instead of salaries, you want to earn profits. Profits are earned by “selling stuff.” Three kinds of stuff:

Products = Stuff Services = Doing stuff for someone Information= Teaching someone to do stuff

Successfully launching a business can be challenging. As soon as you’re earning profit, then the secret is to learn how to “scale up” and “scale down.” What does it mean to “scale up”? It means to market more “units” in magnitudes of 10.

$1 PROFIT PER UNIT

If your profit per unit is $1, you need to sell 100,000 units per year to earn $100,000. That’s a large number. It might be beyond someone’s belief level to think they could do that. To make that number believable, let’s “scale it down” into bite-sized chunks. A hundred thousand units would be about 8,000 units a month. Or 2,000 units per week. Or about 300 units per 24-hour day. Or about 12 an hour. When you scale it down to an hourly number, it becomes more believable. Hmmmm, you ask yourself. I wonder how I could market 12 units per hour?

$10 PROFIT PER UNIT

Let’s scale up the profit per unit. How about $10 per unit? Let’s assume you had an excellent widget with a $10 profit. Could you sell one of them to somebody this month? Sure. No problem. Let’s scale the number up further. Could you sell 10 this month? You’re not all that excited about selling, but sure, you can imagine finding 10 people you know who might buy one each. That’s about two or three a week. Could you sell 10 this week? Hmmmm... that might take a bit more thinking. Probably need to work harder at it. That would be one or two a day. It’s possible. How about 10 a day? That would be a full-time job. I’d probably have to hire someone to help me sell them. Or maybe I’d launch a website. But, yes, if I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY wanted to sell 10 of them a day, I guess I could figure out a way. Hmmmm... 10 a day is 300 a month. At $10 profit per unit, that’s about $3,000 a month. If you translate that into “salary” language, that’s about $20 an hour. It might not be worth quitting your day job. There’s got to be a better way.

Well, you’ve got several choices. You could scale up the number of units you sell per day. How about 100 a day? That would generate $30,000 a month. Would that be worth quitting your day job? Well, yeah! Duh! Thirty thousand dollars a month would be more than $300,000 a year!

How would you sell 100 of those a day? Can you imagine that? You’d probably need a sales force. A company. Employees. Offices. Warehouses. But, yes. That could be possible. The other choice would be to scale up the profit per unit. Do you think you could sell some product, service, or information that would net you about $100 per unit?

$100 PROFIT PER UNIT

Could you sell one unit a month for $100 profit? Hmmmm... probably. How about one a week? Could you do that? Hmmmm... that might take some thinking. I could probably fit it into my after-work hours. One unit a week. Sure. How about a unit a day? Now, that would be harder. That would take some serious thinking. How much could I make? One unit a day times $100 profit times 30 days. That’s about $3,000 a month. Nope. That couldn’t entice me. Then, what about 10 units a day? That would earn you about a thousand bucks a day? Could you handle that?

A thousand dollars a day! Thirty thousand a month. Three hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars a year. From only 300 units a month. Yeah, that profit level could really get me excited.

$1,000 PROFIT PER UNIT

Do you think you could sell one unit a month at a $1,000 profit? You’d have to talk to fewer people, and they’d need to be more qualified. Only one a month. Could you do it? It depends. You’d have a conversation with yourself. “I’m not very good at selling. I’d have to find something I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY believed it. Something that I was convinced would REALLY, REALLY, REALLY work. It would have to be on my purpose path. But, yeah, I think I could work up my courage to sell one of those a month.” How about one a week? That’s about $4,000 a month, 50K a year. Would that be worth your while? Would that be a step up for you or a step down?

Hmmmm... one a week, huh? It depends on how hard it would be. Depends upon how long it would take for me to sell it. If I could do it in an hour a day... after work... that might entice me. How about one a day? On average, that would be $30,000 a month. Would that interest you? Hmmmm... where would I find these kinds of products with $1,000 profit? I’d only have to sell 100 of those in an entire year to make $100,000. That’s only eight a month, two a week. Yeah. I think I could do that.

Well, just for fun let’s scale up. How many units would you need to sell to net a million dollars a year? At $1,000 profit per unit, that would be 1,000 units. Or about three a day. Let’s go the opposite direction. Rather than a unit with a $1,000 profit margin, let’s scale up to $10,000. Does anyone in the world buy things that expensive? Of course. Houses. Cars. Machines. Furniture. Paintings. Animals. Professional fees. Travel. Consulting. There are thousands of products and services that net high profits.

This very day, there might be 100,000 sellers worldwide who netted $10,000 profit from some product or service. In fact there were probably 10,000 sellers who made $100,000 in profit from a single sale today. Hundreds of individuals and companies made a million dollars in profit TODAY from just one sale. Maybe 10 who made 10 million from a single sale today. A least one person made 100 million dollars today. Every day, someone makes that kind of money.

Where do you want to enter this game? Do you want to sell a million widgets at a $1 profit? Or do you want to sell one widget at a million dollars profit?

This is what I call the Millionaire Matrix. There are a million ways to earn a million dollars. But let me show you at least six of them:

THE MILLIONAIRE MATRIX

1,000,000 x $1 = $1,000,000
100,000 x $10 = $1,000,000
10,000 x $100 = $1,000,000
1,000 x $1,000 = $1,000,000
100 x $10,000 = $1,000,000
10 x $100,000 = $1,000,000

The higher the profit margin, the lower the number you need to sell in order to net your million. And vice versa. Do a little number crunching. Could you sell 10,000 widgets for $100 profit in your lifetime? That’s an extra million dollars over the next 20 years. Or about 500 widgets a year. Could you do it? Sure. Could you do it in 10 years? At the rate of 1,000 a year? Or 80 a month? Or 20 a week? Maybe.

Let’s cut to the chase. Could you do it in a year? A million dollars profit THIS YEAR! You’d just have to create a product that 10,000 people would want so badly that they’d part with enough money to net you $100 per product. The secret is to scale up and scale down the Millionaire Matrix to reach a set of numbers that would cause you to believe you could do it. Once you reach that BELIEF number, then you scan through a plan to reach your DESIRED time frame. Do you believe you could sell 10,000 hundred-dollar widgets in a lifetime?

Yeah, I believe I could do that. Would you like to make a million dollars this year? YEAH, that would be exciting!

Pick a number you can believe. Multiply that by a burning desire. And you’ll millionize your life faster than you can imagine.

This is how you “turn on your greed glands” as Gary Halbert liked to say. If you BELIEVE it and DESIRE it, you can ACQUIRE IT.

Scale up the number of units sold. Scale up the profit per unit. Then, scale down the time it takes to sell each unit. From one year, to one month, to one week, to one day, to one hour, to one minute. Then, scale down the time YOU have to be personally involved in the selling process.

I was the co-author of the very popular book The One Minute Millionaire. A MILLION DOLLARS in a minute! That’s absolutely crazy, right? Well, think about it. How could you make a million dollars in a minute using the Millionaire Matrix? Hmmmm... it would depend upon the database of people. Do people buy $100 products online? Absolutely. Ten thousand times a DAY. Do you think you could create a $100 product that someone would buy from YOU online?

Play along with me here... just say “yes!” Suppose someone is willing to send you a hundred bucks for one of your widgets. How many people would you need to reach to earn a million dollars like this over a lifetime? Ten thousand. Could you do that? Probably, if you had a lifetime to figure it out.

OK. Suppose you had a hot database of a million people who were nuts about the kind of products you’re marketing. If you dangled the right kind of bait in front of this school of hungry fish, you’d probably have some takers, wouldn’t you? How many takers would you need to net you a million dollars from this pool of a million fish? Ten thousand. That’s a lot. But wait. What percentage is ten thousand of a million? That’s only 1 percent. ONE PERCENT!

If your product was good enough, 99 percent of them could say no and you’d still be up a million dollars. That’s totally realistic, isn’t it? How long would it take for a million people to read the email that would offer your $100 product? Less than a minute. And 1 percent of them might bite. That’s a million dollars in a minute. Do the math. A million bucks a minute.

Let’s scale up the profit margin to $1,000. Could you create something — a seminar, a one-on-one coaching session, an info-product — that would be worth a thousand bucks? It would have to be REALLY, REALLY good for someone to spend that kind of money. Let’s return to our database of a million fish. How many fish would need to bite? Only a thousand! What percentage is that? One-tenth of 1 percent. Now, that’s totally realistic! Hey, I COULD DO THAT!

So now you believe it. Do you want it? Is that a yes?

Then, here’s what you’ll need to do. Create some fantastic product, service, or information. Find an existing database. Drop your bait in the water, and watch what happens.