“Your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them.”
Its interesting how the Go-Giver Laws of Stratospheric Success build on each Other. The first law of value determines how much potential energy you’ve got wrapped up inside. And that potential energy is related to passion for what you do as much as consistency in how you do it.
In The Go-Giver, the main character meets a young woman who grew frustrated in her teaching career. While she had developed methods that really drove home new lessons to children, she was a little discouraged that she could only touch 20 or 25 children at a time. She started a company that developed and sold games based on her methods. Now, rather than helping just one small group of kids each year, she was able to impact learning in classrooms across the country. She put a system- and consistency- behind her ideas and was able to grow.
On a related note, this reminds me of advice that a manager once gave me. We were discussing why some people make more money than others; its all related to attitude and consistency.
Here’s how his example went:
If you want to make $24,000 a year, you can sleep in, head to work late, leave early, and never really be bothered by any critical thought.
If you want to make $40,000 a year, you’re probably getting up at the same time each day; you’re getting into work on time, working a little past five, and keeping your eye out for advantages on the job.
If you want to make $60,000 a year, you’re probably up at 5:30am or 6am thinking about what you want to accomplish for the day; you’re working past five, and thinking about your job some on the weekend.
If you want to make $[insert your target figure here], you’re putting in serious effort.
While that talk was very money-oriented, it did make me think about what path I was on, and where I wanted to be. Those magic numbers can be whatever amount you want them to be, but the fact remains: the more consistently and passionately you approach your work, the closer you’ll get to stratospheric success.
Income in the form of monetary compensation is just one form of success. I bet you can think of a lot of others.
As a sidenote, when I first started this book, I found the word “Stratospheric” to be a little cliché…a trite phrase in another business book targeted at the lost middle-managers desperately seeking inspiration in their tired careers. But “Stratospheric” turned out to be more than just hyperbole. Throughout the story, I was rooting for the main character to elevate his thinking…to get out of his own way…to forgo the easy, temporary fix in favor of a stronger, long-term values system. “Stratospheric” is really about elevating your thinking and your attitude. Its about leaving complacency and “just good enough” behind.
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