Click here to watch my video on How to double your income in under 6 months.

We all know a person who is extremely talented at doing something and they treat it almost like a hobby. Perhaps it is a hobby for them. But when you need help fixing your car or with a computer they are there and lend a hand for next to nothing. Perhaps they are a good friend or acquaintance but at the time you would have been willing to give your left arm to have whatever working again. Why do you think so many people pay tons of money to the Geek Squad?

What is your true value?

Your true value is what you think you are worth. You might lie to yourself and say, “I don’t know as much about SEO as So-and-So”. That doesn’t matter. If you think you are worth $10/hr, you are going to make $10/hr. We all know people who make a lot of money doing something they have no right doing because they are a complete, incompetent a-hole. But that doesn’t stop them now, does it?

Value is a frame of mind and the sooner you establish what your true value is, the quicker you can start making some real money. This will likely prompt you to make some drastic changes, but that is ok. In six months, I went from a 40 hour per week, 23k per year help desk technician to working 15-20 hours per week and making over 86k per year! I did that all by making a choice and so can you.

How do I find my true value?

You probably think the idea of simply asking for more money is crazy, but in essence that is what I did. The most important thing you can do for your emotional, financial or spiritual life is to simply ask for what you want. It’s not enough to ask for more money. You have to ask for specifically what you want. I want $50,000 per year and the flexibility to work from home.

There is one caveat to this asking for more business. You have to believe it is possible to reach what you are asking. Asking for a million dollars is nice but if you don’t truly believe that having a million dollars is possible you’ll have a very hard time reaching that goal. Aim for a goal that is substantially higher than what you are making now but within reach. Start with doubling your income first.

If you currently make $25k a year, make your goal $50k a year. Then take that $50k and figure out how much per day it takes to reach that goal. Figure the average workweek of 40 hours and 50 weeks per year minus vacation and you get ($50,000/50 weeks = $1,000 per week)($1,000/40 hours = $25 per hour or $200 per day). This could be as easy as setting up one Wordpress blog/business website per week, per client, granted you know how.

Nobody should have a problem trying to figure out how it is possible to make $1,000 per week. If you are having a problem figuring out how to make additional passive income, it is probably due to not having a specific enough goal. Try it once for one week and once you prove you can reach the $1,000 goal for one week I am sure you can find a way to repeat that.

What are people willing to pay?

The short answer is a lot.

People are willing to pay any amount granted the value is there. It is not their job to prove your value assessment right but your job to show their investment is worth the value you offer. This starts with you. Going back to how much you value yourself, your time and your skill set is key. If you don’t truly believe you are worth $25/hr then you wont make $25/hr. You will continually find yourself in low paying jobs constantly grinding away to make ends meet.

I had my wake up call when a family friend put me in my place. I learned from that experience (the one I describe in the video above) that making more money isn’t about the opportunities but about your mindset and your goals.

If you are in the business of solving people’s problems, you’ll find they’ll be willing to pay just about anything in order to make the pain of whatever go away. If you are in the business of providing additional value to their already successful business, you’ll need to show how and why they need to pay you to ensure they don’t end up in pain. The Internet is changing at an exponential rate. It used to be ok to just have a website, an online brochure, but now millions of people (customers) are hanging out in places like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and consume content by the bucket loads.

Tons of businesses are finding themselves behind the 8-ball when it comes to things outside their business. If you believe you are worth more and your value justifies, you’ll have no problem finding clients who are willing to pay that exact amount. You’ll find that you will begin to make deals that fall right in line with what you are asking for. Then you simply ask for more again.

Ideas on how do you increase your value to your clients?

Pain is the number one motivator for 99.99% of the human population. I am not saying to start threatening people with physical pain in order to gain their business but to show them how you can stop a certain type of pain for them. If their company is online and their sales have remained the same or tapered off, show them how you can gain them a larger audience.

You can begin by showing your client the number one business website in their field in comparison to theirs. Now show them how quickly their competition is adapting to the changing circumstances and how you can help them to avoid becoming irrelevant in the future. Relevancy and eyeballs equal more sales and profit. Then lay out a plan for them to regain what has been lost and then where it will go from there. You’ll have to rely on past experiences to make sure you aren’t promising a bill of goods you can’t deliver.

Another way would be for you to work for a small base pay and take a percentage of sales or start selling the leads you generate. In the end you can charge a lot more this route because you are taking on more of the burden or risk. This will vary with the amount of trust you have with your clients.

Ideas on how do you increase your value to your boss?

This can be a little trickier. This will depend a lot on your relationship with your boss coupled with some good negotiating skills.

Start by framing up exactly what your intentions are. Creating a solution for a common problem and/or a way to improve the way things currently are. This of course can raise lots of opposition, especially depending on where you are in the organization and whether or not your organization has people willing to change or adapt. For this very reason I decided to quit my full-time job and pursue the life of the self-employed. Others have stayed with their employers and succeeded massively.

For instance, my good friend has stuck with his corporate job and started heaping all of the value he could onto his back. This year he received twice the raise that all my old coworkers received and has positioned himself as an authority to significantly increase his income in the next two years. All of this amid a recession. He was able to position himself as a high commodity in the workspace. This can be done a number of ways.

Firstly, determine what you want and make a plan to reach it. The people who win wars don’t necessarily have better warriors but better plans for reaching their goal. Decide what your goal is and start your plan of reaching it. This will likely not happen overnight, so be patient. If you need to increase your value, then do so.

Secondly, by increasing your interaction within the workplace and with your company’s clientele you gain more leverage. If my friend above were to leave that job for another, chances are high that it would be for much more money due to the added value he could bring to the table. A more complete package. By positioning yourself within a company as an invaluable resource, you arrive to the table with much more bargaining power. This isn’t to say that anything is a sure thing but with the right goal and understood value you can drastically change your position.

Lastly, you can use your past experiences and successes as a bargaining chip for your new future boss. If your current employer doesn’t fully appreciate the value you bring to the table, another will if presented correctly. Know exactly what your goal is and if your current path is not leading to it, find another. That could possibly mean relocating your job.

Conclusion

The most important thing to know is where you want to be and by when. Answer those two questions and you’ll find a way to arrive on time.

I know I am not alone in finding ways to drastically increase my income in a short time-frame. Tell me about some different ways you have exploded your income.

I did a quick video for everyone talking about working online and the benefits to being able to connect people while adding value. I mention a couple people like Gary Vaynerchuk and Chris Johnson author of F#@% Therapy (you should check out his book if you can. I really enjoyed it) in case you want to check out their sites. I hope you enjoy.

For the last two weeks I have been looking for a program that could run multiple Wordpress accounts. I just wanted a place to manage all of my sites without having to log in and out of a bunch of Admin Panels. I ran across about 20 different software programs or web based programs that wanted to charge up to $2,000 (can you believe that). Nothing was really what I was looking for, and the last thing I wanted to do was waste money on something that wasn’t quite what I was looking for. This brings us to Zoundry Raven.

Zoundry Raven is a Windows based program that allows you to add in all of you blog account Wordpress, and the best part is that it’s free. I quickly added in all of my accounts and configured them to be able to remote post with the help of the xmlrpc.php function of Wordpress. If you are running Wordpress 2.5 or newer, you need to enable this function manually in the settings tab of your Admin Panel. When you write your post or edit an existing post, it looks and feels just like Microsoft Outlook.

As far as I know, there are very few limitations to the software other than if you are running some extra plugins that require your input. Otherwise you are about to quickly and efficiently edit and post to multiple blog accounts in a matter of minutes, or as long as it takes you to bang out some posts. You are still able to insert all of the pictures, html, links and peview before publishing. If you are running more than one blog, it is definately worth checking out.

Next on the tools every blogger must have is the Seagate FreeAgent Go. The FreeAgent Go is a portable hard drive that does more than just store your files. It allows you to run and sync all your home computer files so that while traveling you have all the software and features you are used to having at home. For example, I run my Zoundry, Skype, FireFox, Word, Excel and just about any other program you can imagine. The version I got holds 160 GB and they make 250 GB version as well. (Link to Seagate FreeAgent Go on Amazon non-affiliate).

The main advantage is the ability to have all the comforts of your home computer at your disposal while only having to carry something the size of a deck of UNO cards. The second you unplug the devise from your computer or a remote computer, all of the cache is erased and everything is cleared as if you weren’t there at all. One of the biggest advantages I could see would be the ability to use your own version of FireFox. If you allow some of your passwords to be stored in FireFox when you visit those sites, you don’t have to manually type them, thus preventing any keyboard takers from recording your passwords in any public places. I always make sure to use the encryption mode so that I am the only one able to use the device. If you travel at all and hate lugging around your laptop and cables for just a night or two you can simply bring your Seagate and have everything you would normally have, anywhere.

(P.S. this post was written with the help of Zoundry and Seagate while traveling.)

I have found that the more that I am in love with my work environment, the more I love to work. This goes beyond loving what I do, which I do. My work environment is a pleasant place that I look forward to spending time in work mode. I recently bought a Herman Miller Mirra desk chair and it arrived yesterday . Note: this chair is not cheap but highly recommended.

I picked mine up from InterOffice Furniture in Fargo and had to wait about 3+ weeks to receive it. That seems like a long time but was well worth the wait. I decided to go with the Herman Miller chair after trying out a few different models and brands. The place where I bought the chair from was nice enough to let me try the chairs over a day or two each in order to determine what I needed. I have had mild back issues for a few years and a good chair makes a huge improvement.

I feel completely at home in my chair and even after a long day of sitting, my back still feels like a million bucks. I came to the point about two months ago that it was well worth the money to invest in an office chair and workspace to increase my productivity. If I love my space and am comfortable while working, it becomes even easier to do what I really love, my work. I am to the point where it is motivating and exciting to get up in the morning and start on the day. I hope both your workspace and environment are to the standards of your choosing.

Up until recently, I was using a patio chair as my office chair. Now that chair was actually better than some of the other desk chairs I have had in the past. I made sure I didn’t continue using that chair a day longer than I had to though. Do you have any office space / equipment horror stories? Lets hear them.

I wouldn’t trade my job for the world. I probably wouldn’t even trade it for a higher paying desk job. I don’t really believe that you can put a price on the freedom that being an entrepreneur allows. Each day I can wake up at any time I choose (normally 8:30). I eat a quick breakfast and head into the office and am checking email by about 8:45. Of course this daily routine can change depending on if I have a meeting set up or am out of town.  Here are a couple of the biggest reasons I love being an entrepreneur.

Security

I know that the traditional feeling is to work for someone else (company) and move you way up the ranks until you make management or get placed in charge of another project. I don’t like this type of system and highly recommend against it. Being an entrepreneur, I realize the goal for myself is to create a product or service that generates a decent income and then do it again. Eventually you have set up 4-5 different businesses all generating revenue. What would happen if one of those were to fail? Nothing really, you would be out some time and cash, but overall you would just pick up and move on to the next project. I have never really been concerned to fail in a business idea (which I have) simply because I know I can probably create a new and better product learning from my mistakes. If you and your businesses are diversified enough, there is little to worry about (other than the Internet going away).

Lifestyle

Before starting my journey of entrepreneurship, I never really grasped the idea of lifestyle design. In what other business can you take your work on the road with you as you criss-cross the world all the while knowing everything is going to be okay? Nowadays, with a smart cell phone, you can handle just about any situation that might arise while you are traveling. With Wordpress, I can set up weeks worth of future posts to publish on my blog the whole time I am gone. With email auto-responders and virtual assistants, I wouldn’t even have to go online for weeks at a time. I like traveling and doing outdoor activities and at any time I know I could run off for the weekend knowing that things will be just fine without my every involvement. We can choose what kind of lifestyle we want. If you want to make millions, by all means, do so, if you want the freedom to travel or spend as much time with your family as possible, all options are on the table. You pick and choose the lifestyle you want.

Opportunities

Opportunities come to everyone and at anytime. The best thing you can do is prepare and be able to capitalize on those opportunities when they arise. It is hard to seek out and suggest people try different opportunities when you don’t have the final say in what gets done. Being a self employed entrepreneur allows you to pursue and capitalize on different opportunities when they present themselves (including the forced presentation of opportunities). This is also where the security factor plays in because you are able to seek out completely different areas of business all the while pursuing the things you enjoy. Being able to seek out your own opportunities is like treasure hunting in a way because you never know what you are going to get. Ultimately, you will be able to hone in your opportunity-seeking abilities and will succeed more often than fail. Basically you become a business inventor.

Reward

Nothing could be more rewarding than doing the things you love while providing value to others and being justly rewarded for that value. How much fun is it to run your own business and set your own schedule vs. conforming to the will or others? At my last job I was a slave to the phone, so much so that even 30 seconds late could get you in trouble, including and not limited to the removal of incentives, not getting a raise, verbal / written warnings and possible termination if actions where habitual. I look back at that job and can’t even think of one thing I miss other than the people who worked there. As I add more value to the businesses I am employing (with my time) I can’t help but feel rewarded. Watching your handy-work in action and seeking the positive impact you have on your customer is a rewarding feeling to have. Subsequently, the more value you add to people and businesses, the more you are rewarded both in feeling and money.

Conclusion

This is by no means a complete list. Feel free to add your own thoughts about being an entrepreneur in the comment section. Remember to ask yourself while others are getting laid off in a slowing economy and being told everything is okay until the day the pink slip shows up, who is more secure? Security is best when provided by yourself. You can only control the things you have direct control over. If you don’t have control over your paycheck, what promise do you have it will be there tomorrow? Get excited knowing you can start making the change today that will guarantee security and the lifestyle you desire tomorrow, because today matters.