One of the key differences between a ‘rich’ mentality vs a ‘poor’ one is how expenses are viewed.
Rich people look at how can they make something make money for them.
If a business owner is thinking about spending on the business, be it in terms of products or services, the key decision maker must be, “how is this going to make me money?”
Here’s a story to illustrate this point.
Shamen runs a clothing store, The Outlet. Her showroom looks nice and tidy. Posh looking.
She also has a few sales staff. Shamen does the procurement, inventory and accounts.
Sales is okay, but not where Shamen would like it to be.
A friend of Shamen’s suggested that she attend a management workshop so might be able to learn something new to help herself and the business.
Initially, Shamen was reluctant. After all, it cost Rs 10,000!
But her friend, who was a businessperson herself, told Shamen one valuable thing. “If you want to be successful, you need to look at this in terms of how much it’s going to make you. Not how much it’s going to cost you. ”
Shamen attended the workshop. Learnt a lot. And started looking at her business (and expenditures) in a whole new light!
She hired people for procurement, inventory, and accounts. Before, she sold her time, by doing the menial tasks in the business, herself. Now, she was buying time from others.
She began to have more time for herself. More time to plan and expand her business. More time to invest on herself. She began to develop her high income skills.
While the business was running, Shamen was doing other independent work that gave her a cool monthly earning of at least 200,000 rupees a month. And this number kept growing.
Her High Income Skills helped her earn more on her own. She began to conduct workshops, give talks, and coach others in business.
Now she was independent of her business. Any dips in sales were not going to hurt her.
As she began to invest in herself, and improve and expand her business, her disposable income began to increase.
She invested this in assets, not liabilities. For Shamen, assets meant something that earns her money when she slept. Real estate, and other businesses. She wanted the income from her assets to pay for any luxuries (liabilities) she wanted.
At the same time, her business was doing great. Sales was booming.
Before, her business was turning around 1 – 2 million in revenue a month. After the changes, her business was turning between 4 – 5 million rupees in revenue.
Shamen created a holding company, and brought all her businesses under it. Her own store, The Outlet, the others she invested/bought, and the real estate, were all under this holding company.
Shamen was now a Billionaire.
All because she had learnt to look at things, not in how much it was going to cost her, but in terms of how the returns were going to be.