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The secrets to boosting your financial success (Part 2)
In Part 1, we briefly touched on the basics of income and its importance to your financial success, discussed tax and why it’s important to try and build your career into a life’s purpose.
Let’s build on that and get to the even more exciting topics. Including enhancing your value to the world and the most magical type of income.
Climbing the income ladder

So many wealth gurus (of which I am NOT one, I want to be seen as an educator) preach of monitoring and controlling your expenses. To some degree, I agree that being in control of your expenses and being sensible is important. However, this should not be the main focus of your efforts, because what you focus on, you will become.
If you focus on expenses, you’ll live a frugal (or cheap) life (there are important differences between frugal and being cheap). If you focus on what’s new on TV, YouTube etc, you’ll live a life of wasted time. If you focus on food, you run the risk of being overweight. If you focus on health, you’ll be healthy. If you focus on strength, you’ll be strong. If you focus on raising your kids well, you’ll be a good parent. If you focus on developing your skills and knowledge, you will become more valuable.
Do you see where this is going?
What value do you bring?
When you venture out into the world, you get paid for the value you bring to the marketplace. You bring little value, you get little income.
Remember, this relates only to the marketplace, whether you are a business owner, self-employed or an employee. You can still be a valuable member of society, your family or your group of friends.
If you bring great value to your employer, you’ll do well.
If you bring great value to society, you’ll do even better. How well you do in this arena is almost limitless. Look at the likes of Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. If they didn’t provide great value (which is all a matter of perspective) to the world, they wouldn’t be worth the staggering amount at which they are currently valued.
Where does your value lie?
Are you more comfortable as an employee, self-employed or as a business owner? Only you can determine the answer to this.
Once you know this, then you can focus your attention on how you can bring value to your chosen marketplace.
The secret of success
The secret to increasing your value, and therefore your income, “is to work harder on yourself than you do on your job” (Jim Rohn).
What does this mean?
Let’s look at the ways people work:
- Turn on the computer at 9am and switch off at 5pm (not a second longer, ever). Then the brain stays switched off until the next day. Repeat till age 67, then live off a small retirement fund and government support.
- Grind away doing long hours, perhaps doing a really good job, but never progressing up the ladder. These people can be proud of their work lives.
- Doing a really good job at work. Then after work, spend time developing themselves to get to the next level. These activities are planned and seen as critical to success (see the chart below).
- This may be reading, formal study, short courses or networking in preparation for what is required for a job at the next level. Or they may be thinking of ways to achieve multiple income streams.
- This planning is part of their SMARTER goals. If you haven’t read my posts from the beginning, I highly recommend that you do.

Early on in your career you should make a habit of watching successful people (either in your office or globally) and seeing what it is about them that makes them successful. They may possess one or more of the following skills.
Examples of high-value skills:
- Sales
- Marketing
- Negotiation and deal making
- Public speaking
- Influence & persuasion
- Problem solving
- Networking
- Being a great communicator
- Leadership
- Relationship building
- Consulting (becoming the expert in your field)
Watch the below video for an example of the skills that can elevate your income. Please note that this isn’t an endorsement of the creator of the video, however, I recommend this as a starting point to find high income skills that suit your background and experience.
Increasing your value to the world should flow on to increasing income. Regardless of your income, what you do with it is massively important.
The most magical of incomes
It should be everyone’s goal in life to develop this type of income.
Passive Income
What is this glorious thing?
It is income you receive but NOT from your personal efforts (that is – your job or business). When you invest in an asset, you may receive income because you own that asset. For example, if you buy shares in a company, it may pay you a dividend. That’s income received passively. No effort on your behalf. Fantastic.
And if you start investing early enough and with discipline, you can build your asset base to a sufficient size to provide an income that can match your earned income.
Then you can decide if you want to work.
That is true freedom.
And that leads me to ……
Multiple income streams – A major factor in financial success
Imagine having income from:
- Your job
- An investment property portfolio
- Dividends from shares
- A business you own
- A website you created
If your job disappeared overnight (called redundancy), you still have income. You hate your boss and quit. You still have income.
Multiple streams of income doesn’t mean working 2 or 3 jobs. For some, that’s a necessity unfortunately.
You want to develop passive income from multiple sources. If anything happens to one or even two of the income streams, you still have the others to get you through.
Please note: Creating passive income from a website may/will be hard work in the beginning, but if set up correctly can produce income with reduced or no further effort from you.
Now, if it were easy, everyone would be doing it and no one would have to work. But that’s not the case.
First, you need to save.
Second, you need to build your income from your personal exertion.
Third, you need to invest wisely.
You want to invest in assets that can provide you with an income.
The sources of passive income listed above is not an exhaustive list. Your task is to go look for passive income streams that suit you and your financial situation.
The Wrap
Wow, income and the ways to make it is a huge topic.
Income is such an important part of our lives. It’s your choice as to the amount you can make. The secret to getting it, is serious planning and smart working.
Money is not the most important thing in life, but having more of it allows you to enjoy the important things (and people) in your life.
If you can become a money generating machine, then start giving some of it away. Richard Branson’s gift is the ability to generate money. He enjoys life, sure, but he gives a lot away too. Same for Bill Gates and Warren Buffet.
A good-hearted, generous person with the ability to constantly create money is a gift to the world.
Up next …..
Is there a way to boost your financial success?
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