Money Makes The World Go Around - Did Liza Have It Right?

Now that you’ve enjoyed Liza and Joel, in this absolute CLASSIC scene, I want you to think a little deeper about it.  Does money REALLY make the world go around? Well, not from a physics point of view, that’s for sure, but what about societies around the world?  How important IS money to the peoples of the world? To answer that you first need to thing about how people VALUE things.

Do YOU ever think about what something is worth? This may seem obvious at first, but think about it a little more. Is something worth what it cost to make? That can’t be true otherwise all manufacturing companies would go out of business in a VERY short time.

Why are natural diamonds worth more than synthetic ones? Synthetic ones ARE real diamond AND they’re more pure….no flaws whatsoever. In fact, other than being the hardest natural substance (we can synthesize harder substances now) they are simply pretty when appropriately cut and polished. However they are NO prettier than glass……….or are they? Maybe that’s a subjective matter of opinion?

For some unknown reason, natural diamonds are valued on average about 30% higher than the flawless man-made ones. People, including jewelers, prefer them. So for some, the very fact that it’s NOT man-made makes a thing more valuable………….to SOME people.

I was in Washington D.C. two weeks ago with my wife (she was on a business trip, so I just tagged along for the ride). I’d been there several years earlier, but I didn’t have the opportunity to see any of the attractions.

This time it was vacation (for me anyway!) so I decided to go along to the Mall. I visited the Smithsonian Building, the Library of Congress and then the National Archives where I saw the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence; amazing places, all of them. My wife suggested I also go to the National Art Gallery as she’d been before and really liked it, so I took her suggestion and I’m very glad that I did.

Why? Because I experienced some of the most outrageously incompetent “art” that I’ve ever seen!

I saw paintings by Claude Monet, Paul Cezanne, Vincent Van Gogh and Henri Matisse. Some were INCREDIBLE! Paint applied with amazing skill, intricate in detail, uplifting subject-matter; quite superb…………..in MY opinion.

Others were obviously painted by a three month old Chimpanzee on crack! (Not really, though it DID look like it!).

I have no doubt that if the Cezanne or Monet went to auction it would fetch millions of dollars, purchased either by a wealthy collector or a shrewd businessman who could sell it for a profit, but the worth to ME for several of these paintings was exactly ZERO (dollars or pesos!).

What about your car? Is it worth what you paid for it? Well, my car is worth a LOT more to me than it is to anybody else. I know how reliable it is, what condition it’s in, how much money I’ve spent on it and so on. So what if you took your car to a dealer to sell or trade it in; what do you think HE would give you for it? Yep, you guessed it, a lot LESS than you think it’s worth.

Surprisingly, this can actually be a good thing. How? Once you realize how people value things, you can use this to make money. Just because I didn’t like something and wouldn’t pay anything for an it, doesn’t mean that somebody else wouldn’t. They may pay a LOT of money!

I want you to think a little more deeply about value and worth. These are both extremely subjective.

Show 50 people an object (wristwatch, pen, laptop, book) and ask each of them to write down on a slip of paper what they would be prepared to pay for it. You’ll get 50 different figures written down, guaranteed!

So where am I going with all this? Well, because everybody values things differently, YOU can benefit from this. How? Very simple; YOU have millions of bits of information inside your mind that you may not think are WORTH anything! However, other people may well be willing to PAY you for that information, and pay you VERY well.

Think about what you know, how difficult or costly the knowledge may have been for you to acquire (not just in money, but in time, effort or discomfort). Then think about how you might find OTHERS who would PAY you for that information.

Then, you simply SUPPLY it to them!

Do it once, then do it again…………….then, often before you realize it, you have a business.

So NO, money doesn’t make the world go around……..it just makes it EASIER!

Luke