Two Questions to Make You Money

I recently had the joy of a lunch date with one of my newest team mates.  The date had a bit of reluctance to it as it was not somewhere I wanted to eat, but also all our previous gatherings generally ended up with the dispelling of advice that seemingly was never followed.   With this particular team mate I had begun some tough love pushing her to stop borrowing from me and instead start creating her own materials.  Please do not misinterpret my intentions.  I very much want to assist and support her success but doing for her was not helping her grow.  This woman is amazingly business minded, too, and organizes her ideas by writing them all down.  So, I was reluctant to attend another lunch with her because I felt a failure in getting her to act on her ideas.  But an amazing thought came during our discussion that day and I formed two questions for her to be able to tackle her marvelous compelling ideas without being so overwhelmed by them and the cost of doing business using those ideas.   Bottomline: Make money, don't spend it.  Mission: Make more money than you spend.  She has some struggles she shared with me that made it even more evident to me how necessary it was to make money and stop the spending.  We may want the newest and prettiest but if it is going to slow us from reaching our true goal, what's the point when you can make do, or even make equisite, with what you have!  If you want to make money, apply these two questions to everything: purchases, posts, conversations, afflications, decisions... #1 Does it help my budget?  #2 Does it help my business?  For example, if you are just becoming a consultant, you do not need the shinest business card to convey what you do (no need to spend more money).  The free ones in matte print will do just fine, as will your own clear God given voice and handwriting.  That pretty paper on the artsy site can be printed yourself or not at all.  Let your business and products speak for themselves without being dressed up.  People do not remember or keep the wrapping paper...they keep what's inside and they treasure you forever for the thought.