One of the things I want to talk about today is what I call my value philosophy.
This is not only a life philosophy, but also a part of my belief about the business cycle.
The idea of the value cycle is this:
If you are going to be a long term success, then what you need to do is create value first and then and worry about the money afterward. In other words, pursue value first and money second.
If I was going to do a reductio ad absurdum, I’d say pursue money value without regard to money instead of money without regard to value.
But of course, we have to pay the bills, so I’m going to say value first, money second. In everything that you’re doing deliver as much value as you possibly can, and don’t worry all that much about whether you immediately get paid for it.
Conversely, I think that what a lot of people end up trying to do is try to find the job or business that will pay the most money without consideration of value.
For example, when I was in my corporate career, it’s not that I didn’t provide any value, but it’s that I was principally concerned with making sure that I got a higher paying position versus being concerned with making sure that I was providing as much value as humanly possible and developing as much skill as humanly possible to create value.
Whenever a business, a person, or an enterprise places focus goes on an investment that generates money without generating value or without regard to generating value, that is when implosion is inevitable.
For example, with venture funds, investment schemes, crypto schemes etc. money is the only area of focus.
It’s about getting the money ouput to go higher and higher and higher and higher.
What nobody talks about is what’s the real value here and how much real value is there.
Further, is that real value realistic relative to the amount of money that’s being raised?
The bigger that disconnect between money and value gets, the more inevitable a collapse becomes. I actually believe that we’re in the middle of seeing this play out right now, but we are really going to see it unfold in the relatively near future, as I believe there is going to be a compression of asset prices. What has happened is that prices has gotten so disconnected from value and eventually that a compression back to value always happens.
So, the thought that I want to leave you with for today is really in everything that you’re doing deliver as much value as you possibly can and don’t be all that concerned about whether you get paid for it right away. The reason being that if you generate an exceptional amount of value consistently over a long period of time, the money will find you because eventually somebody is going to want to pay you to generate that value for them and then your time will become scarce and people will need to come and find you if they want to continue experiencing that value you have generated.
