3 Principles of Authentic Moneymaking

“Is it possible to make lots of money… authentically?” –a client asked.

My short answer is: Yes, if we pay attention, along the way, to our motivations.

First, the numbers can be simple: Create a well-loved online course priced at $250. If you average 167 sales per month, you’re making $500,000 per year.

In this post, I’ll explore how to make money authentically. I’ll offer a series of dichotomies to help us think this through:

Profit vs. Value

Push vs. Pull

Future vs. Now

Profit vs. Value

Authentic money-making is about prioritizing the value that customers are gaining from our product/service, versus being fixated on the sales.

This is why I don’t like business advice that focuses on “Make More Profits!”

We’ve all experienced businesses that were great at marketing to us and taking our money… but then have shoddy customer service. Sometimes they’re highly responsive when trying to sell to us, but after we’ve purchased (especially after the guarantee period is over) it’s harder to get them to help us.

We may buy a product that sounds so good, but the product or program doesn’t give us the results that the marketing hype promised.

These are examples of focusing on sales and profit, rather than the value to the customers.

How do we become customer-focused? We seek feedback along the way.

This is something my clients have noticed from me. After every session, my follow-up email includes a request for feedback. Did they enjoy the session? Anything I can do a little differently next time to make it even more helpful for them?

After every course session that I teach, I ask participants for feedback right away.

In my year-long group program, I am requesting feedback several times through the year.

Most of the business training I’ve purchased don’t care about feedback and improvement. Only during the marketing process do they seem to be caring and responsive, but much less after the sale is done.

Push vs. Pull

To make lots of money means to make lots of sales of a product or service. To make lots of sales, it would need to be a product that keeps growing due to authentic market demand.

When a product is in demand, there is pull. Marketing becomes easier. More authentic.

On the other hand, some marketers use aggressive and deceptive techniques to push a product and make it successful, but disappoint a lot of people along the way.

In a lot of marketing training I’ve taken, the focus has been on speaking to the customer’s pain. To make them feel their pain again more intensely and clearly, so that we can generate their desire for our solution.

Scaling up (to make a lot of money) by any means necessary doesn’t care what the experience is for the audience, as long as demand (and leads) are generated for one’s services/products.

Instead, what we can do is pay more attention to our audience and market: what are they seeking that isn’t being fulfilled?

Even if they are finding products/services they want, maybe those offerings aren’t being marketed authentically… and that’s instead what we’re willing to do. Or perhaps those products are being delivered without the kind of good customer service that we are willing to offer.

Whenever there is any dissatisfaction in our market, it is an authentic growth opportunity for us. That is where good money can be made, if we can adequately satisfy (even exceed the expectations) for our customers.

Future vs. Now

Last but not least, let’s talk about where we focus everyday. If we’re dreaming of making a million dollars and fixated on that, we are always focused on the future, rather than the now.

Right now, you have people in front of you to serve.

Right now, you can practice being joyfully productive.

Right now, you can express your soul and highest values in your actions.

If we spend our days dreaming about the big pile of money we’ll be making, we sacrifice our presence now.

We start seeing customers as a means to an end (our money) rather than being present to their needs now.

We start seeing marketing as a chore, a necessary evil, to get to wealth, rather than being present to marketing as an opportunity to serve people now and to express our soul.

This is why I’m often cautioning you against associating with business coaches that are money-focused, hyping you up about how much money you can make, so that you can help people, live in freedom, etc.

You don’t have to wait. You can help people now. You can live in freedom now — because most of being free is a spiritual and mental state anyway.

The heart is accessed here, now. The future is created in your mind. The more you’re in the now, the more authentic you are.

Let’s continually return to our highest values, and the implementation of those values, and watch the results naturally follow.

Today, you can practice being joyfully productive. You can practice expressing your values within your actions in any moment.

Originally written Aug 2019, updated June 2023.