Expanding your Influence (and Opportunities)

Expanding your Influence (and Opportunities)

The reason that these blogs have been posted weekly for the past several months has been to provide my readers with some guidance and hope to improve their financial wellbeing.  Most of the blogs written have focused on personal financial planning concepts that I believe are basic to getting ahead financially.  For the next several weeks, I am going to focus on providing some insight by providing insight on self-employment and learning the art of leverage, so that you can embrace opportunities while being a blessing to others.

In the book, “Business Secrets from the Bible”, by Rabbi Daniel Lapin, the author expands on 40 secrets for us to contemplate.  Rabbi Lapin suggests that if we embrace the time-honored truths of these ancient lessons, we will set ourselves up for success and happiness in at least 5 areas of our lives.  These 5 areas: family, friends, faith, fitness, and finances, are meant to be lived in a way that allows us to enjoy balanced and happy lives.

Today’s blog focuses on Secret #1 which says that “God Wants Each of us to Be Obsessively Preoccupied with the Needs and Desires of His Other Children”.

The first paragraph of this chapter opens with the line, “As long as we all grow our own wheat and corn, and stitch our own clothes, and churn our own butter, and make our own shoes, we need nobody else.”  This means that those of us who believe that being self sufficient is an ideal to embrace are limiting our chances for success.  The author challenges us to “compare the outlook of the solitary survivalist with that of the business professional.”  “The survivalist views other people as competitors and threats whereas the business professional’s life is intricately linked to other people.” The business professional must be concerned with leveraging the skills of employees, contractors, and partners to provide enough goods and services with enough quantity and quality to attract and keep satisfied customers.  A businessperson must be concerned with the welfare of his employees and associates because “only if they are happy and fulfilled will his business prosper.”  The businessperson must also be mindful of the vendors who supply him with everything from office furniture and paper to the raw materials that supply his production processes.  In short, the businessperson must be a complete person because the total enterprise processes include many valuable internal people (employees) and a whole host of external people (vendors, contractors, professional services and customers).

The author concludes chapter 1 with this question, “Now whom do you think God prefers:  the lonesome isolationist whose slogan is “I need nobody”, or the business professional active within a complex matrix of connectivity in which he is preoccupied with making his life and the lives better for so many of God’s other children?”

Al’s Nuggets

  1.  Question:  if you can make an easy $1,000 by working overtime, would you hire the teenager next door for $100 to cut your grass and wash your car?
  2.  There will be times when you are up to your arse with alligators, and you will forget that your job was to drain the swamp!  Stay clear as to what you are trying to accomplish and why!
  3. Learn to grow in your job and in your influence.  It is totally worth it!
  4. Turn off the TV and read books that will help you grow as a complete, well-rounded person!
  5. Learn to take holidays in new and interesting places.  You will meet interesting people who will be “angels” in working clothes!