It might not be much but it’s a start. The dollar amount isn’t as significant as what it did for my outlook on business in the digital age. I’ve learned a heck of a lot since I began building the Droid Island brand since 2016 and the biggest paradigm shifts happened every time I converted apart of my business into something digital or used a digital strategy to push my offline efforts. The most important shift happened to me when I made $3000usd for 1 min video.

The reason why this was important is that it helped me realize a valuable lesson of value, time and the problems you are trying to solve for people.

When we have a job, we essentially give our skillsets to a company at a wholesale price. You could always make more money doing that skill on your own but chances are you may not have the systems, the infrastructure, the know-how or even the drive to figure out, how to monetize your specific skillset.

Yet, we go to work and trade our time for money, regardless of the remuneration.

Have you ever heard this quote from Elon Musk?

“Your income is directly proportional to the difficulty of the problem you solve.”

Elon Musk

It’s a quote filled with so much truth, it’s worth waking up and asking yourself every if what you are doing is generating the type of money you would like or need to sustain yourself.

In order to start figuring this out, you need to learn how to ask the right questions and find the pain points for people, in order to offer the right solutions for them.

Every book will tell you that CEO’s are those who have learned to ask the right questions better than others.

I Do This When Creating Solutions:

• Look at my niche and define the consumers and various businesses in my niche.
• Look at their respective pain points
• Use data to see what consumers are looking for and what problems the companies are not solving for people
• Craft solutions for consumers and various angles that I can help the businesses
• NETWORK!!!

Figuring out the pain points for both consumers and businesses, using different data tools to verify your findings can do wonders for you. It’s the guiding compass that will allow you to craft relevant solutions for those valuable questions.

Whenever I go to tech events, I am always taking notes on the things they launch but trying to figure out where they would struggle in terms of onboarding consumers. So when I craft my content, it’s aimed at educating consumers but the businesses benefit because it makes their jobs easier.

Networking with the right people in different organizations, coming to them with my body of work that helps their specific pain points and showing the results, has a very powerful effect in order to begin aligning yourselves to help push the space forward.

Companies have the money and resources, you need to focus on having something that is worth for them to align their organization with you.

Doing that has allowed me to make some really good money while elevating my niche.

Also, when I took a job offer last year, I knew it would never last because earned income is never an efficient way to make money unless it is an exorbitant amount.

There were days I was drafting invoices for events I was doing, content I was creating or even just selling my products online and I was quickly reminded about how much money you can make without having to give up 9hrs and more a day for a job to get it.

Granted, those 6 months allowed me to invest into my own business and I was able to fund my own workshops without seeking sponsorship, then I was able to flip that into a deal for my workshops (will announce with who at a later date).

Even with this new deal, I am making more money than my old salaried job and that’s for workshops that require me to show up for a few hours out of the month.

I don’t want to drag this blog out for too long but I think you get the idea that I am painting.

Companies & Consumers Look For This

2020 is all about learning how to ask better questions, to the right group of people, consumer or business. If you are able to ask better questions and craft solutions to those questions, you will be paid a hell of a lot more money.

Many of you are solving 2 dollar questions and wondering why people either don’t want to pay you for your efforts or why companies won’t invest in you.

It could be that you haven’t defined your value or connected the dots as to why they need what you offer.

Maybe you need to do some work in showing the market that your solution can actually get them results and that your brand is worth the investment.

---

Let’s focus on learning how to ask better questions and building ourselves as experts in our space, in order to multiply our impact and remuneration.

Answering the right questions will get you paid but building your brand is the multiplier that will get you handsomely paid.

When you get paid well for efforts, in a niche that you are passionate about, it changes your perspective on many things.

For me, making $3000usd for a 1 min video taught me that I have the power to make an impact in a niche that I love and get paid well. Now that I’ve seen what I can do, the goal is to find new questions in my niche that make a bigger impact, with a bigger impact comes…you know what comes next ;).