The Mental Virus That’s Keeping You Broke

I've been really working on examining my mental thinking lately, looking for hidden beliefs and patterns that are slowing down my progress towards becoming a more and more prosperous Inspired Money Maker. I have discovered a major Mental Virus that got installed in my mind at some point in my life and it's time to remove it. nnAs I became aware of it, I also realized that this Mental Virus seems to affect the minds of many other unsuspecting individuals.nnHere's how to test whether or not you are infected by this Mental Virus. nnLet's say that I owned an electronics store and you come to work for me at my business for one day, as a sales rep. In the morning, a wealthy customer walks in and asks for a specific product they are looking for and they see it costs $25,000 and they ask if there is any kind of discount that you can offer them because they've seen the product for $200 cheaper somewhere else. So you come to me and you ask and we both log into our purchasing software, we check our costs and find out that we bring the products in for $22,000/each so we can offer him $200 off the $25,000 pricetag and still make a $2,800 profit. You go ahead and offer the product to the wealthy customer for $24,800 which he gladly purchases and leaves the store happy.nnNext walks in an older lady that has a little bit of trouble walking and she asks about the $15,000 floor model Plazma Screen TV. She really likes it and would like to buy it right there and then, and asks about any kind of warranty available on it. You come back to me and we log into our software and we find out that this particular TV was given to us free of charge from Sony as a promo, so our cost on it is nothing and anything we make on it is pure profit. However, the old lady has not asked for any kind of discount, she is simply asking for a warranty on it. The regular price warranty on the product is $750.nnHere's the question. Do you go back to the old lady and offer her a discount on the TV? Do you offer her the warranty for free or at a discount? Or do you just quote her the $750 regular price on the Warranty? If you feel even the slightlest inkling of guilt charging this lady full price...why?nnThere is a critical distinction in our subconscious programming here that I discovered. Wealthy minded individuals give absolutely NO CONSIDERATION as to the cost of the goods or services they provide. They simply charge whatever fee the market is willing to pay. Joe Vitale will charge $25,000 for a single sales letter that might take him 15minutes to put together. Why? Because his "cost" is irrelevant. The value of that letter might be $50,000 or $250,000 to the person purchasing. He is not holding a gun to his customer's head, he is simply charging what the market will pay - end of story.nnMost of us, however, have this dumb Mental Virus installed in our heads which only allows us to charge maybe a 10% or 20% profit margin above our costs. When I used to be in the computer hardware business I could purchase computer parts for $2000 and sell them for $2200 or $2300 tops. I could not imagine charging someone $25,000 for such a computer. That, in my mind, would have been a "rip off". You know what? There are people out there that purchase $2,000 of computer parts, install a $350 software on them, slap a $0.25 sticker on it and call it a "Lightning Blaster VIDEO Editing Studio" and sell them for $25,000 to customer who are happy to pay for it, and there is nothing wrong with it.nnHave you ever made something yourself doing something that you love and then tried selling it for 10-20% above your cost? Why didn't you consider selling it for 100 times your cost? or 50 times your cost? Now I know what you're thinking is that nobody would pay that much money for something, but this is where you're wrong. People will pay whatever you ask, as long as TO THEM the value is worth more than the money they paid for it. THEY DON'T CARE WHAT YOUR COST IS.nnDo you think that a person who drives a $150,000 BMW thinks that he got ripped off because the cost of the metal that went into making his car was only $5,000?nnWealthy people buy things that cost 100x or 500x their cost. They also make money the same way.nnPoverty stricken people are all into the 10% profit margin thing. They buy things just above the production cost, so as not to get "ripped off" and they make money the same way.nnLet me ask you this. Let's say that your personal monthly expenses are $3,500/month. Meaning, if you added up your rent/mortgage, bills, car payments, gas, food, etc. it would all add up to $3,500/month as an example. If that was your monthly expenses, how much money do you make? Probably $4,000/m? $4,200/m? Am I right? Probably 0%-20% more than your "costs of living" right?nnSaid another way, if you take how much you make per year, how much are your expenses compared to that? Probably 80-90% right? If not 100%, right? nnYour COST of living is X and your thinking is that you should be making maybe 10-20% above X. Why? Because you have that Mental Virus installed. The same one I had too. If your COST of living is $3,500/month, what's wrong with making $35,000/month? Nothing!nnDoes that make you a greedy person?nnDoes it mean you're taking more than your "fair share" of the pie?nnWho ever said that we have to make just 10% ABOVE our COST of living?nnWho ever said that we have to charge just a little bit more above the cost of services we provide?nnIt's not going to happen overnight, but if you have this Mental Virus installed in your mind as well, start looking into this and changing it. When you make decisions on what to purchase in your life, do you purchase the things you TRULY WANT or do you purchase the things that are being sold just above cost (aka 'good deals')? CAN you go out and buy a $500 pair of shoes and feel ok with that if you really like them? Or do you shop at the 40% OFF section?nnIf you're living your life thinking that you are not worthy of making more money than just a bit above your cost of living, you'll do this:nn1) You'll keep your income the same forever and try to keep your costs the same forever in an ever inflating economy.nnornn2) You'll make more and more money in your life, but because the "extra" money in your pocket feels "wrong" you'll justify making it by increasing your expenses to come within 10-20% of your earnings. You may do all this personal development stuff, you might work hard, you might use the Law of Attraction to earn all this extra money, and you might even be making $500,000/year, but until you DELETE this stupid Mental Virus, you'll just increase your expenses to $480,000/year right along with it.nnWhy? Because somewhere along the way someone installed a Mental Virus in our heads that says that making WAY MORE money than we need to "live" is somehow wrong.nnHere's how this Virus affects Inspired Money Makers even more than others.nnBy definition, to be an Inspired Money Maker, you will need to be making money doing what you love. When we are doing what we love, we don't really feel like it's "work" so what happens? We don't want to charge for it! If, for example, we love painting pictures we will paint a picture and we might consider selling it for $100 or $200 at a craft fair or something. Why not try selling it for $80,000? My point is that we won't EVEN TRY!? Why not take that picture, frame it in a nice $300 frame and try selling it for $80,000? If it's a beautiful picture and it brings joy to the person who looks at it and they feel it's worth $80,000, who are you to judge that it's not worth that much JUST BECAUSE it only took you 2 hours to paint it?!nnDo you think it costs BMW $150,000 to make a BMW?nnDo you think it costs a hotel much more for the executive $25,000/night room than it does for the $300/night rooms?nnDo you think it costs Rolex $35,000 to make a watch?nnDo you think it costs $15,000 to make a designer purse?nnDo you consider all of these "rip offs"?nnIf so, how will you EVER be able to make money doing what you love when you KNOW damn well that you'd do it for free! No matter what you charge, you'll think you're "ripping off" the consumer. You'll be thinking "Oh man, I hope they don't find out that I enjoy doing this so much that I'd do it for free..."nnMaybe it's time to start making some mental adjustments in your thinking. Next time you do something that brings value to someone else, why not charge them the fair price THEY perceive the value to be worth? Who cares if it cost you nothing, and you ENJOYED doing it?