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The 5 Elements of Bigg Success

Written on March 26, 2009 by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster in Success

Last time, we talked about how the words we use, the terms, can provide fuel for our bigg success. It’s all part of the definition of bigg success. Bigg success is life on your own terms.

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Hear George & Mary-Lynn discuss the 5 elements of success on The Bigg Success Show! Click the purple player: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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As we conducted our research, we discovered five core elements that propel people to bigg success or that keep us from living our lives on our own terms.

The 5 elements are money, time, growth, work, and play.

They operate independently and interdependently all the time.

Money

As we surveyed people, some of the issues regarding money were:

not making enough
spending too much
not saving enough
not knowing how to invest it

Time

We can get more money, but we can’t get more time. So time is our most precious resource.

Some of the issues we’ve heard in regards to time include:

not knowing how to prioritize
being too stretched between work and home
wishing there was more time for a certain activity
a to-do list that just keeps growing

Growth

Growth is vital to becoming the entrepreneur of our own lives. As we talked about this with people, we found that fear often holds us back because bigg success often forces us out of our comfort zones.

We also heard about challenges with certain essential skills – not the type of skills we learn in school – but the soft skills that are crucial in the 21st century economy.

Work

This is one of the most important decisions we make. Yet it’s definitely not a once-in-a-lifetime decision any longer. To be a bigg success, we must constantly evaluate our situation to see if a career change makes sense.

One of the most critical choices we make is whether we choose to work for ourselves or for someone else. We are the entrepreneurs of our own lives. But do you want to be an entrepreneur in the traditional sense of the term as well?

We obviously face a lot of challenges here as we learned from our research. Some examples:

How do I know if I need to change jobs or think about a career change?
Am I ready to start my own business?
What do I do if I’m really unhappy where I’m at?
How do I make money doing what I love?

Play

Play helps us build vital relationships. It also provides the experiences that make our lives whole.

Many people don’t achieve bigg success quite simply because they don’t play enough! All work and no play, you know! It not only makes us dull, it dulls us.

Another challenge with play is finding time for just ourselves as individuals as well as the people that we care about.

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You can’t have one without the other (four)

What we love about these five elements is how they work interdependently.

Money and time – the two resources we all have.

Work and play – the expressions of who we are.

Growth – the element that links it all together to drive us to bigg success.

We spend time at work to make money so we can afford to play. But if we spend too much time at work, we don’t have time to play! We may spend money to get more time, or we may have to spend more time doing something we’d rather not do because we don’t have the money. With a little growth, we could make that money so could spend more time doing what we want.

Back to the future

The idea behind these five elements and how they work together is the well from which we’ll be drawing for upcoming posts. We’ll focus on the challenges we all face and the opportunities we have to live life on our own terms.

So what does life on your own terms mean to you? What challenges are you facing right now in your quest for bigg success?

You can share that with us by leaving a comment below, calling us at 888.455.BIGG or sending us an e-mail at bigginfo@biggsuccess.com.

We’ll take the most common challenges and do a show about them. We’ll also highlight how people are living life on their own terms.

So this is your opportunity to get in on the fun!

Thank you so much for checking in on us today.

Join us next time as we wrap up this series. We’ll discuss the bigg idea behind our definition for bigg success.

Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

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Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
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Related posts

What is Bigg Success?

Own Your Life

The Power of Defining Your Terms

The Bigg Idea Behind Bigg Success

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Make 55 Percent More Money – Part 2

Written on February 12, 2009 by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster in Balance, Money, Time Management

watch_time Last time, we discussed using the way a venture capitalist invests as a model for how we invest our time. We talked about a 4-step process to create a portfolio of activities that generates the greatest return.

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Hear George & Mary-Lynn discuss today's topic on The Bigg Success Show! Click the purple player: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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The example

Now we want to look at an example. Let’s say that you make $100,000 a year. You invest 2,500 hours a year – 50 hours a week for 50 weeks – to earn that money. We immediately see that you’re making $40 an hour.

We’ll simplify the 4-step process we discussed last time. Let’s say that you found that 20 percent of your activities generate 80 percent of your income. The old 80/20 rule. We’ll call these your highest-value activities.

So while you earn $40 an hour from your entire portfolio of activities, you’re actually making $160 an hour from your highest-value activities.

Also assume that further analysis showed that you aren’t making any money from 20 percent of your tasks. These are your lowest-value activities, which are really weighing down the overall return on your invested time.

before-snapshot1

A bigg jump in income

Looking at the lowest-value activities, ask yourself if you can eliminate any of them. Let’s say you determine that all those activities are a complete waste of your time. Further assume that you could spend all of that time on your highest value activities. It’s unlikely that this would be the case, but it illustrates our point simply so let’s go with it.

Under our assumptions here, your income would increase 80 percent. You would make $180,000 instead of $100,000. Instead of making $40 an hour, you’re making $72 an hour. Sounds pretty good, huh?

But it’s really just making sure you’re allocating your time – your most precious resource – most effectively.

after-snapshot1

Make 55 percent more

The problem is it’s not realistic to think that 20 percent of your time is completely wasted. In fact, we bet you waste very little. A more realistic assumption is that you would have to pay someone to do some portion of these lowest-value activities. But you can afford it now!

In fact, we found that you could pay up to $160 an hour for those activities and still break-even. But we want to do better than break-even.

So we assumed you would pay $50 an hour on average for those activities. In that case, you would make 55% more even after paying someone!

Synergy

Now think about it, you’re paying someone $50 an hour and before you were only making $40 an hour. This is consistent with things we’ve seen in our own businesses as we focus on higher-value activities.

But here’s something else we’ve found – your highest value activities may our lowest value activities. This is where synergy comes in. By partnering with people and organizations around core strengths – we work together, with you doing what you do best while we do what we do best – everyone makes more money without investing more time.

The importance of testing

But what if you just don’t have the money to hire someone to do these things for you? It’s important to test. Just try investing a little more time on your highest value activity.

You may have to give up something – even a little downtime – while you’re doing this. See if you make more money. If you do, keep feeding that task. To do that, find ways to delegate those lower-value activities for you, even if it costs a little money.

Just like a venture capitalist, if you keep funding those activities that generate the highest return and you move away from things that don’t, you’ll make that bigg money you know you’re worth!

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