What is value and how to provide it?

tl;dr

You can always skip some parts, go on the fast-track, but then you won’t know what you missed in between 🙃

If you aren’t curious what exactly decides about your success, then jump directly to Takeaways.

Does value mean money?

That’s a great question to start! Value is something that many people like to equate with money. And since everyone knows what money means, maybe it would be enough to explain value? I believe value is something more than money.

I, personally, understand value as something that allows a person to satisfy their need. Let me be more precise by using examples below.

Consuming value

When you are thirsty, you’d like to have something to drink. And after having a glass of water, you stop being thirsty.

Moving from point A (being thirsty) to the desired point B (not being thirsty) requires you to consume some value (a glass of water). You have to use something you don’t have now to progress with your goals.

Is it always easy to move forward and reach what you need? Not really, I guess. You may feel blocked and lacking support. Here’s the thing. It’s 100% up to you how you make it possible for you to get from point A to point B. Either the value you are seeking for may be available for free, or you will have to pay for it.

Free value

A case when you don’t have to pay for something that you need is when you ask your family or friends for it. It may be a kind of favour, a little thing or maybe a conversation that you’re missing. Everyone is receiving help from people from the closest environment. It just happens all the time.

However, there’s the other excellent source of free value you may be searching for: the Internet. It’s an endless spring of knowledge. You can find inspiration, discuss an idea, learn a foreign language or answer that hard question you’ve had on your mind recently.

My goal is to focus on the value present on the Internet, and beneath is more.

The value you pay for

In this case, you’d been looking for something and couldn’t find it for free. But you need it to progress! What to do now?

You either ask people around you if they know someone who could have that value and give it to you. Nowadays, there’s even a more convenient way to find anything. You need to open your internet browser on your handy mobile phone and use Google. You will be able to get whatever you need — it’s only a matter of price.

So, does value mean money? Yes, in many many cases. You either pay the price to get the value, or you offer the value to someone looking for it, and they pay you.

Producing value

Think for a second, how many times during the day you pay for something? Or if you look from an annual perspective, how many bills are there that you are paying for? Whenever you spend your money to get something, you are getting some value and pay its price.

While there’s an opposite side of all of these expenses. The side of an income from producing value! And I believe this is the side to better be on. I’ll tell you why 🙂

Giving what you have for free — volunteering

If you think that you have some knowledge or time someone else could benefit from and you’re willing to help them, then it’s excellent. Just look: you don’t lose anything (or not much) while somebody you care about can develop. Think of it as paying the debts to all of these folks who supported you in the past. Stop for a while and recall how many times you were that person in need, and you got help? I bet it was plenty of situations.

If you can, support struggling people for free - after all life is not about money when you already have it.

Sharing by offering

The most common example of sharing something you have for money is working. It doesn’t matter if it’s full-time or part-time if you have your company or live as a freelancer. You offer your time to someone willing to pay for it. And what’s worth mentioning, not everyone earns the same salary for the same amount of time they sell.

The reason for that is the uniqueness of value a particular person can produce over time. To earn more, you need to provide more outcomes from a unit of your work. But how to do that?

Generating more value

It’s not an easy task; however, it’s possible. People have been doing it for ages. Below you’ll read about two ways of getting more things done in a shorter period.

Growing vertically

It’s still only you. And that’s OK. A common approach is to increase your skills. Now you become the one who seeks a value to satisfy their need. You’ve been there once or twice 😎 Personal growth requires a lot of patience and consistency. You won’t change everything in one day. But one day, everything will change. Read books, watch the presentations, take part in discussions. Keep focus, and again, be patient. Gaining new skills could be described as the multiplication of the small steps. Every single one enhances the next ones. This effect is known as compound interest.

Money example

Just imagine you’re saving money. You don’t get any saving account interest credit. It means you always have the same amount of money. After 12 months and an initial deposit of $1000 you’ll have:

1000 * 1.00 * 1.00 * 1.00 * 1.00 * 1.00 * 1.00 * 1.00 * 1.00 * 1.00 * 1.00 * 1.00 * 1.00 = 1000

Yes, you still have the same amount of money (but maybe it’s now worth even less because of the inflation).

What if you invested the initial deposit of $1000 and got 5% return of investment each month?

1000 * 1.05 * 1.05 * 1.05 * 1.05 * 1.05 * 1.05 * 1.05 * 1.05 * 1.05 * 1.05 * 1.05 * 1.05 = 1795.85

This is crazy, isn’t it? After 12 monts you’d have almost 80% more cash.

The compound interest applies a similar way to investing in skills as it applies to investing in money.

Growing horizontally

The other way to provide more outcomes is to scale what you do. Scaling is a way more complex problem than increasing the skills. It’s because when you’re scaling means delegating some work and make all the moving parts of this system work effectively with each other.

Infinite loop

You start with a little knowledge and seek the value that helps you to grow. Then you realize that you have enough skills or expertise in some subject. Now you think you could start sharing your learnings and experience. Here you find yourself looking for other people who would need the value you can provide them with.

Then, it’s again something we already said. You either share value for free (if you can afford it) or offer that value for some price.

By sharing the value, you almost always get satisfaction from it. You also get paid if you ask for it.

Takeaways

1. Understand value as something that allows a person to satisfy their need.
2. Either the value you are seeking for may be available for free, or you will have to pay for it.
3. If you can, support struggling people for free.
4. To earn more, you need to provide more outcomes from a unit of your work.
5. You won’t change everything in one day. But one day, everything will change.
6. Compound interest applies a similar way to investing in skills as it applies to investing in money.