Profit sharing is a perfect situation for applying the foundation tools from the Diamond Cutter Institute to meet your goals. You can meet all your goals because of one very simple but critical idea. Your success will not come from the business model you choose or the partner you pick. It will not come from the marketing package you put together. 

In this chapter you are going to learn exactly how you are going to reach your goals. This is a two part process; understanding where our success comes from and, most importantly, how we can plant seeds to design our own future. 

You have contemplated your financial freedom in exercise 1, let’s explore your financial goal further by making it specific. You need a concrete goal to consider as an example for this chapter so, before you read further, do the exercise below and set a financial goal.

Exercise 2 Setting a Financial Goal

Write down how much money you want to make in the next few months of business or longer if you have some prep work to do before the income starts. You can make the goal as big or small as you want but make it easily measurable. Pick a time frame that is not so long that you will forget about the goal you set or become discouraged before you reach it. Set a goal that is in the realm of possibility and also don’t limit yourself with your old ideas about money.

Example – I will make net income of $100,000 in the 2nd quarter of this year.

Keep this financial goal handy, post it where you can see it often, maybe on your computer or phone home screen or on your bathroom mirror. You will be referring back to your goal more soon. 

Is your financial goal attainable?

To answer this question, and it is one of the most important questions you can answer for yourself, consider again if money is good or bad from it’s own side. Just like fire, it can be used to make people comfortable or it can be destructive. A good way to understand that the value of anything is not coming from the thing itself is the example of the value of a house. Let’s look at the value of a house where I live in Durango, Colorado, from the perspective of several different characters, a Realtor, a buyer, a seller and a termite. 

For the Realtor, being able to sell the house by determining a fair market value will help them pay their bills in a couple of months once the transaction is complete. For the buyer of a home, the value they put on the house is a complex formula in their own mind, of comfort for their family, security in making a good investment and upcoming expenses of repairs, taxes, insurance, and other fees. For the seller, the house may represent their life savings and an opportunity to make a new start. 

For the termite the house is a reliable source of food! The realtor may have a middle price, the seller a high price and the buyer a low price. The termite, though happy with the wood, has no money so does not plan to pay anything at all for using the house. Each of them has a different idea of the value of the house. They are all looking at the same rectangle, a wooden box with square and rectangle openings and a sloping top, but each of our characters sees it differently.

Who is right about the value of this Durango home? They are all right, each one entitled to their own perception of value. Another proof that the value is not in the house is that in 2005 (seller’s market), 2010 (great recession buyer’s market), 2015 (recovering balanced market), and 2021 (back to seller’s market with pandemic) the value of the house went up, down and up again even though the house itself may not have changed much in those years. If the value was in the house, not in the eyes of the beholder, it would not change.

Here is the most important part of this example: What if the house is sitting by itself with no Realtor, buyer, seller or termite around at all? What is the value of the house at that moment? When no one is perceiving the house, you can’t say what the value is because the value is totally dependent on who is looking at the house. The value of the house is coming from each person that is looking at the house. 

What does this have to do with whether you can reach the financial goal you set? You reaching your goal depends on who is looking, in this case, it is you. Some people will set small goals and not reach them, some will set high goals and exceed them. The goal itself is not the determining factor of whether you will reach it or not, you are the determining factor. The balance in your bank account, stock account and the value of your real estate investments is not fixed, it may go up or down.  Cowry shells, which were used for currency for thousands of years, will not buy me lunch today. Bitcoins and other cryptocurrency are gaining popularity but having them may not help at the grocery store when you want to buy food. 

What the money you have will buy is also variable as prices and availability of products fluctuate. The feeling of comfort and security that you have from your net worth is not fixed either. What is enough for you may not be enough for someone else. Some people can never get enough no matter how much money they have. Others are content living simply and keeping their expenses low.

The lack of any value being in the thing itself, in the money, in the investment, indicates that your success comes from you not from the things outside of you. This is not a new idea. I am sure you have heard these phrases; “What comes around goes around,” “you reap what you sow,” and the golden rule – “treat others exactly the way you want to be treated.” Is it possible that one person can be wealthy and another person in the same circumstances can be poor? Our minds have trouble with this idea because we think that everyone is experiencing the same thing we are. It doesn’t take much investigation to realize that we are certainly not experiencing the same things. 

Understanding the process, how success comes “from” you not “at” you, is what will help you reach not just your financial goals but all your goals. Once you understand why you achieve the things you want and why you sometimes end up with things you don’t want, it is simple to use that knowledge to design the life you want to live.

Here is how it works. Imagine your life is like a blank screen and your mind is like a video camera that projects what it has already recorded onto that blank screen. It may be an unfamiliar thought that the world around you is a projection coming from you rather than a world that comes at you. If you think about it though, nothing can be perceived without the senses first sending a message of shapes, colors, sounds, tactile feelings and smells to the brain. Then the brain determines what it is the senses encountered. Is it a shell or is it money? Before the brain can determine shell or money it is also determining smooth or rough, dark or light, small or big. Every perception is dependent on a perception that came before, and it is that “label” that we project onto the objects, people and experiences around us.

Where does the recording that is projected onto the things around us come from? Your mind is recording everything all the time. Everything that you think, say and do. Nothing is ever lost, everything is a cause, and you will always get the result back: you reap what you sow. You design your reality by first choosing the imprints that you put in your mind.