Playing by Rules

RE-TWEET IT!
Tweet

I’ve decided.

I’m going back to being a maverick.

Because I can.

Long ago, I made the choice to specialize in pediatric heart surgery, when not many in India were willing to hinge their future on the uncertainty of pursuing what was then a non-existent sub-specialty.

After graduating, I made the even more unusual choice to follow a charity-based route to funding operations for families who could not afford the high cost.

I’m very possibly the only heart surgeon in the world who engages actively in an infopreneur business to generate a portion of this cash – in essence funding my passion through a business.

And yet, surprisingly enough, I’ve let ‘conventional wisdom’ condition some of my thinking and actions lately.

It hit me suddenly with a flash… I’m tired of ‘playing by rules’ – especially when they are rules someone else set.

This thought ran through my mind while making the decision to price my new program at a ridiculously low level – ignoring and flaunting the traditional ‘funnel’ approach of getting them in the door with a low-priced entree, and working customers up the product-profit continuum.

I not going to play the game that way any longer! I’m bored with it!

• Who ruled that maximizing your value comes from raising your prices?
• Who dictates that having more money is the end-goal in life?
• Who decided that getting more customers and squeezing higher profits out of their every transaction makes you a more successful business-person?

Not me.

And not Frank McKinney, that maverick real estate genius who also happens to be a very successful, profitable and HAPPY business owner, who says this in an interview…

“I’ve met my share of unhappy billionaires. In the same time, I’ve met my fair share of happy homeless people. What’s the difference? These people got to the top rung of the corporate ladder, they got there, put their hand on their forehead, looking out over the horizon, and say to themselves: ‘IS THIS ALL THERE IS?’ “

I’ve realized that for many, the focus is on what’s in their bank balance – because it’s an easy to measure metric, a more or less universal score-card one can use to compare and contrast.

Yet that very nature has built into it an inherent value/judgment system that leaves more people disenchanted or vaguely frustrated in the end – if that’s the only yardstick they use to measure the rich tapestry of Life.

I’ve never been guilty of that. As a school-boy, I had a plaque on my desk (and took that message pretty seriously too) which read:

“Remember, money is not everything”

… and then, in smaller print at the bottom:

“But also remember to make a lot of it before talking such nonsense!”

Money is important. It also isn’t everything. It gives you the freedom to choose which rules you’ll play by.

And in the game called Life, that’s probably the best thing money can buy!

.