Rags to Riches: the reality, a.k.a. hard work doesn't always pay off

Some people work hard all their lives, but they never get rich. Other people seem to be lazy and never do any work, but they become wealthy. This is because sometimes hard work doesn’t pay off. Or does it?

Why do entrepreneurs work so hard and get nowhere?

I’m sure you already heard the ‘Rags to riches’ phrase that basically means becoming rich from having very little money. Being self-made. Dreaming big and achieving big.

It actually sounds so good that so many not-so-self-made people claim they’re self-made. One of them is famously Donald Trump. He’s self-made, apart from the fact that claimed he turned a ‘small’ $1 million loan from his father into an empire. The New York Times says it was more like $60.7 million in loans… Anyway, if your father or anyone lends you $1 million that would not make you self-made as you’ve got access to a huge lump sum.

Anna Delvey or Sorokin, if you like it better (you can know her from the news or from the Netflix series, “Inventing Anna”) is much more a self-made person. Whilst I’m completely against what she was doing, she did not have the background to be the person she wanted to be. She didn’t have a dad or a rich relative who could’ve lent her some money so she could enter the elite circles she wanted to mingle in. Yes, she’s a scam artist but you could rather call her self-made as the previous president of the United States.

But why is it so admirable that someone from a poor background can work through all the difficulties and get the thing they wanted?

Because we all want to believe if we do the things we’re asked to or believe in then we WILL be awarded and can achieve the thing we want to achieve. This is programmed in us. We want to believe that the good always wins and the bad always gets the deserved punishment and everything is fair. It’s kind of a fairytale (not the original gruesome ones, the Disney ones).

And who are those people who like to dream big and go after their dreams?

Entrepreneurs.

So why hard work doesn't always pay off?

One of the reasons is that if you’re an entrepreneur, small business owner, sooner or later you’re going to become the bottleneck in your business. And as such, you can’t go further.

What does this mean? As your business is growing, you’re getting busier and busier. You’re going to get so busy that you won’t be able to keep up with the demand for your services.

This can cause problems for your business because clients may not be able to get what they need from you. You may also start to lose money because quality can drop and unsatisfied customers can damage your reputation.

“OK, I get busier and I’ll hire people or raise my prices, so what?” – I hear you.

That’s cool, but from the point, you hire people you lose the USP you used so far. You know, the Unique Selling Point, the very thing that differentiated you from everyone else. Why?

Because so far you said to everyone that your thing/offer is unique because no one does it the way you do. You used your personality, experience and knowledge to deliver a service. But once you hire people to deliver a service for your clients, you WILL NOT be able to transfer your personality. You WILL NOT be able to differentiate yourself the same way you did it before.

And if you start to raise your prices, if you’re not differentiated and unique, why would people pay higher prices? It wouldn’t even be you who would deliver the service. How could you justify the value?

Does this mean that you shouldn’t go for your dreams and be busy?

No. You should do it. But before you go for it, put down proper foundations. Differentiate yourself on every level, and I mean you need to find the uniqueness of you, your offer and your business to be able to do this.

Map out your processes and improve your efficiency. Just that step will help you deliver your service and RESULTS quicker to your clients, hence the value of your offer (perceived and real) is increasing. If you have systems you can teach your employees or outsource tasks and your VAs, assistants or other service providers will be able to follow your processes. This means the quality stays at high standards and you don’t need to waste time micromanaging everyone.

You’ll also be able to automate recurring tasks to save time and money. Did you know that the average entrepreneur could save a minimum of 15 hours a month just by automating recurring tasks? That’s 2 working days a month you could spend on whatever your heart desire! But to have those 2 days, you need to have clear processes, so you can find those things that you can eliminate, automate or outsource.

Imagine for a second what would happen if you need to go to a hospital for an operation and after that, you’d need to stay in bed for 6 weeks. Would your business survive?

The more thing you do yourself, the more manual work you do, the more marketing and sales rely on you the higher the risk of your business might not survive.

So instead of working every awake hour under the sun, have a crystal clear plan you can follow. Because being busy just lead you to burnout. Ask any entrepreneur who works a lot (irrelevant if they have or don’t have clients) if they ever experienced burnout. And also, by being busy with your business all the time, you just created a glorified job for yourself you cannot escape. And doesn’t pay you well enough…

If you liked this tip and want my help and a more detailed structure I can help you with that. We start with the Outstanding Gameplan to strengthen your uniqueness and leverage buyer psychology to increase your profit. And once you become outstanding, we’ll find a way to increase your profit without working more.

And if you’re up for it, keep reading because I tell you how we’ll do it.

How will we do this?

First, we’ll look at your business, industry and your offer to understand why people buy from you and leverage buyer psychology to sign more clients. (I wrote a dissertation on the topic.) And we’ll find the unique essence of your offer that’ll put you above all similar offers to attract and impress your (prospective) clients.

And after that, we’ll do the math and your pricing to make sure your business can reach a very nice and comfortable high-profit margin revenue (a.k.a. your ambitious income goal), without working every hour under the sun. Yes, this means we’ll brainstorm ways to increase the value of your offer or reduce the time of delivery.

And if you’re a good fit and want to go further after the Outstanding Gameplan, you might grab one of the Profit Zone offers to progress further, which include the below steps and more.

We’ll find the best ways to grow your audience by checking on your existing results, resources & your personality. You can expect to work on your email marketing, social media & community-building activities.

We’ll put together a simple system & process that’ll help you increase your sales conversion & referral rate.

We’ll pinpoint your crystal clear & concise message & craft a few viral & engagement posts. You’ll write different posts following my proven method by leveraging buyer psychology to get the leads coming in. Then I review & critique your content.

We’ll optimise your sales process to increase your conversion rate, so you can enjoy better results with less work.

Together, we’ll create the simplest marketing plan on Earth for your business. And help you repurpose your content to be able to set and forget most of it.

By this point, your offer, your messaging, content & sales process basically lets people close themselves with very little effort on your side.

One of the versions of my Profit Zone method I used to help a client to go from making £9M in a year to over £20M in just 9 months. This method also helped me save 6 figures in a client’s marketing budget whilst increasing their business growth by 270%.

End result? You’ll be able to simplify your marketing, fine-tuning your marketing message and methodology so these won’t hold you back from rapid growth and peace in your business anymore.

No more working way too hard talking to the wrong people and presenting your offers in the wrong way.

Pretty simple, right? And very effective.

But this is not for everyone, so who's a good fit to work with me?

they want better quality leads and more clients but they don’t want the “busy work”, they want to focus on money-generating tasks and they need a clear method they can follow

their content doesn’t generate buzz and/or leads because it lacks the clarity and powerful, unambiguous positioning and messaging required to generate those leads

they already know their material is great but for some reason, they’re stuck under the frustrating income ceiling that they want to smash through now

they don’t want to change niche or your offer (tweaking is fine) because it works but they need to up their game

they’re confident in their ability to convert all their new leads into clients

Are you ready to scale your business to the next level?

How it works

Step 1

starts with the Outstanding Gameplan

The purpose of the session is to recognise the uniqueness of your business, so you can stand out of the sea of sameness. And once you become outstanding, we’ll find a way to increase your profit without working more.

All this in a 2,5 hours online session.

Step 2

let the ball roll with Profit Zone

The Outstanding Gameplan uncovers the unique essence of your offer that’ll put you above all similar offers. After that, with the Profit Zone, I’ll show you the simplified processes, crystal clear, concise messaging, content and the easiest marketing plan you need to sell NOW… If you don’t have the time to wait 3-6+ months to start making money.

All this in 1 or 3 days.

What people are saying

Who am I?

I’m Viki Thorbjorn, an ex-athlete turned award-winning marketer. I’ve helped clients to go from making £9M in a year to over £20M in just 9 months. Or to save 6 figures in a client’s marketing budget whilst increasing their business growth by 270%. And just in 2021 alone I helped thousands of people with their business and gained hundreds of customers – will you be the next?

And I designed the Outstanding Gameplan to reveal the very unique, authentic essence of your business, letting you tackle the goals you care about, no matter how complex or ambitious they might seem.

Rags to Riches: the reality, a.k.a. hard work doesn’t always pay off