Give Your Money Away

Hello, I've spent lots of time trying to help you make more money through setting targets and commissions for your team, or we've talked through discounts and pricing, all sorts of things to help you get more profit out of your business. Well today, for a change, I'm going to try and persuade you to give some of it away. Welcome! I do a lot of non-fiction reading. I'm continually reading business books, biographies of successful people, a little sprinkling of marketing education, and some philosophy along the way as well. And one of the things I love is looking for the themes, looking for the stuff that emerges from all of these places, because you kind of think, if it's coming up again and again in lots of different books, perhaps we're getting close to a grain of universal truth. And one of the things that comes up again and again in the biographies of these big hitters, and I'm talking about Richard Branson and Warren Buffett, people like that, is that the sense of fulfilment they get from their business is very often dwarfed by the sense of fulfilment they get through giving and giving time to good causes. My name is Phil Jackson, I'm a coach and mentor, and I've made it my life's work to help you with the skills you need to master to build the business you deserve and enjoy. And I suppose today we're talking more about the enjoy bit, because I want you to have that sense of pride and fulfilment in your own business. I'm not suggesting for a second that you're not a charitable person in your everyday life, perhaps you're already supporting good causes financially, or dedicating your time through volunteer work, and I commend and applaud that. But I also think we should be giving through our businesses as well. I've just made a commitment to give 1% of my profits away. Okay, for a start, that's not going to be an awful lot of money, to be honest with you. It's certainly not going to change the world or make things spin off their axes for a long time. But I'm hoping as the business grows, my contribution can grow as well. So I've found a charity that I'm particularly passionate about. It's an adoption charity, because both of my children are adopted, and I'll be giving them money regularly every month through my business. Now, I think you should think about doing the same for a number of reasons. Firstly, and very unromantically, it's probably quite tax efficient. Normally, if you're giving money to a registered charity, a recognised charity, then that money is tax deductible. So we pay a little bit less on our corporation tax at the end of the year.

But I think there's some much better reasons to be doing it than that. Firstly, I think it's a nice thing to do. I think there's that kind of holistic, looking after the rest of the world thing. And also, I think, actually, ultimately, if you have great success, you'll probably want to be doing something like that anyway. And I think we can tap into that even before great success finds us. And of course, there are some selfish reasons, because actually, I think it's going to help you keep going in tough times, when you can't really see the light at the end of the tunnel, when you're not feeling that you're achieving great things in your business, when you're not having that sense that you're getting anywhere. Won't it be wonderful to look back and see how much money you've given to a charity? What difference you've made to other people's lives? Of course, I would love to give time as well as money. And I do some of that in my own personal life. But honestly, I really think it would be a worthwhile exercise to spend some time today trying to find charities that switch you on, that connect with you. I don't think, necessarily, this is a marketing exercise. I don't think you should be looking for charities that your customers are going to approve of. I think it should be something that really means something to you. And then make that commitment, even if, like me at the moment, all it can be is 1%. Send the email, make the commitment, get the logo on your website, and let's start making the world a slightly better place. I hope that's been useful to you. If it has, please don't forget to subscribe. I do a broadcast like this every single week, and not all of them are asking you to give your money away. If you've already subscribed, I will see you next week. Take care.