168. You Don't Need to Impact Millions of People to Make a Difference in the World

The way do you create deep and lasting change in people's lives is to connect with people and serve them and help them and listen to them and hear them, and then based upon that, create value for them.

Hey, it's Wade here. Hope you're doing awesome today. I want to share with you a very simple concept that a lot of people have been kind of hooked by. And sometimes I have, too, in our desire to want to make an impact in the world, to want to help people. There seems to be this belief that we have to impact millions of people in order for something to happen that's valuable.

And I'm going to suggest to you that it doesn't need to be that many. You can impact people one person at a time. The way that you create deep and lasting change in people's lives is to connect with people and serve them and help them and listen to them and hear them. And then based upon that, create value for them. Now we have tools such as books and YouTube videos or the video you're watching now to reach a lot of people.

And that can hit a certain amount of impact for people. That can make an impact that's very positive. And I'm all about that. What you're going to find is people who are really ready for change need lesser interventions. So a book, a video, something that's produced from one person to many can make that difference.

But then other people need more one on one interventions where they need people to connect with them. And so it's not going to work in that way. And so in the same way, a lot of people are hoping to have an online business where they sell their online course that's let's say $1,000, and they sell it to 100 people a year or to 1000 people a year. That sounds great. But at this point, the technology has reached a point where people just look at technology and like, okay, great.

So I've got a recording of a course while I also have Netflix for $7 a month or $10 a month. And that's got a lot of entertainment on there's, a lot of production costs to that. So ultimately, we're not selling videos, we're not selling PDFs. We're really hoping to help people make change. So if we're selling anything, it's transformation.

And transformation can happen from insights. It can happen from listening to a Podfest, it can happen from reading a book. But usually it's going to happen one at a time. And in order to reach the point where we understand how to communicate in a way with people that leads to transformation, chances are we've had to have worked with a lot of individuals first. So to put it a different way, in order for me to get great at doing a certain coaching program, to teach a group first, I've got to learn how to deliver that to one person.

And how did I learn that that person wanted to deliver? Well, I was probably helping them with something else, and I was helping with Thing A, and they said, you know what? I need help with Thing B, can you help me with that? And I said, okay, well, I don't have a product for that, but I can maybe figure that out or let's work on that. And I might have done that thing that some people say you should not do traded gasp dollars for hours or hours for dollars.

I had somebody pay me for my time, and that's okay. Leon Omessi gets paid a certain amount for soccer games. Some of the players in the NBA National Basketball Association get paid for their time. When Sting is taking up his residency in Las Vegas, he's getting paid for his time. Ultimately, they really are being paid for the results, but it looks like dollars for hours.

So I want to suggest to you that if you're going to reach people, there's going to be times where it doesn't look exactly like what you've been told. It needs to look like you're not going to be impacting millions of people at once. You're not going to be selling $1,000 courses. And yet that doesn't mean that's a problem. We can reach people where they're at, meet them there, learn to first listen to what's going on in the world, how we can help them do our best to serve them with where they're at.

And then if it turns out that a lot of people have that same challenge and want that same help, then we can say to those people, hey, here's what I do. If you want the one on one coaching version of it, here's what that cost. Or if you just want my book that costs less, or if you want my group coaching, that's somewhere in between, we can do that and build a business model out of that could be something as simple as $10 for a book, $100 for a course, and $1,000 for a coaching group, and $10,000 for private coaching. So it doesn't have to be fancy. But at the end of the day, at some point, we need to have that one on one transformation.

We need to have that one on one situation where we figure this out and we help somebody first. And the way we learn about it is we listen to them and based on their feedback, we create a solution. Some of it works, we get some feedback, we tweak it, it works even better. And that's how things happen. So taking it back full circle, we don't have to impact millions.

We need to impact one person. That could be the person you see in the street, that is just having a bad day and you smile and you might have impacted that person's day. And maybe because of that smile, they make some better decisions that day, or they see the world in a different way, or they get the confidence to apply for that job. They want to apply for whatever it might be. So it can be that simple and it can be complex and grandiose of a big coaching program or a launch of a book.

But if we're missing out on the opportunities to help the one, it's going to be very difficult for us to help the millions. If I had a business and you said to me, Wade, I want to run your entire business operation. And Wade, you've got 500 locations for your business. You have 500 storefronts. I want to run all of it.

What would I tell you? First, run one of the locations first, master that, and then let's talk about you perhaps running ten of them and then 30 of them and then 50 of them. Then maybe run the whole company. Similarly, focus on impacting one person's life first. Whoever it is that's in front of you, that's your opportunity.

That's how we serve at least half the time, maybe 80%, 90% of the time. We're not going to get paid directly for the work we do. I don't fully understand how God, the universe, Karma, or any of that works, but I do know when I serve people, I feel better. So there's something inside of me that leads me to do that. And I do know that that happens.

And I get that feedback when it's one to one. And so it can work one to one. It can work one to ten and then one to 100. But that's something we grow into. We don't get there right away.

And as we do that, we're going to need teams and we're going to need to invest more. And some people have the energy and the drive to do that. They want to do that. God bless them, God love them. That's awesome.

And some people say, you know what, I just want to help 100 people and do a great job deeply impacting those people. And I want to enjoy my time outside of work. So there's no right or wrong answer here, but I just wanted to make sure that we're not beating ourselves up and thinking, Man, I only helped 100 people this year, or I only helped 50 people this year. Whoever you're helping, give them the best. You have to give them the best version of yourself, your best energy, your best intentions, if you want to.

If you believe that there is a God, I happen to, I'm not selling it. But if you do say a prayer for them, ask God, the universe, whatever it is, the voice inside you, help me be the best person I can be. Help me be my best me so I can help them be their best. Then do that and you will start impacting people. And some of those people will pay you money.

Most of them won't, and that's okay. But at the end of the day, if there's enough money in the bank to enjoy life, family and friends and pay your bills, that's a good thing. You can keep it real simple and enjoy the process along the way. I hope you find this helpful. If you have any questions or thoughts or suggestions on topics you wish I would cover or people you think I should get on the podcast different topics you wish you'd like me to do you can go to the website and share those ideas you can email me as always.

I look forward to helping you impact more people and make more money in less time due on what you do best so you can better enjoy your family, your friends and your life. Thanks so much for listening go out there today and impact one life.