This post is excerpted from the book How to “How to increase your income by $10,000, $20,000, or even $30,000 per year” which goes through in exact detail how anyone can dramatically increase their income, no matter their personal situation. You can download it for free here, or on Amazon here.

From nothing to something

How much does a pound of iron cost? One dollar? Maybe two dollars? What are one thousand shiny needles worth? One hundred dollars? Two hundred dollars? How does a pound of iron get to be worth one hundred times more? I am going to tell you the secret and it’s the secret of all success. Ok, it’s not really a secret but it sounds better if I call it a secret because now you are paying attention. Applied intelligence combined with applied effort.

It’s not the iron that becomes more intelligent. It’s what you did with the iron that made it useful and valuable to someone else. You could have turned that iron into five carburetors or ten watch cases, or fifty precision pieces for a machine, or one thousand needles and each time you would have added value. It’s your applied intellect that makes the world a better place.

Add value to be valuable

Cars are just a pile of metal, plastic and rubber. Glass is made out of sand and limestone, both cheap commodities. A computer is just a pile of metal and tiny bits and pieces of silicon. A smartphone is five cents worth of plastic and glass. 99.99% of the value of a smartphone is applied intelligence. That is a fact worth pondering. Software is probably the most amazing invention ever; it’s the greatest added-value application of human intellect ever.

Many people and companies are paid enormous sums of money for…what? Pure organized intelligence.