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What’s a good business to start with fifteen dollars?
How much money can I make selling black staplers on Amazon?
How do I make $1 million dollars in the next six months?
Can I make money trading the Forex market?
What’s an easy product to import from China?
Inside these questions stinks the money scam. The lost entrepreneur sees
money as prey, and they are the hunter. The money-chaser rummages behind
every nook and cranny, searching for sunken treasure undiscovered by their
10,000 predecessors who just dived the same dive.
Remember, money is only a hyperreality. Just because you can see, touch,
and smell it doesn’t mean it’s tangible, other than its paper form. The truth is,
most of the world’s money is represented
intangibly
: in pixelated numbers on a
monitor, a number on a paper check or a bill, or a number represented by a
ledger entry at a bank. If you have $5 million deposited at Bank of America, you
cannot physically walk into the branch and withdraw it, at least not without
substantial notice. In every six-or seven-figure transaction I’ve done, from selling
houses to businesses, I never touched the money. A number simply moved from
one party to another based on a mutually negotiated exchange.
So, before we remove the teeth from the money scam, here’s a question: At its
fundamental core, what is money to you? Something that buys stuff? A tool for
power? A payment for work performed? While all of these things are uses of
money, they don’t define money itself.
Removing our cognitive hang-ups, what does money really represent?
If you’ve said production, you’re wrong.
A medium to facilitate barter?
Nope, but getting closer.
Value?
Wrong again, but now you’re getting hot.
Try this.
Assume you have something I want. Let’s say it’s an eighteenth-century gold
statue, and I pay you $50,000 for it. In this exchange, we mutually agree and
reach equilibrium: I value your statue at $50,000 and you value losing it at
$50,000. The transaction mediator in this exchange is money. We agreed. No one
was held at gunpoint and forced into the transaction. Money is not hunted,
cajoled, or manipulated in the deal; it merely mediates and bridges the deal once
equilibrium is reached.
Afterward and thanks to the money bridge, I get your statue and you get
$50K; this stores the transaction value NOW so you can exchange it for
something LATER. Let’s say a week later you buy a new Cadillac for $50K. In
essence, money bridged and stored our perceived value assessments between two
vastly different items: I get a statue; you get a Cadillac or the “option” to buy a
Cadillac.
However, here is where things get muddied.
Let’s say that during our sales negotiations, you represented the sculpture to
be pure gold. After paying $50,000, I later discover the sculpture is not gold but
bronze covered in cheap electroplate. I feel scammed. Why? Because you
misrepresented value.
Perceived value did not translate into actual value.
In response to this misrepresentation, I approach you (the seller) and ask for
a $49,000 refund, since my
new
perceived value of the statue is only $1,000. You
laugh and tell me to pound sand. I get in your grill and threaten you. You punch
me in the noggin. I drop to the floor and the statue shatters to the ground in a
hundred shards. As I pick up the pieces, frazzled by your unforeseen MMA skills,
I notice a tiny black satchel among the debris—apparently molded within the
statue was a satchel hidden for centuries. I open it and find what appears to be a
huge crystal rock. Unfazed, I pocket the rock and leave bloody angry while
cursing you a crook.
Next week, I have the crystal rock examined by a geologist. He tells me that
it’s a diamond and appraises it for $4 million. I call you and sneer a self-satisfied
thank you. The punk gets punked.
Despite these swings in actual value, nothing changed with respect to the
transaction because
money is just a transaction mediator where agreed perceived
value is stored
.
Unfortunately, as demonstrated in our story, perceived value has a caveat:
actual value and its delivery sometimes don’t match
. And that’s an important
distinction. Money’s velocity is only predicated on
perceived
value, not
actual
value. When you sold me your gold statue, we agreed to $50,000 in perceived
value. However, actual value fluctuated from $1,000 to $4 million.
If you're fired from a job which pays $50K per year, your employer has
decided that your actual value is not matching the perceived value, your salary.
While most world transactions amount to a fair exchange where perceived and
actual value closely match, sometimes they do not.
So, imagine the lunacy of hunting something without knowing anything
about your prey. It’s like hunting stags by stapling Bambi photos to the trees.
Most people are broke and remain broke because the money scam has made
them perpetual chasers of something that cannot be chased—
it can only be
attracted by offering perceived value.
One of my favorite metaphors highlighting this disassociation is likened to a
slippery cat scampering loose in the neighborhood. Money-chasers stalk the cat,
hoping someday to catch it—around the bushes, up the tree, and in between the
parked cars. That someday never comes. Meanwhile, the
UNSCRIPTED
know
better. They ignore the cat and instead offer it something attractive. A cracked
can of tuna later, and bam, that cat slinks in and leaps to your lap.
The money-chasing ideal is unfortunately (and disgustingly) common in the
entrepreneurial subculture. Ask many aspiring entrepreneurs why they pursue
entrepreneurship and you’ll likely hear something about money, passive income,
or world travel. I witness this several times per day.
At the end of my forum registration process, I ask: “Why are you joining our
community?” The question comes with a warning: answers are evaluated, and
fudged registrations are deleted. Despite the clear instructions, the most popular
answer is simply “money.” Other popular answers are “get rich or die trying,”
“want to own a Lambo!” “travel,” and other inconsequential cringe-worthy shit.
These responses expose money-chasing “dreampreneurs”—a class of wannabe
entrepreneurs who somehow mistook starting a business with a ride on the
Ferris wheel with a stick of cotton in one hand and a Slurpee in the other.
Lost in the money hunt is money’s true nature. And it’s something few talk
about. Money is stored perceived value intangibly accounted, value that you have
created, acquired, and communicated. In effect,
your net worth scoreboards how
much perceived value you’ve created, communicated, and sold beyond your
consumption of it
. Billionaires (or their heirs) have been privy to a massive value
operation. And the actual paper? That’s our universal agreement to transform
the intangible number into the tangible. Throw in some fancy paper, ink, and
dead presidents, and voilà, money!
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