Impact Vs Reward – What Is Your Drive? Part 1

Success has many definitions. In fact, one person’s understanding of success could be totally different from what you think it is. To some, success is having a huge house and owning 6 cars. While to others, success is being able to say that because of your efforts, your family can now have 3 meals a day instead of just one. These two situations may seem similar, but fundamentally they are not. So what drives you to wake up early every morning?

This is a very important question that we don’t ask ourselves very often. But the pursuit of happiness begins with understanding just what it is you're chasing. Why get on a bus if you don’t know where you want to arrive at?

There are a great number of reasons why people want to pursue a life in making games, music, farming, blogging, or even selling toys. But all those reasons can be distilled into just two fundamental ones. To create an impact and to reap the rewards.

I believe that most people have a balance of both. I mean, you most likely want to create music that people would love plus tour the world in a private jet to attend concerts. But what is that balance? How much of your drive should be about creating an impact and how much of your drive should be about reaping the rewards?

I got one answer for you. Serve others before you begin to serve yourself.

When I offered web design services, I often realized that clients weren’t merely looking for website solutions. What they really wanted was a successful presence online. They didn’t want a bunch of images and text to just pop every time someone visited their site. Instead, they wanted visitors to feel welcomed, informed, and act on finding out more about their company and the services they offered.

This was a valuable lesson for me. You see, I wasn’t selling websites anymore. I ended up offering ways to help companies communicate their message in a clear and meaningful way online… to their specific audience. I educated my clients. Helped them identify the different opportunities they had to thrive on the web.

What was the impact? When clients are confident that they could strengthen their brands on the web. That they could get more customers by engaging with an audience online. I ended up becoming their go-to guy whenever the topic of online marketing was brought up. Doing this helped set me apart from my competition.

Look, the reason why you would want to freelance in writing or making apps is for the extra cash. I get it. But hear me on one thing: unless you have something unique to offer, you are just another freelancer-fish in the ocean. Succeeding becomes difficult.

So how do you find that uniqueness? Simple. Look to your passion. Do you love blogging? Of course, you do. Is it because you like it for the sake of writing? No, of course not. It’s because you have a message that you think is worth sharing with the world (or friends). Yep! And what if you get positive feedback from your audience? Then you have made an impact. You have helped someone in some way.

Do it consistently, and they will beg you to not stop. That’s when you charge them for content. Lol!

But seriously, this is key to long-term success. I have realized that developing a good reputation is key to surviving in the modern market where everyone and everything is connected. If you have a good reputation, people hear of you quickly and will want to interact (or do business) with you.

“People will forget who you are, or what you did. But they will never forget how you made them feel.” ~ Maya Angelou

Creating an impact generally makes you feel good about yourself. You feel a lot more helpful. You become someone that people want to be around because you have a genuine interest in helping others. Trust me, you do not want to be that person people avoid. It can be bad for business.

In Conclusion

To create an impact may first seem like a grand task, but it often isn’t. You will be surprised by the number of unhappy customers out there waiting for you to actually LISTEN and HELP them out. They expect empathy, compassion, appreciation… Business may be business, but it’s not like we're trading with robots.

Your actions/contributions will ultimately build your brand, reputation and you will definitely be rewarded for it. To create an impact. You will succeed.

Part one was to briefly look at how creating an impact could work for you. The next post will be about the results of focusing on the rewards first and worrying about impact later (if ever). And with that, I welcome you to share your thoughts on the topic and let me know if this even makes sense.