Even the things that start off with “you” working, don’t have to always be “you” working. Let’s use the car washing round as an example:
Once you get to 20 cars you’re going to need help. So you ask a friend to help. You pay them £4 a car (and charge £5 a car). It’s not a secret – you did the work to get the customer and it’s your neck on the block if your friend does a crap job – so you should be paid for that.
At 40 cars your friend earns £80 for washing 20 cars and you earn £120 for washing the other 20. At that point you could even consider offloading your part of the ‘round’ to another friend for £80 and you sleep in on Sunday morning and still earn £40!!! But why would you? You’re on a roll!!! You’re the town’s premier car wash service and you want to grow this into something MUCH bigger!!!
You can increase the number of cars you can wash, or you can upsell. What about a once-a-month inside-and-out valet for £20? Now your £5 a car, 40 car car-wash business is doing £1,400 a month (3 x 40 x £5 (£600) + 40 x £20 (£800)! If you do half of those, you’re getting about £400 for the valets that you do, £300 (£100 x 3) for the car washes you do, say £80 for the valets that your ‘employee’ does, and £60 (£20 x 3) for the car washes that they do. So now your Sunday morning gig is £840 a month. Your ‘employee’ is doing OK too. His or her £560 a month extra is not to be scoffed at! And bearing in mind you and your ‘employee’ do the same work, you take home an extra £180. That’s money you’ve not ‘worked’ for physically, but you have earned because of your willingness to get off your arse, risk rejection and put something together. It’s well earned.