We all want to make money, good money every year. It can be several hundreds, thousands, or even millions of US dollars annually. In developed nations, it seems relatively easier for people to build 7-figure companies. These are companies that will be realizing millions of US dollars in annual revenue. What is their secret? Yes, their operating environment could be better than ours but how do they pull it off? As it turns out from their narration of experiences, making money is easy. In principle that is true because success takes one following systematic steps. Let us dissect 3 of those steps that you can take to make thousands in a year.

Start By Doing Everything And Mostly For Free

At first, glance that sounds ridiculous but that is an important initial step in this journey. When opportunities come your way, grab them, even if it is in unfamiliar territories. There is usually a reason why people might come to you with problems needing solutions. The amount of personal development and capacity building this will do for you is remarkable. I am a living testimony of how impactful this approach can be. There have been many times in the past 3 or so years when people have come to me with unfamiliar problems or requests.

As challenging as it can be at times I have usually agreed to solve or address them. I have learnt a lot from that experience by learning as I go whilst solving real-life problems. I have also tended at times to do stuff for free. It sounds silly to do that but it can open unimaginable doors for you. Plus it primes you to be a diligent and dependable person. If you can thoroughly do something for free then you can easily do even more when being paid. This all is about conditioning yourself to be a force to reckon with as time unfolds. As you do all this you get so exposed to so many things and areas of endeavour. Ultimately it helps you in figuring out what you should then hyper-focus on and that brings us to the next step.

Hyper-Focus On One Thing Or Area

I read somewhere that the key to success is subtraction. I have come across many anonymous quotes on this subject. One says, ‘when things are not adding up in your life, start subtracting. ‘We improve the quality of what we are doing by reducing the quantity of what we should not be doing, is another one. A third one is, ‘the more you subtract, the more you add’.

All of these are driving at the importance of hyper-focusing on one thing or area. You can never be a master of all trades. All successful entrepreneurs or business people tend to hyper-focus. That is what you should do; figure out that one thing or area and immerse yourself in it. Sometime this year I did an article on the YouTube sensation, MrBeast – I highlighted hyper-focus from his example.

How do you figure out this thing or area? By asking these 4 questions namely, what teaches me the most, what interests me the most, what makes me the most money, and what is the most efficient? Obsess and be about that one thing or area! Become a formidable force or voice in that domain. Your goal is to get to a point where your name is synonymous with your thing or area of focus.

Create A Repeatable Process, Iterate And Scale

Most people do get to figure out what exactly to hyper-focus on. The challenge comes in creating a repeatable process and iterating it. You can easily manage to have 2 or 3 clients but can handle 100+ clients. Do you have a process that is solid and repeatable such that you can cater for any number of clients? Can you tweak some things to enhance the process without compromising it? Do you have the expertise and resources to scale your venture either by expanding your clientele or your geographical reach? That is where most people miss it because they get comfortable with just small revenue to cater for their bills and basics. They get uneasy or hesitate to take things further so that they realize more revenue. I can confidently tell you that most entrepreneurs or business people in Zimbabwe can make thousands and even more annually. What stops them is not having a repeatable process, not iterating and not scaling.

3 basic steps and they sound so simple but very few take them. Daily I see so many businesses or startups laden with untapped potential in Zimbabwe. Even some side hustles have what it takes to make thousands every year. I guess it is fear of risk-taking or simply being small-minded. It is high time we stop limiting ourselves by sleeping on money that is right under our noses.