On a recent long-haul flight, I played a computer game called “Plants vs. Zombies” and learned a valuable business lesson.
The game created a mini economy around my battle to protect my home from zombies with the tactical usage of garden plants.
The most critical plant, it turns out, was the sunflower, a plant that would issue a small ray of sunshine every 30 seconds or so, which would help me accrue 25 points at a time.
When I accrued 50 points [or each 60-second interval], I could buy another sunflower, or I could start to buy various weapons to defeat the zombies coming to my house.
What I discovered quickly was that if I focused on investing early in weapons and arsenal for my zombie defense, I moved slowly, waiting for each minute for more rays of sunshine to give me currency in my bank account to buy more weapons.
The zombies came in ever more forceful waves, and some had the power to eat my weapons and move past them, eating my sunflowers and getting closer and closer to my house [and to sure death].
However, if I focused my investment strategy on buying more and more sunflowers, I found the opposite was true.
I quickly found I had a bank of sunflowers, each producing rays of sunshine such that almost every few seconds, more sunrays filled up my currency coffer.
My currency coffer was overfull, and I could buy and replace every weapon I needed and have money to spare.
I would finish each round with thousands in the bank and all zombies defeated before they even had a chance to break through my defense or eat my sunflowers.
My business lesson was hard-hitting.
Invest in income-producing assets that work for you and fill your coffers so you can repel the waves of zombies that devour business time and money.
Zombies such as annual software licenses, tax bills, client refunds, hiring costs, ads bills, and the list goes on.
If you invest in things that destroy zombies one by one or focus on paying each bill as it comes in, the wave of zombies becomes so great that your defenses are broken, and the zombies take over.
Scaling a business means that zombies only increase and rarely decrease.
However, by investing in income-producing assets, the coffers are always replenished, defenses can always be paid for, Zombies are always defeated before they can come close, and there are always reserves for the future.
For me, income-producing assets are clients on retainers who produce income each month without more new work required to solicit and onboard them.
Another is my course materials that can serve clients in a year-long paid-in-full mastermind, a program that creates great results without much new investment or effort on my behalf.
Sunflowers for you could be rental properties that create recurring income after all expenses have been paid or investments/ shares in companies that grow and grant you dividends.
Income-producing assets are sometimes different from passive income producers. However, the principle is the same.
Invest early in the source of income that, once in place, will equip you with all the energy and resources required to achieve the goals of life and business that you need
