No matter where you are currently employed, there is one thing that will make you EXTREMELY valuable to your employer.

Shift the way you view your work. Don’t conform to the normal behaviors and ways of all the other employees, instead learn this one little secret.

The secret is simple:

Act like you own the place…literally.

Have an ownership mindset.

Every time you come in to your workplace look around and ask yourself,

“What would I do if I owned this place?”

What would I change about what I see?

If this were MY business, I would ___________________.

Every time a customer smarts off, “How would I handle this if I was the owner?”

When you are on the verge of making a sale think to yourself “I’m the owner of this company, I’ll get this sale done, I’ll do whatever it takes because my financial future depends on it.”

This mindset changes everything.

When you filter every action and every decision through the lens of the business owner, you will be shocked at how many issues you’ll see.

You will see yourself, coworkers, customer service, and your entire work environment in a whole new light.

You’ll notice the twisted welcome mat at the entrance, you’ll notice the empty hand sanitizer bottle at the front desk, you’ll notice that your sales pitch sounds insincere.

You will notice these things, and then you’ll do something about it.

People with ownership mindsets, come to work early and they stay late.

They do what it takes not only to make themselves better, but to make those around them and the entire business better.

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 I want you to listen to my story and extract from it. Look for the keys that you can take from it and implement in your own situation:

Several years ago an acquaintance of mine asked me to come work for him at his Insurance agency.

I knew NOTHING about the insurance industry, just that he was successful with his 2 offices and was looking to expand.

I checked out the opportunity, prayed about it and got the greenlight. (That’s key!)

I decided that  if I was going to work there, I was going to kick butt. I was going to be the BEST employee he had ever had from day one.

Since I had owned a business before, I came in with an entirely different mindset. I approached working there differently than any other employee. This gave me the advantage.

Case in point:

We were supposed to be to work at 8:45am. I started coming by 8:20.

I committed in my heart that I would always be the first person there. After I had been there a month, I asked the owner if he could teach me how to open the store. He gladly gave me a key and the alarm code and a few opening procedures.

I simply came in before everyone. And then I outworked them.

As I learned how to do my job, I would laser focus my attention on what I was doing, instead of having my coworkers just “show me” how to do it, I would do it myself and have someone watch over my shoulder and correct me, that way I learned faster and was forced to pay closer attention and take mental notes.

As soon as I had one minute of free time between customers, I would go to my boss and ask if there was anything else I could do for him.

At first I learned car insurance, then I asked if I could learn motorcycle insurance, then home insurance, then I asked if I could learn the preferred companies, and advanced systems. I’d ask him if there were any phone calls I could make, or file paperwork, literally anything I could do to help his business.

Think about this from the business OWNER’S perspective: Here was this new ambitious employee who comes in early, stays late, is EAGER to learn more, do more and help me take some of my work load. He outworks everyone and has a great attitude.  The boss is thinking “hey, he reminds me of me, I could use someone like that!”

Now, let me set the record straight. I wasn’t doing this to “suck up” to my boss or try to win any special favor from him. I was working as “unto the Lord.” I was there acting like I owned the company and putting my ALL into it. With God’s help, you can do the same, no matter where you work or who you work for.

Within 3 months I was promoted to manager and put on a nice fat salary with bonuses.

I was put in charge of opening two new offices in a nearby city travelling down there 2 or 3 times of week. Hiring and firing employees. Training them and setting up the offices themselves, marketing for those offices, managing those offices…basically everything an OWNER does.

At this point, I really didn’t know what I was doing. But I was confident I could figure it out.

Sometimes you’ll have to “fake it til you make it!”

(If you ask God for help and wisdom in your job/career/business He will hook you up!)

Here’s where things got interesting:

At this point, things were trucking along, but I noticed that our company’s website wasn’t really doing us any good. It was decent looking but it wasn’t showing up in Google and it wasn’t getting us any new car insurance leads.

I called a buddy of mine who builds websites (this was before I learned) and we came up with a quote and pitched it to my boss.

(Remember, ownership mindset. I saw there was an underperforming part of the company, the website, and I did something about it.)

My friend would rebuild the website and maintain it for $1200. We had to do a little selling, but not much. We assured my boss it would make the company more money.

But there was a catch, I told him I would make the website work for us if I get $10 for every new customer that signs up with us because of the website.

He happily agreed.

As the months and years rolled on, I learned more about websites, ranking high in Google, and Facebook. I did research and put in some work.

Today this extra revenue stream makes me more than a $1,200 a month. And it’s basically passive income. I worked hard up front, now it pays me month after month.

Think about it, I created my own paycheck.

I want you thinking this way too.

It made my boss happy because now we write more than a hundred new customers each month, just from the website, and I’m happy because I get bonuses for it.

Create ways to make your boss more money and you’ll make more money too.

How I got a $200 a month raise in one afternoon:

One day we were slow at work and I just had the thought “I wonder where I could lower some of our expenses?” (Ownership mindset)

I asked our secretary how much we spend on our necessities: Paper, ink, phone service, answering service, and credit card processor.

I did some simple Google searches and made a few phone calls that lowered our monthly paper order by $200 a month.

I found if we switched to an internet phone service it would  lower our monthly bills AND it came with it’s own answering service, so we saved about $100 a month on our phone bill, but it also saved $400 a month because we could cancel our old after-hours answering service!

I also found a credit card processing company that saved us a few hundred dollars in fees and ongoing expenses.

What do you think my boss thought then?

Let’s just say at this point I was his favorite.

No one else thinks like this, no one else acts like this. I simply acted like I owned the place.

I showed him what I had done and he just looked at me and said, “Wow. Thank you so much!” And gave me a $200 a month raise right on the spot. The other cool part is he had JUST given me a a $530 a month raise just two months before that!

An extra $730 a month PLUS the online lead revenue of $1200 a month, PLUS other monthly bonuses was pretty nice. (That didn’t even include my salary)

How did I get this increase so fast?

I thought like an owner.

I had an ownership mindset. When you do the same, you will get amazing results.

This is a rare quality. Most people just do the bare minimum required. Every now and then someone might work a little overtime but they don’t have an ownership mindset.

They see trash on the sidewalk but walk by, they see flaws in the company don’t care to fix them, they talk bad about their bosses (NEVER do this!) and slam their coworkers.

We can back up this attitude in scripture:

Colossians 3:23-24 says, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters,  since you know that you will receive an inheritance  from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”

I walked into that insurance office the first day, not knowing anything about insurance or what I was getting into.

But it didn’t matter, I knew the principle of the ownership mindset. Within 3 months I was the highest paid employee, and some employees  had been there for over 6 years.

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Action Steps for Increase:

Before you go to work tomorrow, commit to making this mindset shift.

When you walk in the door tomorrow, YOU OWN THE PLACE.

Beat everyone to work tomorrow.

Stay at least 15 minutes late. If you feel led to, be the last one to leave.

Look for ways to improve your company and it’s systems.

Find ways to lower expenses.

Find ways to bring in more profit.

Don’t ever be idle, find new things to learn, show your boss you want to improve and gain more responsibility.

Never talk bad about your boss or coworkers. (This one shocks people!)

Ask God to open your eyes to strategy and opportunity in these areas.

Ask God to point out things you can improve and make better, in yourself and in your business.

Stay the course, work as unto the Lord and you will live a life of increase.

As a business owner, I’ll let you in on a secret: When my employees do well, make me money, and prove that I can trust them with the reins, I WANT TO GIVE THEM MONEY! I want to take care of them, bless them, and keep them happy.

Because I want employees like that to stay with me.

Tomorrow, be that employee. Even if you’ve been at your job for years.

Oh, and one more great thing about God: Even if you do all these things and your boss doesn’t give you an increase, THAT’S OKAY!

God sees you being a great steward of your job and He will hook you up in one way or another, either at this job or the next.

Trust God to bless you, not your boss.

Make That Money!