This is a continuation of last week’s topic. Click here to catch up on part one of Sex & Money 

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The most creative thing human beings can ever do is to create other human beings.  Second to that would be to create value – creating something of value that, when used by others, would enhance the quality of human lives.  The creation of other humans trumps the creation of value because humans, themselves, have the capacity to create value.  So, you’re basically creating something that can in turn create value.  It is the ultimate act of creativity!

Stay with me, mentally.

Sex is the process of creating humans, and money is the result of creating value.  Now, since we know the process involved in the ultimate act of creativity, it only makes sense that we apply its underlying principles to whatever act of creativity we engage in – especially the creation of value, which brings money.

Making money is like making love.

The first similarity is that they both desperately depend upon interaction with other human beings.  True creativity depends upon interaction with others.  Making love with the aim of making babies, and creating value with the aim of making money can never be done alone.  They both desperately depend upon interaction with other human beings.

The second similarity, or principle, is that the person you interact with has to be different from you.  Just like a male needs a female, if he’s serious about making babies, a producer needs a consumer if he’s serious about making money.  So does a boss need an employee, an employee a boss, a doctor a patient, a teacher a student, a seller a buyer.  There has to be a giver and there has to be a receiver in the process of making love and money.  Even business partners have to be different from each other.  The most successful pairs are usually those of which one is very outgoing; loves selling and marketing the product and putting out ideas, while the other generally prefers staying in to develop and improve the product; taking the ideas put out by the outgoing partner and nurturing them to life.

The third is that the heart of creativity is in trying to please somebody else.  Just like making love is most pleasurable to both parties involved when they both know that the other person is enjoying it, a business deal will be most pleasurable and profitable to you if you go into it not based on what you want out of it, but based on what the other person wants out of it.  The producer is to be chiefly concerned with pleasing the consumer; the employee the boss, the doctor the patient, the teacher the students and the seller the buyer.  Creativity is enhanced when you focus on the needs of the other party (before your own).

Lastly, they both require patience and continuous service.  If the aim of having sex – within the right context – is making babies, then we know for sure that having it only once and then putting all hopes for a baby on that one time is really not a smart move.  If making money is the aim, then creating something of value only once and then putting all your hopes on a one-hit-wonder is no smart move either.  You have to keep on producing, serving your clients continuously, getting better, honing your craft, putting out more, until it clicks one day – much like conception!

Patience is key.  Just like you have to wait a while for conception and then nine months after that, for birth, you also have to be patient with making money and building wealth.  Getting rich quickly becomes like having a premature baby.  A lot more time, effort and even money would have to be spent just to maintain it, with a meager chance that it survives.

Let’s bring this in for a landing.

Sex is the process for making babies and creating value is the process for making money.  Doing them correctly culminates in genuine acts of creativity.  Like all other things in the world, there is the true or right way to do them and then there are other ways to which the right way is superior.

If we are to be truly creative therefore, it is best we extract the principles behind the similarities between these two genuine concepts and apply them to become the most creative human beings we’ve ever been.