One of the best things about having a job is that no matter what you do, you will always get paid a base salary. The longer people stay at their jobs, the longer they understand this “benefit.” Managers understand this as well, which is why they are constantly looking for new blood to keep the workforce hungry.
Everybody knows somebody at work who just kicks backs to your chagrin. Despite paying their dues way longer than you, you’re still annoyed that s/he is more senior and gets paid better! Some people are stupid enough to have the mentality of, If he can do so well slacking off, then so can I! Pretty soon, your delusional self starts getting bad marks in your mid-year review, doesn’t get a raise, nor do you get a promotion.
The lack of congruency is what gets people in trouble. Thinking we deserve one thing, when we really deserve another really kills happiness. We start complaining about perceived injustices, when we really have nobody to blame but ourselves. I remember being so mad at losing a tennis match, all I did was mentally blame him for “pushing” the ball back to me. The reality is, I was not in shape and could not maintain my level of performance for the entire battle.
WELCOME ENTREPRENEURSHIP!
A great cure for delusion is entrepreneurship. With no steady paycheck, we only eat what you kill. No, that’s Socialism. With no steady paycheck, we only eat what WE kill.
Perhaps schools and parents should be required to cut us off completely for six months before the age of 21 and see if we can survive on our own. We’ll be forced to work any job we can for a living. Our entitlement attitude easily gets vanquished when we’re flipping burgers for minimum wage.
Our appreciation for school will rise to a new level, when we feel the pain of using our minimum wage earnings from Burger King to pay for tuition or for that MBA degree. There’s no way we can slack off now can we?
Our love and respect for our parents will soar when we realize how much sacrifice they must have given to raise us. No more talking back and disobeying the rules!
Finally, we’ll never take for granted our jobs again, at least not for a long while. No more will we want to just quit after a couple years because things aren’t going away. We stick it out and fight.
THE SAFETY NET FILLED WITH HOLES
Every single month, my Paypal account resets to zero. I purposefully flush everything out so I know exactly how much income is coming in throughout the entire month. If I don’t flush the money out, then it becomes very easy to cheat and live off my old spoils.
The great thing about entrepreneurship is that there is a good correlation with effort once you get things off the ground. The more I write, connect, market, the more I get paid. The more I go on vacation and spend time on the tennis court playing with friends, the less I get paid.
Passive income is fantastic, but it is also a crutch for entrepreneurs. My crutch is that I have generated enough passive income from my years of savings and investing that I don’t have to work hard any longer. Although it took a lot of discipline to get to my passive income, but it’s all good now!
Now that I’m on my own, I am tempted on a weekly basis to just kick back like that co-worker we all know. I ask myself why I bother trying so hard, when there really isn’t any need to. I don’t need millions of dollars, or hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to be happy. I just need enough to provide for my basic needs and travel on occasion.
SWIM UNTIL YOU START SINKING
With each temptation, I just tell myself that I’m working hard because I can. I know there will be a point where I no longer have the energy or desire to continue. That is when I will shift gears, not now.
Entrepreneurship is one of the true avenues for showing what we are made of. It can be scary building something from scratch. However, it is also very rewarding and exhilarating. There will be tremendous times of stress, anxiety and worry, but the successes make up for it all. Just don’t forget to take a break, get some exercise, and do something completely separate from your endeavors once in a while! If you want to be one step ahead of the game, search for information about the benefits of pursuing a master of business administration. The lessons they teach you will give you the tools you need in order to be successful.
RESOURCES FOR A BETTER LIFE
Manage Your Finances In One Place: The best way to build wealth is to get a handle on your finances by signing up with Personal Capital. They are a free online platform which aggregates all your financial accounts in one place so you can see where you can optimize. Before Personal Capital, I had to log into eight different systems to track 28 different accounts (brokerage, multiple banks, 401K, etc) to track my finances. Now, I can just log into Personal Capital to see how my stock accounts are doing, how my net worth is progressing, and where I’m spending my money.
Negotiate A Severance Package: Don’t quit your job, get laid off and negotiate a severance package instead. Negotiating a severance enabled me to receive six years worth of living expenses from a company I dedicated 11 years of my life to. If I had quit, I wouldn’t get any severance, deferred compensation, medical benefits, job assistance training or unemployment benefits and neither will you. I believe so strongly in the message of never quitting that I spent a couple years writing this 100-page book entitled, “How To Engineer Your Layoff: Make A Small Fortune By Saying Goodbye.” I’m absolutely certain this book will help you recognize your rights as an employee and break free from the corporate grind to do something you truly want to do.
Updated for 2015 and beyond
I think the people who thrive in that environment would appreciate things more while others would just curse their bad luck and blame others for their misfortune. It takes a special type of person to have the drive that an entrepreneur needs to succeed.
Pity the fool who constantly blames others for their misfortune.
Entrepreneurship certainly does help, but it can also be part of the problem at the day job. Imagine someone starting to earn as much money as they make at their day job with the side job. I think it would be hard to stay motivated to work hard at the day job with that kind of success. For me personally, I am enjoying a little extra cash from my side business while enjoying the “security” of my dayjob. I’m working on that passive income.
True. But, that is a great problem to have!
Honestly, I am de-motivated by just pulling in a salary….sort of. I love knowing that it is there and do work hard, but if there was any uncertainty, that’s when I kick it into high gear. When my wife got pregnant, we knew that she was going to be a stay-at-home mom, so that lit a fire under me. I studied and got my EA license to do taxes (this was pre-pregnancy), applied for every promotion at my company and saved aggresively. That helped me get a 40% raise and start building a tax practice.
I feel like entrepeneurship is the GREAT motivator, and I could use a little more of it at this point in my life. :)
Then you’ve got great motivation Jake! Do it while you still got the energy, b/c I think it will fade in all of us at some point.
I’ve definitely got the energy, and I hope to be able to keep it up for a while. But I agree, at some point I won’t have it. That’s why I plan on busting my butt for a while and then level out a bit once I’ve established where I want to be. But, I’ll probably end up like you and find something else to pursue and be re-motivated all over again :)
It’s pretty interesting how our paths go somewhat differently, or very differently from where we first planned. I thought working til 60 for sure, and going the traditional route when I was in college. Then the internet bubble emerged in 1999 and I was like WOW! Making money is easy! Then the crash, and now the real internet.
Always fun to keep options going!
I think I have a little bit of ADD when it comes to generating money. Not one thing really motivates me fully… I get really excited and driven when I have several income streams coming in. I love having the dedicated “salary” but in the type of work I do I have hit a “ceiling” of sorts, so I can feel some of my drive fading. But, I also like earning money from my other job of teaching, another side business I run, the stock market (dividends!!!), rentals, and of course online income. For me, there is a little bit of a thrill in knowing that if at any time any one of these income generators fails to bring me joy I can walk away and not be too effected. I like having many safety nets to back up any entrepreneurial plans I have!
I hit the ceiling a three years ago, and was happy to engineer my layoff. When there’s no progress, it loses its fun.
I choose to work hard, too, every day. Except the days I choose to slack off, and I still get paid.
Well done!
Forcing kids to survive on their own at 18 would be a great way to eliminate this “entitlement” mentality that’s so prevalent today. Kids will realize that they have to actually work hard to receive anything of value. This should be a college prerequisite.
I have a friend who quit his start up he founded after a year b/c it felt too much like work. He had to work every weekday. I’m thinking to myself…….. really? With a startup, we should be working even MORE, especially if its our own!
What are your thoughts on making it ILLEGAL for children after the age of 21 to live at home with the parents without paying the median income rent for a room? Seems like a good way to motivate kids to do whatever it takes, including working at Burger King like you said!
Could be good! Would put more fire into kids to study hard and quit goofing off. My time at McDonald’s gave me a lot of appreciation for work. Anything is better than making egg mcmuffins at 6:45am! ANYTHING!
I think there is too much coddling and other things at home, in school, and in the workplace. I don’t think you need to always go out and start a business, but you can be entrepreneurial in spirit at work, but you should be rewarded for it as well.
True. Although, it’s not the same. It really isn’t. Being entrepreneurial at work is like maybe 25% of the feeling, fear, responsibility, joy, etc of being a full-time entrepreneur imo.
One of the reasons I was so motivated going into college was I knew I wouldn’t be able to rely on my parents for money, so I had to become independent. I think putting some of that type of fear and fire in students bellies is a good way to get them off the couch.
And I agree with you on exercise being a good stress reliever. It’s usually the last thing I feel like doing when I’m at wits end, but it really helps clear my head and get out my frustrations.
Ah yes, good to know. If you KNOW your parents are poor and can’t pay for college and beyond, you are going to do whatever it takes to do your best. I know that is exactly what you did, and now, you are rocking it. It seems so clear to me that throwing our children in the “deep end” for even just a little bit helps build character that is beneficial for the long run.
One of my best stress relievers is being active. I teamed up with a personal trainer (2x/week) and organized sports (2x/week). All four times it’s like my zen moment. I take my frustration out on the weights or a solid cardio workout. I feel like a million bucks after. Going home, and moping about it, didn’t do much for me before, other than feeling more tense the next day. Most friends think I’m somewhat nuts of working FT, and pulling in additional income on two side hustles, but it motivates me to see all the checks that come in at the end of the month, followed by an admiration of the bank accounts. I’m a huge believer of working early on in life, to reap the rewards later, such as enjoying your late 30s and 40s (or stacking chips as I call it).
Sounds like you’ve got a lot of energy Eddie! After I work out in the gym, I want to take a nap, hence I don’t work out much!
Seeing the bank account grow was very motivating in the beginning as well. Around the age of 31 or so, I began to feel that motivation fade. I just wanted more free time.
Well said. Also, money has a decreasing marginal utility, so don’t worry so much about gaining huge amounts of it. We live lives (those of us lucky enough to be in developed country, but the whole world is rising) live lives of incredible luxury. We only need to open our eyes enough to realize and see it, and fight against those who would damage and take it away. If everyone feels a little bit more appreciate and a little bit less entitled, the world will be a much better place.
Flying first class everywhere or private would be really nice though eh? :) One day!
There are some MBA programs that require two years experience! I think it should make classroom discussions less theoretical. I experienced entrepreneurship when i was 17 years old as commission salesman. I think it was a good test of my skills and certainly taught me a lot as well. The real lesson occurred in college when I lived on a budget of those summer earnings. My children lived on a budget in college as well. I think it was a good lesson for them. I am in favor of everyone testing their limits to find out what they can do. Not everyone is an entrepreneur though, but there are still ways of testing themselves.
Exactly. Let’s test ourselves and see what we’re made of. If we don’t ever push ourselves, how will we ever know our limits?
All the top MBA programs require at least 2 years of experience. To have no experience and then talk about theory is very hollow.
The best is actually going part-time and learning real-time and leveraging the knowledge from the classroom.
Having been an employee and entrepreneur, I believe certain people are better suited for entrepreneurship than others. If one is not much of a risk taker nor self motivated, much better to work for someone else. My suggestion, find what works for you.
Well, I was aiming for just having everyone experience the feeling of being completely on their own and not wondering whether the next paycheck can pay the bills. If we all go through that, I think we appreciate everything much more.
I wouldn’t mind trying that out on my kids. I can already see they feel somewhat entitled and I haven’t given them anything yet.
Funny how that works huh? How about making them hand clean the floors with a wet towel?
I agree. When you are forced to figure out how to provide for yourself, your attitude and behavior changes. It was definitely the case for me as I moved out when I was 16. I had to figure it out early in life and I am better off for it.
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Entrepreneurship definitely makes you grow up fast. I am creating things now from scratch, the ground up, not easy, but rewarding as I go seeing the potential of where it can go and the potential market I will reach.