Jerry Maguire
starring Tom Cruise, there are many great one-liners. Probably
the most memorable is: “Show me the money.” But there is one line I thought most truthful. It
comes from the scene where Tom Cruise is leaving the firm. He has just been fired, and he is
asking the entire company, “Who wants to come with me?” And the whole place is silent and
frozen. Only one woman speaks up and says, “I’d like to, but I’m due for a promotion in
three months.”
That statement is probably the most truthful statement in the whole movie. It is the type of
statement that people use to keep themselves busy, working away to pay bills. I know my
educated dad looked forward to his pay raise every year, and every year he was
disappointed. So he would go back to school to earn more qualifications so he could get
another raise. Then, once again, there would be another disappointment.
The question I often ask people is, “Where is this daily activity taking you?” Just like the
little hamster, I wonder if people look at where their hard work is taking them. What does
the future hold?
In his book
The Retirement Myth,
Craig S. Karpel writes: “I visited the headquarters of a
major national pension consulting firm and met with a managing director who specializes in
designing lush retirement plans for top management. When I asked her what people who
don’t have corner offices will be able to expect in the way of pension income, she said with
a confident smile, ‘The Silver Bullet’.
“What, I asked, is ‘The Silver Bullet?’”
“She shrugged and said, ‘If baby boomers discover they don’t have enough money to live on
when they’re older, they can always blow their brains out.’”
Karpel goes on to explain the difference between the old defined-benefit retirement plans
and the new 401(k) plans that are riskier. It is not a pretty picture for most people working
today. And that is just for retirement. Add medical fees and long-term nursing-home care and
the picture is frightening. Already, many hospitals in countries with socialized medicine
need to make tough decisions such as, “Who will live, and who will die?” They make those
decisions purely on how much money they have and how old the patients are. If the patient is
old, they often will give the medical care to someone younger. The older poor patient gets
put to the back of the line. Just as the rich can afford better education, the rich will be able to
keep themselves alive, while those who have little wealth will die.
So I wonder: Are workers looking into the future or just until their next paycheck, never
questioning where they are headed?
When I speak to adults who want to earn more money, I always recommend the same thing. I
suggest taking a long view of their life. Instead of simply working for the money and
security, which I admit are important, I suggest they take a second job that will teach them a
second skill. Often I recommend joining a network-marketing company, also called
multilevel marketing, if they want to learn sales skills. Some of these companies have
excellent training programs that help people get over their fear of failure and rejection,
which are the main reasons people are unsuccessful. Education is more valuable than money,
in the long run.
When I offer this suggestion, I often hear in response, “Oh that is too much hassle,” or “I
only want to do what I am interested in.”
If they say, “It’s too much of a hassle,” I ask, “So you would rather work all your life giving
50 percent of what you earn to government?” If they tell me, “I only do what I am interested
in,” I say, “I’m not interested in going to the gym, but I go because I want to feel better and
live longer.”
Unfortunately, there is some truth to the old statement, “You can’t teach an old dog new
tricks.” Unless a person is used to changing, it’s hard to change.
But for those of you who might be on the fence when it comes to the idea of working to learn
something new, I offer this word of encouragement: Life is much like going to the gym. The
most painful part is deciding to go. Once you get past that, it’s easy. There have been many
days I have dreaded going to the gym, but once I am there and in motion, it is a pleasure.
After the workout is over, I am always glad I talked myself into going.
If you are unwilling to work to learn something new and instead insist on becoming highly
specialized within your field, make sure the company you work for is unionized. Labor
unions are designed to protect specialists. My educated dad, after falling from grace with the
governor, became the head of the teachers union in Hawaii. He told me that it was the
hardest job he ever held. My rich dad, on the other hand, spent his life doing his best to keep
his companies from becoming unionized. He was successful. Although the unions came
close, rich dad was always able to fight them off.
Personally, I take no sides because I can see the need for and the benefits of both sides. If
you do as school recommends, become highly specialized. Then seek union protection. For
example, had I continued with my flying career, I would have sought a company that had a
strong pilots union. Why? Because my life would be dedicated to learning a skill that was
valuable in only one industry. If I were pushed out of that industry, my life’s skills would not
be as valuable to another industry. A displaced senior pilot—with 100,000 hours of heavy
airline transport time, earning $150,000 a year—would have a hard time finding an
equivalent high-paying job teaching in school. Skills do not necessarily transfer from
industry to industry. Skills the pilots are paid for in the airline industry are not as important
in, say, the school system.
The same is true even for doctors today. With all the changes in medicine, many medical
specialists are needing to conform to medical organizations such as HMOs. Schoolteachers
definitely need to be union members. Today in America, the teachers union is the largest and
the richest labor union of all. The NEA, the National Education Association, has tremendous
political clout. Teachers need the protection of their union because their skills are also of
limited value to an industry outside of education. So the rule of thumb is: “Highly
specialized; then unionize.” It’s the smart thing to do.
When I ask the classes I teach, “How many of you can cook a better hamburger than
McDonald’s?” almost all the students raise their hands. I then ask, “So if most of you can
cook a better hamburger, how come McDonald’s makes more money than you?”
The answer is obvious: McDonald’s is excellent at business systems. The reason so many
talented people are poor is because they focus on building a better hamburger and know
little to nothing about business systems. A friend of mine in Hawaii is a great artist. He
makes a sizable amount of money. One day his mother’s attorney called to tell him that she
had left him $35,000. That is what was left of her estate after the attorney and the
government took their shares. Immediately, he saw an opportunity to increase his business by
using some of this money to advertise. Two months later, his first four-color, full-page ad
appeared in an expensive magazine that targeted the very rich. The ad ran for three months.
He received no replies from the ad, and all of his inheritance is now gone. He now wants to
sue the magazine for misrepresentation.
This is a common case of someone who can build a beautiful hamburger, but knows little
about business. When I asked him what he learned, his only reply was, “Advertising
salespeople are crooks.” I then asked him if he would be willing to take a course in sales
and a course in direct marketing. His reply, “I don’t have the time, and I don’t want to waste
my money.”
The world is filled with talented poor people. All too often, they’re poor or struggle
financially or earn less than they are capable of, not because of what they know, but because
of what they do not know. They focus on perfecting their skills at building a better
hamburger rather than the skills of selling and delivering the hamburger. Maybe McDonald’s
does not make the best hamburger, but they are the best at selling and delivering a basic
average burger.
Poor dad wanted me to specialize. That was his view on how to be paid more. Even after
being told by the governor of Hawaii that he could no longer work in state government, my
educated dad continued to encourage me to get specialized. Educated dad then took up the
cause of the teachers’ union, campaigning for further protection and benefits for these highly
skilled and educated professionals. We argued often, but I know he never agreed that
overspecialization is what caused the need for union protection. He never understood that
the more specialized you become, the more you are trapped and dependent on that specialty.
Rich dad advised that Mike and I groom ourselves. Many corporations do the same thing.
They find a young bright student just out of business school and begin grooming that person
to someday take over the company. So these bright young employees do not specialize in one
department. They are moved from department to department to learn all the aspects of
business systems. The rich often groom their children or the children of others. By doing so,
their children gain an overall knowledge of the operations of the business and how the
various departments interrelate.
For the World War II generation, it was considered bad to skip from company to company.
Today, it is considered smart. Since people will skip from company to company rather than
seek greater specialization in skills, why not seek to learn more than to earn? In the short
term, it may earn you less, but it will pay dividends in the long term.
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