For the love of money
Chasing money or chasing your passion?
It’s a professional dilemma that frankly I have never fully worked out.
In my heart of hearts, boys, I believe that when you do what you love, and you do it well, money will follow.
The fact is, if you love house cleaning, and you do it well, it’s highly improbable that will turn into a pot of plenty.
So to an extent, you guys will have to choose a job or a profession that has a reasonable chance of providing opportunity for both love and for money.
You know how they say that money can’t buy you happiness. They neglect to mention that very few people without financial resource are happy either. Again, it’s a quagmire.
I know this. My most financially successful friends have created greater wealth because they love making money. That in an of itself becomes the source of the passion. So whether they are in the assisted living business or in the cement business, their satisfaction comes from managing a business successfully.
I know this. If you don’t put making money on the list of life/career objectives, the decisions you make will likely not lead you towards the cash.
Realistically, I just have to say that money matters. It never mattered enough to me to leave the advertising marketing world and move to sales where the dollars would have been larger but for me the personal reward smaller.
At 21 it’s easy to believe that you don’t need material things. Certainly a large house, a new car every three years, a club membership and a boat won’t necessarily make you and your spouse happy. But having the opportunity to determine how much or how little you need only comes from pursuing a career where significant income opportunities are present.
Mom and I made the top 10%. But the reality is that only the folks in the top 1% can self-determine every day. And if you aren’t in the top 10% in America today, you are simply going to struggle to make ends meet on a daily basis.
My thought is this:
1. You can make a more than fair wage in second tier professions (architecture, advertising, etc) provided that you are entrepreneurial enough to run your own business; corporate enough to work your way through the bureaucracy in New York, San Francisco or Tokyo; and flexible enough to uproot yourself and your family when greater opportunity presents itself somewhere away from home. You guys both know how tough that is to do. But it is a part of the trade off we make for love and for money.
2. You can direct your efforts to a field in which money is made beyond the C-Suite — medicine, law, international business requiring significant travel and multi-linguistic skills. Some skills simply are valued more than others and fewer people are qualified for the position. Scarcity creates financial success. Thus, guy with 65 IQ’s making millions catching a football.
3. You can create wealth through the development of a better mousetrap … and then managing that mousetrap company effectively until you can find a larger partner to buy out your brilliance.
4. You can become a great salesperson. Regardless of the industry in this world if you can close a deal you can make money.
In any of the three areas you still be easily derailed. It’s a competitive world and those who risk rising above the mass are always a target for others attack.
My best advice to you is this.
Focus on being great at something. Set a clear course. Be persistent. Never lose sight of the financial reward — in essence, know your worth. If money matters, make decisions that you can reasonably predict a better financial outcome.
And always bear in mind that if money and the pursuit of money isn’t making you happy, then lose that objective and turn to others where happiness is found. Just don’t lie to yourself and say that money doesn’t mean anything to you until you are confident that you would rather live off the land, collect road kill for dinner, and plan your vacations around the location of a Super 8 or Motel 6.
That might seem harsh. But for many of us making and multiplying money is simply a never ending challenge. In retrospect, I think my failure (so to speak) was chasing my personal passion to the exclusion of chasing opportunities where financial reward would have been greater.
Don’t settle for less. Have a plan to make more. Then adjust as you determine what you need versus what you thought you wanted to have.
Simple? Hardly.
Just a part of the greater plan.
