Never Get a ”Real„ Job (4 page)

Real jobs render you powerless
. Clueless management. Moronic colleagues. Tedious reports. Unrealistic deadlines. What do all of these things have in common? It’s simple: No one wants or cares about your opinion on
any
of them. Your job is to keep your head down and get whatever needs handling done—no questions asked.

Don’t kid yourself. In most instances, you’re not a decision maker unless you are
the
decision maker—and chances are, you’re scared of whoever this truly is. In fact, according to a research poll conducted by workplace expert and
BusinessWeek
columnist Lynn Taylor, the average U.S. employee spends more than 19 hours each week worrying about what their boss will do or say. That hardly seems productive to the corporate bottom line.

Unlike entrepreneurs who succeed or fail based on their own decisions, employees with “real” jobs must play the roles of obedient cogs in the machine tasked with performing
X
function
Y
amount of times to get
Z
result for the sole benefit of the mother ship. Deviation from the carefully designed corporate agenda dictated from above could result in unforeseen losses—and consequently, the termination of employment. After all, such actions prohibit you from improving the wealth of others and that cannot be tolerated. Mind you, even if you abide by the corporate agenda and there are losses, it still doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed any sort of safety—or severance. Say good-bye to freedom and hello to a life as a corporate wage slave.

Real jobs overwork and underpay you
. A recent study conducted by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health found that the average U.S. employee works two months longer than an employee from 1969 for nearly the same salary after inflation adjustments.

So, not only are many people overworked—they’re also paid less for working more.

What does this mean to you in dollars and cents? Maybe $35,100 annually; the average salary for 25- to 34-year-olds in the United States according to the July 2010
BusinessWeek
article “Retirement: Gen Y’s Empty Piggy Bank”—a dollar amount that has come to be after falling 19 percent over the last 30 years after adjusting for inflation. For many entry-level employees, the workday doesn’t end at 5 pm—and it often includes portions of weekends. So, we’ll suppose that between putting out your boss’s fires at 10 pm on Fridays and composing reports during football game viewing on Sundays, that your actual workweek is 50 hours long. Breaking down your annual salary, your actual wage is a little more than $13.50 per hour. Now let’s include overtime. Oops—I forgot; according to the Department of Labor’s overtime rules, you might not even be eligible for overtime! Silly me. And let’s not forget about deductions to your paycheck for taxes and social security. So we’ll make that more like $10 per hour. After you subtract for your clothing, travel expenses, college debts, and any costs associated with your company benefits package, well, you’re lucky if you can afford a night out at the movies.

On the bright side, you do get paid vacation days. Unfortunately, the average U.S. employee only gets around 13 vacation days—well below that of his counterparts in most other industrialized nations (Italy’s average is 42, France’s is 37, and Canada’s is 26). And according to the May 2009
CNN.com
article, “Layoff Worries Keep Many from Taking Vacations,” 34 percent of Americans don’t even use all of their vacation time because they’re too afraid of losing their jobs. And although you might be eligible for a raise in a year or so, that’s only likely to happen if the corporate bigwigs haven’t taken all the profits to buy new vacation homes.

Job-happy stalwarts may claim that being an entrepreneur doesn’t guarantee you’ll make more money than a salaried employee or work less hours—and they’d be right. However, unlike “real” job employees—who are stuck in predetermined pay grades and boss-dictated work schedules—entrepreneurs benefit directly from every minute they spend on their business and have the ability to earn as much money as their efforts can produce. As companies continue to streamline their processes—and globalization continues sending jobs overseas to cheaper labor markets—employees will find it increasingly more difficult to land a job that’s willing to tolerate a more lenient work-life balance or pay them what they truly deserve for a full “40-hour” workweek.

Real jobs don’t reward you for excellence
. Not only are your wages pathetic—they are also a minuscule fraction of the marked-up prices that your company is charging its clients. Customers may be paying 10 times more than what you’re earning, but other than the possibility of a small bonus, do you know what your upside is? Bupkes. Nothing. Zero. Zilch. Zip. Well, except—maybe—a health benefits package (although, according to a Pew Research Study, Gen Y is the least likely generation to receive health benefits, with nearly 40 percent uncovered by any sort of health plan whatsoever). No, the majority of the revenue that you generate goes toward overhead costs and lining the pockets of the senior executives. Did you have any idea that you were such a thoughtful and generous employee?!

In the end, your workweek translates into nothing more than a paycheck and the honor of begging your incorrigible, take-all-of-the-credit boss for an insignificant promotion that may or may not include a measly raise. Sure, you might get an increase in wages or a bonus; however, it’s a mere fraction of the upside you’ve produced. Equity? Partner status? Ha! In most companies, those are simply hilarious jokes to tell your fellow disgruntled employees around the water cooler. Your company expects you to give everything you have—and more—without offering you real incentives for the harder work. And even if a company does offer some sort of stock option, accepting it merely renders you that much more dependent on the
only
hand that feeds you, by putting even more of your eggs into a single basket that you’re neither holding, nor have a real say in. I’m glad that you trust your CEO with your financial future. I wonder if he feels the same way about you?

Real jobs slowly kill your entrepreneurial ambitions
. Real jobs have one mission: to ensure that you keep creating value for employers under the guise of safety, security, and career advancement. Little by little, inch by inch, “real” jobs suck the humanity from you, enticing you to put self-sufficiency on the backburner by luring you deeper into their pockets with promises of bonuses, extra vacation days, and cute-sounding perks like “casual Fridays.” Distractions and tasks start to get the better of you and complacency takes over. Before you realize it, you’ve begun meeting fewer people; your drive dissipates; your ambitions dwindle; and your passions take a back seat to “getting things done.” Suddenly, you’ve been transformed into a hollow shell of yourself, tricked into putting your plans on hold indefinitely—willing to deal with your misery in exchange for the comfort of a paycheck. You’re stuck because now you feel like you really can’t lose your “real” job. You’re doomed because you don’t know how to make it on your own or you have nothing to fall back on.

THE BROKEN PROMISE

Face it: The “work hard, get good grades, and go to college to get a good job” philosophy is obsolete and completely irrelevant to our generation. Times have changed. Our mentors wanted us to apply their lessons to the world as they experienced it. They simply assumed that their way of life would continue; they didn’t get the memo that they were disconnected, out of touch, and living in a new world where a one-person business armed with an e-mail address and a mobile phone can rival captains of industry. (Actually, it was probably e-mailed to them, and they forgot to call us to ask how to open the attachment.)

Today’s job market is virtually nonexistent because of explosive population growth, the overexpansion of educational institutions, and the effects of globalization. There were only a few million students enrolled in U.S. institutions when our parents went to college. There are more than 19 million today—not to mention millions more taking classes part-time or online. Similarly, our parents weren’t competing for jobs in a global marketplace when they graduated. Like our grandparents, they mostly worked jobs within their local communities—in a time before the Internet—when local consumption was high and the country still produced its own products. Today, many of us don’t graduate from college to seek out local employment; instead, we compete globally for jobs as assistants to assistants who recycle data and produce nothing of real, tangible value.

Bottom line: We were promised more, and expected more as a result. By the time we discovered our dream jobs were imaginary, it was too late. We ended up being forced into an assembly line system known as the “real” job.

There were countless people you encountered along the way who could have explained the ways of the real world to you. But instead, everyone consciously decided to shield you from its harsh realities and fill your head with innumerable motivational sound bites. Your mother told you to “Work hard and you’ll go far.” Your high school valedictorian inspired you to “Pursue your dreams.” MTV proclaimed, “You can do whatever you set your mind to.”

But do any of these catch phrases sound remotely applicable to the 9-to-5 lifestyle as we’ve come to know and experience it today? How many employed recent college grads do you know are “living the dream”? Most aren’t even working in their fields of study—
if
they have jobs at all. I’m sure the individual with the $100,000 degree in public relations is thrilled about his position as the resident coffee and copy grunt for an insurance broker.

No one ever said, “Work hard so that you get better placement in the system.” Why? Because no one actually wanted you to become a corporate slave; they wanted you to fulfill their delusional expectations. And when their concepts of your dream job didn’t materialize out of nowhere, you were told that you needed to get a “real” job. Now you’re expected to forget everything you’ve ever known because you need to pay the bills. But when we can’t even get “real” jobs—or the ones we’re accepting aren’t even in our field—what does that say about the credibility of “the system”?

Contrary to what you may have been told, avoiding climbing the corporate ladder does
not
mean you are doomed to fail in life.
You
define your success in this world—not your parents, mentors, or teachers. They have—or eventually will—let their fears for your security, livelihood, and well-being overshadow the core values they instilled in you. Their values are still right; but their applications of those ideals are outdated, flawed, and no longer apply to your reality.

If you’re one of the tens of millions of young people who can’t even get their footing on the corporate ladder—let alone climb it—then now isn’t the time to actively keep putting your future in someone else’s hands by continuing to mail out resumes. Such an action is the equivalent of inserting a quarter into a broken arcade game, losing it to the machine, and popping another quarter in, hoping for a different outcome.

This is not a job market—it is an
opportunity
market.

Stop trying to fight your way into the system—and fight your way around it instead. If you’re wasting away at a 9-to-5 job, stop hurting yourself and your future. Paychecks come and go; but wasted time is gone forever. Rather than wasting time, money, and resources on sending out resumes or working dead-end “real” jobs to make ends meet, it’s time to refocus your energies on attaining and securing your financial independence.

Never let those around you dismiss your passions and ambitions as a symptom of postcollegiate stress disorder or shrug off your contempt for the system as the ramblings of a disgruntled employee. It’s never wrong to want more, so long as you keep both feet on the ground and a level head on your shoulders. With the proper training, attitude, and dedication, you have the power to build a revenue-generating business and rise above the antiquated social conditioning that is the 9-to-5 mentality.

However—if you think that just because mommy and daddy screwed you up that you’re entitled to be an entrepreneur—
boy
, have you got another thing coming.

2

No One Cares About You—Unless You
Make
Them Care

“What are you going to be when you grow up?” This is a profound question we’re expected to answer at too young of an age, and for all of the wrong reasons.

For example, I knew growing up that I loved the arts. However, I didn’t discover my “dream job” until a fateful day in English class during my sophomore year of high school. Our midterm assignment was to do a project about the 1960s. The class was divided into groups, and we were given complete creative flexibility. So rather than construct a cheesy diorama or give some boring oral presentation, my group opted to produce a short film for which I was the director. From that moment on, I was hooked. My calling became evident:

Show business!

Suddenly, I was obsessed with becoming the next great American auteur; the most famous film director Tinsel Town had ever known. I even gave myself a self-important sounding nickname: “Spielgerber.”

Sure, I’d yet to direct anything more than a high school play. But I could look you in the eye and tell you with absolute certainty the license plate number of my future Ferrari.

I began to connect with various members of my high school’s alumni who I found out had gone on to work in “the business” (that’s how Hollywood insiders—and wannabe insiders—refer to it). All of them
claimed
to be directors, producers, or screenplay writers; yet in reality they were production assistants merely
hoping
to fill those positions one day.

I remember thinking to myself I’d never be like those poor schmucks working their way up to the director’s chair by slogging it out 25 hours a day as some coffee gopher. I was Scott Gerber—Tour De Force, future star, and guaranteed millionaire. I was destined to direct a big-budget Orwellian masterpiece right out of college and make millions.

Boy, was I a moron.

Or, as my friends would kindly put it, an arrogant, pretentious, unrealistic jackass caught in a self-absorbed fantasy world. They weren’t wrong. That was a kind assessment.

It wasn’t until years later when I got some real-world experience under my belt that I realized how misguided and delusional I truly was. After deep reflection, I also realized that the only way I’d find success was to rid myself of my irrational ideals.

I wish I could say that I’m an exception, but sadly, this entitled mentality is hardly uncommon in Gen Y. Sure, part of the blame rests with the loved ones who rewarded us with the same shiny plastic medallions for participating in elementary school spelling bees. But truly, most of the blame is our own. We went from being children—helpless victims who were told all along about how great we were—to being adults, conscious of our own mediocrity, patting ourselves on the back for having done nothing.

Our coddled upbringing and fearless attitudes make us willing to take more risks than previous generations. The same outlook also makes us cocky, careless, and, at times, reckless know-it-alls who are under the impression that the world owes us something. Although Gen Y has been referred to as the most entrepreneurial generation in history, we’ve also been called irrational whiners, cry babies, spoiled brats, gratification whores, fame-seekers, approval junkies, and the entitlement generation.

You know what? We deserve every bit of it.

Why? Because the vast majority of us walk around as if our brilliance and enthusiasm entitle us to fame, fortune, and instant success. Well—that couldn’t be a bigger load of crap.

Like alcoholics or drug addicts, the first step to recovery is admitting we have a problem. There are deeply rooted psychological issues that we must get rid of if we are to learn how to take control of our lives and our careers and eventually become successful entrepreneurs. We can continue to live in a fantasy world if we want—but this flawed logic will result in behavioral and emotional traits that are likely to lead us down a one-way road to failure.

Now close your eyes and take a deep breath. You’re about to pop the hot-air-filled balloon known as your head.

YOU ARE NOT SPECIAL

I hate to break it to you, but your life is not a reality TV show. And even if it were, no one would watch anyway. Contrary to what you believe, the world does not revolve around you. In fact, it doesn’t know or even care that you exist. Yes, you’re one in a billion—and not in that egotistical way you’re thinking.

You’re simply one in a billion. Period. That’s it. End of story.

You are not exempt from hard work simply because you have a skill and exist on this planet. Don’t convince yourself that you will be able to open doors with a snap of your fingers. Such thinking will lead you on a downward spiral that—as the late Chris Farley said—“ends with you sleeping in a van down by the river, eating a steady diet of government cheese.” You’re not as important as you think you are. You’re just Joe Schmuck, creator of the next widget
you
believe will change people’s lives.

With the possible exception of your family and friends, no one will care about your product or your start-up. Unless they are paying customers, their opinions are worthless. There are millions of people—most of whom are bigger, stronger, faster, and smarter than you—who are vying for the same attention from the same prospects. Every one of them is trying to open those same doors, and is spouting the same sales pitches supported by the same inflated, self-proclaimed executive title.

If you want to become an effective and respected leader, you have to stop walking around like you’re better than everyone else. You’re not. If you believe that all you have to do is tell people how special you are to earn their business, you’re starting with a deeply flawed mind-set right out of the gate.

Your McLife—one which has turned you into a lazy, Xbox-addicted couch potato, incapable of long-term survival without Hot Pockets—has fooled you into believing that everything you want can be attained easily and instantaneously. You’ve been brainwashed into thinking that everything will happen in 30 seconds or less—and that you’ll reap great rewards with the most minimal efforts.

Get real! Not everything is microwaveable. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and if you think your business will be, you’re in for a rude awakening—followed by regular trips to the soup kitchen. Get this instant gratification nonsense out of your head or you’ll quit long before your start-up even has the chance to fail.

CLAIMING TO BE A WINNER DOES NOT MAKE YOU ONE

Too many people think they’re winners these days. Even the worst of the worst
American Idol
rejects—the ones who couldn’t sing on key if a madman was pressing a gun to their puppies’ heads—have convinced themselves that they’re talented and great.

If everyone is a winner, then I ask you: Where are all of the losers?

Face it: Not everyone gets rewarded with a trophy or a pat on the back. Life is a competition with real winners and losers. Second place is simply one step closer to bankruptcy.

There are concrete reasons why some people sink and others swim. When losers get knocked down, they stay down—but keep talking. When winners get knocked down, they learn from their mistakes and stand up stronger. Losers talk about what they want to do; winners get it done. Losers quit because the race is too hard. Winners hustle across the finish line, no matter what it takes.

YOU’RE BRILLIANT . . . SO WHAT?

Here’s a joke for you. What’s the difference between toilet paper and an MBA in a start-up?

Give up?

One is actually useful.

Congratulations on your perfect SAT score and graduating Magna Cum Laude. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but no one cares. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying book smarts aren’t important. Who doesn’t enjoy participating in a rousing game of Jeopardy every once in a while? But gloating about the A+ you received on your midterm paper detailing the consumer trends in emerging third-world nations will not translate into more revenue for your business.

Yes, you’ll need to be able to properly articulate your value proposition and communicate it intelligently to prospective customers and partners. However, to survive in the real world, there is a different set of secret weapons on which you’ll need to rely: hustler instincts, the intuition for problem solving, and good old-fashioned perseverance. These traits will enable you to open closed doors, surpass your competitors, and make things happen.

LIFESTYLES OF THE POOR AND VAIN

Be honest. You’ve undoubtedly daydreamed about owning yachts, Rolexes, mansions, and a Rolls-Royce. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this dream. I still hope to someday drive my Ferrari into the garage of my private 4,000-acre beach resort in Fiji. However, if the only reason you want to become your own boss is so you can live out some MTV
Cribs
fantasy, the only Rolls-Royce you’ll ever drive is the one the successful people hire you to chauffeur.

Get your head out of your idealistic
E! True Hollywood Story
ass.

The goal to become rich and famous leads to developing an unrealistic state of mind that will prove detrimental to your decision-making abilities. Indulging in a foolhardy, ego-driven, “going-for-millions” mentality will quickly become a “going-for-broke” gamble that will lead you one step closer to saying, “Would you like fries with that?”

Most business owners never earn millions or bask in the spotlight. Does this mean that most small business owners are
failures
? Absolutely not. For every trendy start-up you hear about Google acquiring for 10 figures, there are hundreds of thousands of successful small businesses you’ve never heard of that generate a healthy income to support the lifestyle of some smart entrepreneur and his family.

Don’t fall for the hype. Not only did the rock star entrepreneurs you’ve seen and read about in the media work
extremely
hard to make it big, they were also lucky. They were in the right place at the right time, with the right story and the right product or service. I’m not saying that you’ll never achieve this level of success, but you’ll be better off reorganizing your priorities, resetting your expectations, and setting more realistic goals.

SHUT UP, PINOCCHIO

You have a dormant virus inside of you, and if you don’t get the antidote fast, it’s only a matter of time before it overtakes your business.

At first, the virus will seem harmless. You might begin by enthusiastically promoting your business idea as a “sure thing” to perfect strangers. Slowly but surely, the Stage 2 symptoms will start to cloud your judgment—and you’ll begin introducing yourself to prospective significant others by handing them a business card and saying, “Hi, I’m a CEO.” Before you know what hits you, the full bug will manifest itself, causing you to uncontrollably spew irrational, nonsensical verbal diarrhea ad nauseam. Without revenue or a single client, you’ll convince yourself that Apple’s acquisition of your masterpiece is inevitable—and then it’s only a matter of time before you retire to a private island, smoking hand-rolled cigars crafted from $100 bills.

Am I referring to salmonella or mad cow disease? No. I’m talking about the Liar’s Disease.

Want to guarantee that no one will trust your abilities or your company? Keep talking out of your ass. There is a fine line between enthusiasm and exaggeration. Don’t cross it. Pathological smooth talking or outright lying will cause others to view you as an untrustworthy, arrogant used-car salesperson.

Instead—be authentic. From your clothing to your work ethic, you are sending a message to others with every decision you make. Whether you’re a T-shirt-wearing tech-nerd or a super-polished, suit-clad tight ass, be
real
. Own and accept who you are and what you do. Underpromise and overdeliver—not the other way around. Make sure that everything you say is backed up with real, measurable results. A solid track record of high-quality work will sell others on your value much better than any cheap rhetoric.

Walk the walk, or don’t talk the talk. Talk isn’t just cheap. Sometimes, it can kill your business.

PUT IT ON MY TAB

Remember the good old days when your parents gave you an allowance? Pick up a toy, get a dollar. Do your homework, get a dollar. Say hello to your grandparents, get a dollar, plus some interest to boot from your beloved grandma. Those were the days when money grew on trees.