There was a time where I worked in corporate America. It’s a famed institution. Perhaps you are familiar with it and all the fun and games associated with participation. I had several personal problems back then. They included but were not limited to;
- I hated my job,
- I was broke,
- I couldn’t get ahead financially,
- I was being told that I had a spending problem, and thus the solution was to just keep cutting my budget which seemed impossible based on basic math.
- I felt trapped and hopeless,
- I was ignorant and was working on bad knowledge and information,
- I blamed others for my problems who in reality were trying to help me.
Do any of those problems sound familiar to you?
“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.” – Charles Dickens.
Oh let me tell you. I went to my employer and told them what their problem was. I said, “Your problem is that you aren’t paying me enough!” I meant it, even if it was one of the dumbest things I could have said to them at the time. I was a staff auditor fresh out of graduate school. I had a fancy graduate degree but really didn’t know jack-sh!t about how to do my job well. I seemed to also forget that about 100 people applied for my job for every offer extended. If I didn’t want the job, there was a list as long as a phone book of people that were willing to fill it. (Dating myself as Millenials don’t know what a phone book is…but I digress. Now pay attention you young whipper-snappers.)
My employer did have a problem that they were trying to solve. It just wasn’t the problem that I was frustrated with. The problem that my employer was trying to solve was they had paying clients that needed financial audits completed by competent and licensed professionals for a variety of regulatory reasons. The firm solved this problem by hiring, training, and maintaining a staff of competent and licensed professionals. The client wins. The firm wins. Everybody should be happy. But I wasn’t. I wasn’t making enough money.
I felt like I was losing in life because I didn’t have enough money to live the way I thought I was entitled to at the time. Forget about market rates for like-kind professionals. I had bills to pay and things I wanted in life. My personal budget was running deficits and I hated my life because of it.
I kept trying to solve my problem of budget deficits by cutting spending. Cut, cut, cut. Restrict, restrict, restrict. If it was fun, I couldn’t do it so it seemed. I grew aggressive towards the entire situation and I’m sure others around me felt my diminishing attitude (It really quickly moved past diminishing. Let’s just call it a bad attitude.) Have you ever felt this way yourself before? It can often create a downward spiral in many areas of life.
In hindsight, I didn’t really have a spending problem. I had an income problem. The fact that my employer wasn’t willing to pay me more was something I just couldn’t comprehend at the time. I was just an angry guy who was pissed off at the unjust world.
I didn’t understand that making a higher income really comes down to solving larger and more valuable problems. The bigger the problem you can solve, the higher the pay. This never crossed my mind at the time. Like I said, I was ignorant working with bad knowledge and information.
Then I learned that everything in business is about problem-solving with efficiencies. That was revolutionary to me. Why didn’t they explain it like that to me in school for crying out loud?
Wait you say, what about J.K. Rowling. She’s a zillionaire…. Nope, she solved a problem. People want an escape from their reality. That is a problem for many. They want to be entertained. They want to forget about their work, their home, their relationships, their financial situation, even if for only a few hours. So, she wrote books to solve that problem. Pay her for her book and you will escape your reality for a few hours. If you’d like, come back for more. Just buy another book.
The same holds true for all entertainers. They are solving a problem for you. You want to be distracted, entertained, and escape from your reality. Music solves that problem. So does movies, sit-coms, news, and sports. You just haven’t thought about it like this before.
The plumber. He solves a problem. You have clogged pipes and the sh!t is backing up. Pay him a fee and he will solve your problem.
Your employer has a problem. That’s why they hired you. They are paying you to solve that problem for them. The tasks you perform is solving a problem that they need a solution to in the giant scheme of things. The minute they can solve that same problem a cheaper way, say goodbye to your job. They found a better solution to their problem.
Keep in mind, the difficulty in solving problems correlates to the level of pay associated with those endeavors. You can stock shelves at a grocery store to replace the purchased inventory. That’s a job that pays an income. It’s a legitimate problem that needs to be solved in retail centers across the land. How complex is it to solve that problem and how many people are there available to perform that task? That determines the pay (the income to the problem solver).
When you start looking at the world as problem-solving opportunities, your income potential starts to change. Often the change could be quite dramatic. If you could solve a problem that a billion people experience, you probably are on your way to making a billion dollars. If you can only solve simple, uncomplicated, and easy problems, your pay is going to suck. This is especially true if there are a glut of other people ready, willing, and able to solve that same problem. The low pay is not somebody else’s problem (like your employer). That’s your problem. Welcome to supply and demand in problem-solving.
There’s another tidbit that they never explained to any of us in school. It’s about personal excellence. Society favors excellence. If you are an excellent doctor, or excellent dentist, or accountant, or basketball player, or painter, or woodworker, or clothing designer, or drummer, or comedian, the money follows the excellence. People sometimes think about how they would be excellent at a skill if they only made more money. But it works completely the other way around. When you achieve personal excellence, the money follows.
Personal excellence should always come first. The money will follow if that excellence helps somebody solve a problem (including if they just want to be entertained for a moment in time.)
Do you look at the world as an opportunity to solve problems and help people? Your income depends on it. It’s hard to solve other people’s problems when you have too many personal problems, don’t live a life of personal excellence, and don’t have your sh!t together. It’s important to get your own problems sorted out and fixed so that you can move on to help others. Then your income problems can be worked on.
“Every job from the heart is, ultimately, of equal value. The nurse injects the syringe; the writer slides the pen; the farmer plows the dirt; the comedian draws the laughter. Monetary income is the perfect deceiver of a man’s true worth.” – Criss Jami
Do I believe that you could boost your future income? Yes, I believe in you. You know deep down that you can help more people solve more problems. The bigger the problems you can help people solve, the higher your income will climb. That’s how people achieve success in the business world. They become problem solvers. Whether they have only one client (their current employer) or several clients isn’t really the determining factor. The determining factor is the complexity of the problem that you could solve and the value that you could add to the person or institution that you are helping solve a problem.
You don’t need to figure out all this stuff overnight. It’s not going to happen that way so don’t set your expectations as such. You just need to develop a framework that allows you to make small improvements each day so that you can continue to boost your income over time. If you do that, there’s no telling how far you can go. Just ask yourself, “How much would your life change if you made more income?”
What problems are you seeing in the world today and how can you help those people out? What could you do to make somebody’s life better by helping them solve a problem? They will gladly pay you money if your skills help make their life better. You’ll transform your own life as well.
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