How I Will Be Rich

Hell week is almost over for me. Tomorrow is my last chance to get all the jobs done that people demanded were done before Christmas. Today we had a little fire in the factory. Somebody decided to put their coffee in the microwave for twenty minutes and, pretty literally, blew up the microwave. Not to mention one of my key factory guys decided not to show up today and set us back a little on our production priorities. It’s been a rough week and, by the end of the day tomorrow, I am going to be so relieved. We’re actually throwing a Christmas party for the factory and we are BBQing carne asada. I’m looking forward to that.

I have about twelve days off after tomorrow. I won’t be going back to work until January 2nd, 2008. I’m really going to spend a lot of time focusing on this blog during that time. I want to apologize for the random, off-topic and short posts that I’ve been coming up with lately. My brain hasn’t had the chance to relax in the past week. This vacation will be much needed for my sanity and for the blog.

My girlfriend is throwing a formal Christmas party tomorrow night. I’ve got to get back to Ironing out all my dress clothes. In the mean time, go check out our sister site, Be Healthy and Relax. It has really been blowing up lately. The site has been really well received and has just been bombarded with traffic out of nowhere. It’s really amazing. I’d recommend it for people who are fans of Zen Habits, anyone wanting to learn how to relax or anyone wanting some good health advice.

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I’m skipping my Top 10 Tuesday today. Believe it or not, those actually take quite a while to do. I’m not skipping it because it takes too long though. I’d just rather do my round up on Friday this week. I’m going out of town tomorrow night and by setting my roundup to post on Friday, I’m getting myself off the hook for a post that day.

I’ve recently started reading Your Money or Your Life. It’s been recommended by so many other personal finance sites and The Simple Dollar even devoted several weeks to this book alone. Joe actually got his hands on a copy of this book and passed it on to me. I’m just barely getting started with it but so far it’s already really starting to grab my interest. A lot of people have told me that they had a hard time because it starts off sort of slow. Somehow, I seem to really be relating to the first part of this book. I don’t want to write a review on it or anything, I just wanted to make note that I have begun reading it and over the next couple weeks I will probably refer to it quite a bit.

The first chapter really focuses on what people consider “making a living”. We go to work, put in forty or more hours, go home, eat, watch t.v. and then go to bed. We then look forward to the weekends because we are going to do something meaningful but when the weekend comes around, what happens? You do housework, make sure the laundry is taken care of, do all the shopping you need to get done and, when all is said and done, have gotten really nothing of real value done.

Why is it that we work so hard for money just so we can go home and do the same old boring routine things that we seem to do day in and day out. Don’t get me wrong, I know that there is the occasional excitement when you go on your vacation for one or two weeks out of the year. Once you get home from your vacation, it’s right back to the daily grind. The vacation just served as tease to let you know that there is fun out there, you only get to see it for one or two weeks out of the year, but it is out there.

Like I said, I’ve barely began to get in to this book. I’m just thinking that if I’m only this far in to the book and it’s already starting to hit home, I’m really going to enjoy this book.

Has anyone else read it that wants to share any thoughts? I’ll be posting plenty of my thoughts on it as I go…

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Do you want to make more money in the job that you are in currently? My recommendation is that you increase your value. Coming from that standpoint of someone who basically runs a business, I have to deal with employee issues every single day. This includes people coming to me on almost a daily basis asking for more money. My stock question to them is always, “What have you done to make yourself worth this increase?” After asking this question, the employee almost always leaps in to listing off all of the things that they do for the company. And more often than not, every single item that they list is exactly what we agreed upon in hiring this person. I want to know what this person has done to go above and beyond their job position. We sat down with this person before we hired them, we discussed what their responsibilities would be and how much we would pay them for following through with these responsibilities. Six months later, when an employee comes and asks for more money, this is what I hear; “I’m doing the job that you asked me to do and making the agreed upon amount of money for doing it, can I have more?”

I’m not quite sure how many people are probably taking the whole idea behind this post. People probably think that we are a bunch of Scrooges or something. That’s not the case at all. We hand out plenty of raises. We do it all of the time. I’m not a believer in giving someone a raise just because they’ve been here for a certain amount of time. I’m a fan of giving out raises when someone does something that increases their value to me. I currently have an office employee who wants more money. The only problem with this person is that they have the attitude that they will not take on any more responsibilities until they make more money. Well my viewpoint is the opposite. Show me that you are willing to add more value to this company and I will reward you with more money. We have sort of a catch 22 here. This person won’t work harder unless they get more money and I won’t give them more money until they start working harder. I tried to train this employee in a new area today. I wanted to add one new task that would consume about five minutes to their daily agenda. This person basically gave me the attitude that they weren’t going to learn it because they don’t make enough. In this particular case, I taught someone else. Little does that person know that if they would have taken the time to learn this small task it would have increased their value to me.

Look at your employment as your employee being your customer. You are providing them with a service and you want to do your absolute best to make sure your customer is happy. The more you do for your customer, the more value your customer is going to see in your service. Go above and beyond what your typical day to day tasks are and your employer will appreciate it. Be eager to learn new things and take on more responsibility. Employers notice this and value it. I said in a previous post that even if I was the guy who cleaned the toilets at McDonalds I’d be the best at it. I would do whatever I had to in order to get noticed and make sure I was recognized for my efforts. The same goes for any position you could put me in. My upbringing and my morals lead me to the mindset that I’m going to be the absolute best at what I do. I do it not only for my employer but for my own pride.

Raise your value to your employer and your employer will see you as more valuable. It just makes sense.

-M

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According to Forbes List of Best Cities For Jobs, Salt Lake City, Utah is the best place to live for a better job. The unemployment rate is low and the rate of income growth is high. Apparently, San Diego (or nowhere in California, for that matter) made the list. Florida and Oklahoma are also apparently good places to live as well.

The list is based on five factors:

• Unemployment Rate
• Job Growth
• Income Growth
• Median Household Income
• Cost of living

I also find it quite interesting that none of the country’s major cities made the list. There’s no New York, Los Angeles or Chicago…

If you are unsatisfied with your job and you just aren’t making the money that you think you deserve, maybe relocation is an option. If I wasn’t so heavily involved in my family’s business, I know I would definitely consider relocation. Salt Lake City is a beautiful place too…

Read the Full Article Here.

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