Industriousness, fat cash and you. Oh, and not being an idiot if you work in payroll.

By Charlie on July 6th, 2009 | 6

Welcome to part one of Ignite Living’s “Why You Owe it to Yourself to be an Entrepreneur” series. In this series we’re going to explore…guess what? That’s right. Why you owe it to yourself to be an entrepreneur.

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We’re gonna start this series off with a subject that’s very close to our hearts, stomachs and landlords: money.

If I were to give my top two reasons for becoming an entrepreneur, the first would be freedom and the second would be money.

Now, how much money you make as an entrepreneur will mostly be in ratio to your industriousness, marketing ability and many other factors, so it wouldn’t be fully truthful for me to say all entrepreneurs make more money.

However, the potential for you to make sick amounts of cash is much higher as an entrepreneur. And I can illustrate this by telling you a real-life story that is entirely not even a lie. About me. In my old corporate job. At a HUGE company that I guarantee you’ve heard of, from which you’ve bought stuff and which should have known better.

Corporate suckiness

Back when I was in the corporate world, I out-produced my quota by double. I’m not patting my own back. It’s just the job was easy and I was antisocial and never once left my desk ever, hence production. After the third year of doing this, I asked for what I thought would be a fitting raise and was given the awesome response of “no.”

I wanted to know the reason for that so I asked, “What’s the reason for that?”

My pay, I came to learn, was actually part of a complicated mix of factors, most important of which was how long I’d been at the company. Having been there for X amount of years, I’d make X amount of money. Then later, when I’d been at the company for Y years, I’d be making Y.

Yay. Worst. System. Ever. Gotta love the Old People Win and Young People Get Screwed System of Rewards and Penalties.

So when I was told I hadn’t been at the company long enough to get a raise, I kindly mentioned that I’d doubled my quota for the year. And I figured, by looking at store sales and such, that I’d grossed the company an insane amount of extra income that year and that they could therefore afford to give me a raise despite having people who don’t use logic in the Payroll Department.

“It’s more complicated than that,” I was told.

“No. Not really,” I said. “How about I just get a little bonus. Say $2,000? Drop in the bucket really. And it’s a tax write-off for all that extra cash I made you.”

“People in hourly positions like you don’t get bonuses,” I was told.

“So,” I began, putting on my Perry Mason courtroom disguise. “I doubled my quota, increased the income of the company by maybe six-figures, out produced the majority of my peers, even those that have been here for many years longer. And I can’t get a raise? Or a bonus?”

“No.”

“Thank you for the explanation. How ’bout this then? One extra week of vacation?”

“Your vacation time won’t change until you’ve been here for five years.”

“Okay, well, here’s another idea. Since I doubled my quota, I’ve essentially done all the work I needed to do for the next year. Can I take a year off with full pay please?”

“Sure. Have fun.”

Just kidding. The official answer was something between, “No” and, “Eat shit, thank you for playing.”

“So, basically,” I said, knowing for a fact that the human in front of me had in fact been replaced by a bowl of jello, “no matter how hard I work or how much I help the company I will never get a single solitary benefit from doing so?”

(shrug went the jello)

That was it. Well, not really, because my big mouth also earned an increased production quota for the next year. Yay again. Welcome to Socialism. Er, excuse me. Corporate America I mean.

If you ONLY get paid for the bare minimum, you’ll only DO the bare minimum

The funny part of this arrangement is that it puts each employee into a situation where they are completely and totally unable to change their condition. Nor will they care to try after a while. With that sort of pay/reward system there is ZERO benefit to putting in extra work, trying harder, being productive, staying overtime, streamlining the system, thinking, having ideas and making things faster. There is no benefit whatsoever. No matter how hard I worked, I would never see an extra dime, extra day of vacation, bonus, pay raise…nothing. This is all the exact opposite of entrepreneurialism (is that a word?).

Nine-to-fivers, for the most part, are subject to just this sort of illogical derangement. They’re locked in at an hourly rate, a set salary, a set bonus structure, etc. While some of those pay structures can be very very good, it doesn’t change this fact, and mark this well if you have even a single person (including yourself) on your payroll:

If the pay system is NOT based on production, it will eventually break all to shit.

Germany proved this in the mid 1900’s by doing the exact opposite and imploding the whole country’s face in.

When your hard work is rewarded financially, production goes up, statistics soar and workers get happier. And oddly enough they start to like the company and product more as well. Interesting, that.

We’ve all known this since we were kids. We mowed the lawn and earned $5. So why not mow two lawns and make $10? That’s how it should be and, honestly, that really is the simplicity of it.

And luckily that’s how it is for entrepreneurs. Well, mostly. And I added that “mostly” in there because someone in the comments is going to say, “But, Charlie, it’s more complex than that. You’re forgetting about import excise numbers multiplied by the parallel of the hypotenuse on the gross amount paid before taxes on your 401k structure. Oh and then there are accounting fees and the dragons too. Plus…that whole ozone layer thing.”

Yeah, probably, whatever.

But no, not really. At all.

When production is rewarded, you get higher production.

That is it. Game, Set and Match. Oh…and a touchdown. I win, and so do you if you’re an entrepreneur or are lucky enough to work at a company where people get it. Which is unlikely. Sorry.

What the hell was all that anyway?

Yeah, I know. This is a sort of a roundabout story and weird way to make a point. So it goes…sometimes I’d rather teach people about a cube by showing them a sphere, telling them what a corner is and letting them sort the rest out for themselves.

So, if your bulb isn’t burning as brightly as it should at the moment, the moral of the story is this:

Entrepreneurs (usually) get paid in ratio to their effort and not by some Socialist, complex system of illogics. The harder you work (hopefully) the more you’ll make, and you can give yourself fat bonuses any time you wish.

You want more money? Put in more hours, figure out a way to work faster and smarter. Market to a new group of people. Try a new ad or test some new headlines on old ads. Create a new product that can replace or enhance the service you provide…or vice versa.

The possibilities are infinite, but the fact remains that when you’re in charge of your own financial destiny, every little thing can help. And sometimes in a big big way. And the extra money you make doesn’t get filtered around to the exec strata (or worse yet, the non-producers) but to yourself. It’s all right and proper.

So be an entrepreneur. Work your ass off; you’re gonna need to. But you’ll get the rewards that you’d likely never see as a nine-to-fiver.

Stay tuned for the next part in the series, in which we’ll explore a subject I haven’t thought of yet, but I’m sure will be just as erotic as this one was.

You won’t want to miss it. I don’t think. So subscribe now.