Introduction
1 - Master Potential
2 - Master Goals
3 - Master Time
4 - Master Money & Work
5 - Master Small Business
6 - Master Real Estate
7 - Master Health
8 - Master Mind
9 - Master Relationships
10 - Master Life
Conclusion

Lesson Four - Master Money & Work

Operational Guidelines

Choose a career that you'd love doing.
Work at work.
Make hard work your hallmark.
Expect promotions and raises or quit.
Commit to doing whatever it takes: one job or three.
Be a saver.

   As a Master of Success, you know that your focused mind is your strongest asset. When you are at work, you work. You take personal responsibility. You are pro-active: solving problems and capitalizing on opportunities. Whether you work for yourself or someone else, you manage your own career. Alert and aware, you work with your eyes and ears open. Since you are a hard worker, you expect raises and promotions. Since you are an informed realist, you are alert to signs that might signal downsizing, outsourcing or being replaced by the boss's nephew or a cute assistant.

   You think strategically. Your mission plan has given you career direction. Being an ambitious person, you are constantly evaluating and re-evaluating your career status. Is your career advancing? Are you treading water and slowly sinking? Are you working in the right industry, for the right company and for the right bosses? All indicators must align or you adjust accordingly.

   A mark of the master is to be honest, so be brutally honest because you are only helping or hurting yourself. If you are working in a record store or for a newspaper, your days of reliable employment may be numbered. For good or bad, digitization is drastically changing these dated industries. However, if you are working for an online music channel or online news service, your future prospects may be bright. If you are living in an economically depressed area, do you hang around competing over limited prospects or do you boldly seek your fortune where the new jobs are located? You must continually reassess your career. Are you swimming strongly with the tide or are you fighting against an upstream torrent? Is the work you are doing now and in the foreseeable future bringing you closer to mission accomplishment or not?

   With economic prospects as an excuse or a reality, many companies are choosing to replace full time benefited careers with part-time or contract non-benefited jobs. Today, the average young person faces the prospect of having to make between seven and eleven job changes in his or her career. In today's work environment being average means being hired and fired over and over again. Being fired and then scrambling to be rehired is stressful and rarely career advancing. It's not fun if time and time again, as you get older and older, you have to be the new guy or gal.

   As a Master of Success, it is important that you remain in control of your own career. This means that you work in a growth industry for a good company that appreciates your superior productivity and you receive commensurate compensation. If not, get out. Start actively planning your move to a better situation. A Master of Success is not going to sit around nervously dreading the coming day when someone you thought was your friend or some anonymous bureaucrat decides that you should be reassigned, relocated, merged, downsized or simply fired.

   When you are alert and aware at work and you don't like what you see or feel, you have three alternatives: find a better job, be your own boss as a commissioned salesperson or start your own business.

   Alert and aware, you are sensitive to the corporate power centers. Who is really running the show? Is it the president, vice-president or general manager? Maybe it is a board of directors or a principal investor. Perhaps the boss's secretary, assistant or wife wields thumbs up or thumbs down influence. If there is a tangled web of internal politics over promotions and dismissals, are you willing to curry favor with the right forces? To advance your career, you might have to decide to play ball or find another job. Eyes and ears open, you decide before they decide.

Are you truly committed to success? If you are, then you are willing to put up with the rejection, disappointment and hard work necessary to progress toward the plateau of your potential. You must run toward and not away from the challenge.

   You are not one of the many simply settling for what's available. You are one of the few charting your own career. Without excuses, you are ready to move forward right now. Without excuses, you know enough to get started right now. Assess where you are and your next move. This is your life right now.

   Don't kid yourself and waste years and tens of thousands of dollars under the delusion that you need an MBA. Most probably, you do not. You have been a consumer for many years. You know how you want to be treated. This is how you treat your customers. Everybody has had a boss. You know how to treat your employees.

   As a Master of Success, you make things happen. Your financial goal is to live comfortably while investing for a secure retirement, possibly an early retirement. For some, this can be accomplished working at one job. Some young masters may need to cobble together two or three jobs. If you need to arrive early, leave late or work through lunch, you do what needs to be done.

The Type of Business Doesn't Matter

   As a Master of Success, you are an extraordinary person. You are not allowing one third of your life to be subject to some random online job posting. You take control. You are pro-active. There are good jobs in sports and broadcasting and computers and fashion and travel and aviation and gardening and cooking and everything. You research. You take direct action based upon your informed research.

   You start where you must start and do what you must do. If you want to sell cars and, initially, the manager asks you to help prep cars for delivery, you prep cars. You get the job and figure out step by step how to own the dealership. You start sweeping hair for a successful hairstylist or cutting vegetables for a successful chef or policing construction sites for a successful builder; you don't complain. You learn. You do. It doesn't matter where you start. You have a winner's attitude. You research and you act. You stumble. You regain your balance and keep moving forward.

   Drop the entitlement mentality. Don't look for short cuts or easy ways to game the system. Be willing to pay the price. There are lots of ways to make a solid income doing jobs that other people avoid. Begin immediately. If it's a blue collar or dirty job or the hours are weird or you have to travel, the masterly response is "So what." Actually, the masterly response is to smile, do it and don't even try to explain to skeptics.

Finding Your Career Path

   As a Master of Success, you have direction. You have prepared. You have a clear career path, a solid work ethic and a pleasant personality. You are someone who appreciates the opportunity to work and who shows that appreciation to his employer by being productive. Successful corporations are successful because of the elite few, like you.

   You are in control. You pick. There are five thousand different business and people have been successful at all of them. If you love soccer or fishing or computers or cooking or travel, find the jobs that are associated with your love. Find a career that you'd love doing. When you love your career, work doesn't seem like work. Others have done and are doing what you want to do. Why not you? Based on that career choice, identify the opportunities and get noticed: join associations, work part-time, take internships, volunteer and be willing to start at rock bottom. Make every day a learning experience. Identify the movers and shakers and model yourself after them. See the next step up and place your foot on the rung. From a supervisory perspective, you do not want to be seen or treated as just another drone. You want to be seen and treated as a valuable asset, an indispensible asset. There is power in being needed.

   Think high-tech. The Internet and the digitization of all intellectual property will make many new millionaires and a few billionaires. Think low-tech. You can get rich picking up garbage, selling fish, painting houses, teaching aerobics, paving driveways, catering parties or just about any other product or service that you can imagine. It is all about you and your style and your attitude and your hunger to succeed.

   Think about family connections. You may have worked after school and summers for your uncle who owns a dry cleaner. Being smart, you learned a lot about the dry cleaning business. Do not regret this time. You are fortunate. You have a leg up over your peers. Do not casually dismiss this advantage. Cleaning clothes isn't glamorous but it is steady, gainful employment. It will pay the bills and could lead to much more. As a Master of Success, you may have a ten year plan to buy six dry cleaners along with the commercial real estate that house them. Along the way, you build the business with exemplary customer service. You look for opportunities to sell the individual store sites or the entire chain for top dollar. Your plan is to sell the dry cleaner businesses but keep the real estate. Collect the rent and then play golf every day. Better yet, play golf at Augusta, Pebble Beach and Saint Andrews. You may have been the teenager who was laughed at for smelling like dry cleaning fluid. Now, you are in your fifties, retired and no one is laughing.

   As a future Master of Success, if you are not committed to a specific career, consider a few years in military. You can explore various trades, take courses, save money and see the world while serving your country. You'll have time to mature and to think about the exact career you wish to pursue. Who is better off at 22, the tough veteran with direction, purpose and some money in his pocket or the philosophy major with a six figure student loan debt?

   Pity the long homeward parade of debt laden college seniors who have majored in unmarketable fields and are about to graduate to endless career changes or long term unemployment.

   Pity those whose future depends on random job listings, or sending hundreds of unsolicited resumes or awaiting an auto response ping back from an online job site.

   Pity those who turn their noses up at working at a dry cleaner.

   Some, because of a lack of opportunity, are unemployed. Some, because of lack of proper attitude, are unemployable. Growing up, or more accurately, simply aging, if you have been patted on the head and given a trophy for every modest effort, you aren't going to understand a boss's request to perform menial tasks without a "thank you" and "good job" every ten minutes. You aren't going to understand that, as a newbie, your suggestions may not be solicited or considered seriously. You are going to blame the mean boss. You are going to stomp your feet and quit. You are unemployable.

Your Career Planning

   Your career planning must be pro-active and not an afterthought. You don't want to be the person who spends four years in college and hundreds of thousands of dollars on an education only to end up with all your hopes resting on next Sunday's Help Wanted section of the newspaper. You don't want to be another in the army of college students who major in psychology only to end up in low paying jobs because they didn't take the time to research the likelihood of finding employment as psychology majors. During college, every student should work part-time and intern in his or her chosen major. Talk to the people in the profession who are doing the job on a daily basis. Are the majority still bright eyed and enthusiastic or are many under-motivated and bleary-eyed burnouts just barely able to go through the motions? Most people will be honest with you. Are you hearing, "Wow, this profession is great and everyone is so nice." Or, are you hearing, "Everyone in this profession is a depressed whack job. If there is any other way that you can make a living, do that!"

   You have to do the research and analyze the data from your personal perspective. If you interview one disgruntled worker, that's one person's opinion. But, if you see a pattern of discontent, be wary. Remember, as a Master of Success, you have choices.

   Enjoying your work gives you a tremendous advantage over your peers. You will want to work at work. Almost all jobs have tedious or arduous aspects to them and it is human nature to avoid these more difficult tasks, even though these are the tasks which may be the most productive for the company.

   The master salesperson is willing to explain the extended warranty and how to best to use the product. The master auto mechanic is willing to make a follow up call to see how the repairs worked out. The master real estate agent is willing to show a house on Sunday night. The tasks that others avoid can become your opportunity to show your mettle. Let hard work be your hallmark. You know your field of expertise. What can be done faster or better? Which gaps need to be filled? Find a niche and fill it.

As a Master of Success, you don't live your life in constant hopeful anticipation or dread. You are pro-active. You find out where you stand. You ask. You ask for the job. You ask for the promotion. You ask for the business. You ask for the feedback. If you want it, ask.

Working at Work

   When you are at work you will work. This may sound funny but most people don't work very hard at work. In fact, industrial psychologists tell us that the average worker only works half the time that they are on the job. The rest of the time they are daydreaming, gabbing at the water cooler, taking breaks, going to or from the rest rooms, surfing the Internet, engaging in personal business or doing easy, non-essential activities. Many employees are happy to laze through their "work" days doing unimportant, unproductive busy tasks.

   For your own personal satisfaction and motivation, conduct your own internal corporate investigation. Alert and aware, go ahead and count the individuals on the staff only working hard enough to not get fired. Go ahead and open your eyes at work because you may be pleasantly surprised to find that your competition is so complacent and weak. All employees are being paid to work for the exclusive benefit of their companies but how few actually work with this mindset?

   You are a master; you take your obligations at work seriously. If you work for someone else, you are being paid and you are honor bound actually to work hard for that person or company. Work hard more than half the time you are on the clock and you will shine in comparison to your peers. Work full time and you will be twice as productive. You should get the raises and the promotions. You should be indispensible with your superiors thinking that losing you would be a major blow to the company. This becomes your power, leverage to use. As a valued employee, you earn the right to be audacious. If your hard work is not acknowledged and appreciated by management, they lose. Find other employment.

   In some employment situations, you are boxed in. If you are a city bus driver, you work under a union contract. As a hard worker, you might make twenty dollars an hour. If you are a lazy slacker, you make the same twenty dollars an hour. If the contract says that bus drivers make twenty dollars an hour, then all bus drivers make the same salary.

   As a bus driver or a postal worker or a soldier or a police officer or a teacher, you have a good job with a reliable income. But, is this enough to reach your financial goals? What are your choices to improve your income? You could work overtime, become a supervisor or become a union rep. You might consider using your driving expertise to start a part-time limo service. Perhaps, you can earn a college degree at night and start a transportation consulting business with a specialty in bus safety, terrorism against buses or bus maintenance. Figure it out. You are a thinking person of action.

Consider that as a strong individualist, you may not fit in or want to work in a team environment of shared reward. Some masters make great leaders. Some masters succeed as lone wolves, sole-proprietors.

Job Interviewing

   You want the opportunity. You want the chance to get your foot in the door. Once you are employed, the superiority of your efforts will quickly become self-evident. But, first, you have to get in the door.

   Arrive for your interview on time and appropriately dressed. Act friendly, open and confident. No crossed arms or twitching or staring into space. Leave the ego and name dropping behind. The interviewer is considering how you can benefit the company and not vice versa.

   Prior to the interview, show some initiative by having researched the company. Let your one page resume speak to your qualifications. Don't ask too many questions about salary and benefits. Rather, speak in terms of your willingness to help the company achieve its objectives.

   Let it be clear that you want the job and the opportunity to perform beyond expectations. Be proud of the fact that you are a fast learner and a hard worker. Without bragging, you can appear competent and enthusiastic.

As a Master of Success, you are an extraordinary worker and it will be the fortunate company that hires you. While your peers may be content with any job at any company, you should be selective. Do the research and be sure that you are accepting employment with a reputable company offering a quality product or service. Find the company within your industry that exemplifies high standards where management appreciates their employees and customers.

Fry Cook To Franchise Owner

   When you start working for a company, consider your initial pay as your minimum wage. You must be consciously aware of opportunities for advancement. If you start out making $10/hour, how can you make $15/hour or $20/hour? You aren't idly passing time. You are immediately figuring out who gets raises and promotions and why. Who gets the overtime or access to the best accounts? Who makes these decisions?

   Some people start off as the fry cook and in ten years they are still at it. Some people start off as the fry cook and in ten years they own the operation and the commercial real estate. Stay alert and be aware that many of your co-workers may be slackers who are happy and content to pass the "workday" half-asleep. Poorly performing co-workers should be creating advancement opportunities for you. Take advantage. You figure out what steps are necessary to move from fry cook to shift supervisor to assistant manager to manager to owner.

   You do what needs to be done. You may work overtime. You may volunteer for inconvenient shift times. You may accept unpopular assignments. You are a problem solver and make your boss's job easier. You make the boss look good. You become the reliable "go-to" person.

   There is nothing wrong with your ambition. You choose to spend your off-hours studying the fast food business. You visit and figure out why some franchise operations are more successful than others. You start building a network of corporate connections and identifying franchise owners who have already done what you want to do.

   If you need college degree[s], you start taking courses. You figure out the financial aspects of your plan. What monies are involved? How much can you borrow? How do you qualify for federal or state small business incentives? Who may be willing to partner with you?

   You keep going: working, learning, saving and networking.

   It won't be easy.

   Few will persevere.

   But, some will.

   It's your choice; why not you?

   How hard are you willing to work for yourself and those you love?

   Some twenty-three-year-old is going to be a winner at thirty-five. Someone at thirty-five will be a winner at forty-seven. Someone at forty-seven will be a winner at seventy-two. They will become Masters of Success. They will persist and win. Give it your all and die fulfilled. Let this be you!

   What are your interests? What is your temperament and aptitude? What is the present condition and long-range projections for the field you wish to enter? What are your present skills and talents? What kinds of work do you find easy? What is your ideal job?

   As you search for opportunities, you also will find dead ends. Mangers may like the job you do as a fry cook so much that they leave you as the fry cook indefinitely. In this circumstance, it won't matter how hard you work because promotions and respect are being saved for others. This is unfair but the real world of business is not about fairness. If you are not ambitious, your career may be ruled by the simple fact that you are just too good at frying potatoes to be replaced.

   Are you working for a manager who doesn't care about you and the quality job you are doing? Are you working for a boss capable of replacing you with his dim-witted nephew just to shut up his sister? Are you working in a department where everyone else is happy to slide along in a leisurely fashion and let you do all the hard work?

   Alert and aware, you judge the security of your position and realistic opportunities for advancement. Awareness is not paranoia. Awareness in a corporate environment is self-reliance and self-preservation. You are responsible for yourself. In the final analysis, whatever career path you have chosen, you are really working for yourself. Be a reality thinker and not a wishful thinker.

   Do you see employee discontent and customer complaints on the rise? How important are you to the company? Are you stuck in a position where you could easily be blamed for mistakes that are beyond your control? If the company is sold or taken over, how secure is your job? If you are laid off, what are your options? If you were the consumer, would you do business with your company? Do your research and be honest because this is your livelihood at stake. Are competitors' products just as good or better than yours? Maybe you should plan to get out and find another job while the getting is good. Be realistic. Your loyalty to your company may be admirable but not necessarily reciprocal. Wake up and smell the coffee. You've got to replace yourself on your terms and not when hundreds or thousands of your co-workers are being laid off at the same time. Get your head out of the sand. This is your problem to resolve.

When To Find A New Job

It may be time to look for a new job if:

your job is boring
your co-workers aren't compatible
the company isn't ethical
your hard work isn't recognized
the boss's son and you are vying for the same job
the company isn't investing back into the company
the atmosphere is always in crisis mode
top management is jumping ship
your co-workers prefer to use a competitor's product
the company can't borrow money or has borrowed too much money
the long range outlook for your industry is poor

Conversely, perhaps you work for a company with a great spirit where everyone is committed to quality. The company is preparing for major expansion. Are you ready to climb up the responsibility ladder and, of course, to profit by buying more stock in your company?

You have to put yourself in a position to make more money than you need so that you have excess funds for investment. You must invest so that eventually your investments will be substantial enough that you can stop working. Realize that for many people working today, this day will never come! The average working person has less than ten thousand dollars saved for retirement. They will have no alternative but to keep working until they leave work on that last day feet first. You don't want to find yourself eighty years old, still behind your desk mumbling about the mistakes you made. You are old when your dreams are replaced by your regrets. This isn't funny. This will be the sad reality for too many.

If there is an exemplary company in your industry, why aren't you working there?

All Jobs Are Not Created Equal

   In a capitalist society, there is a wide disparity in earning potential: most engineers and investment bankers make a lot of money while most fast food workers and hospital aides make little.

   Do you want job security? Are you a self-starter who can work independently or do you need guidance and supervision? Are you able and willing to invest time and money to secure a better career even if there may be many risks and few guarantees?

   There are good reasons why some jobs pay more than others. Many high paying jobs such as engineering involve an investment of years of study while you incur mountains of debt. Some, such as mining, may involve physical danger. Others like working on oil tankers or military careers demand long periods of separation from your loved ones. Commissioned sales of real estate and stocks can be very lucrative but also necessitate a strong backbone to put up with all the rejection, income fluctuation, wasting time on unproductive leads and working odd hours. Start a small business and you may make several false starts before you begin to rake in the profits.

   Everything about making money comes back to the Action Principles^®: persistence, determination and hard work coupled with a clear view of who is going to give you their money and why. Masters of Success aren't just going through the motions at work. They are constantly thinking and evaluating their positions. They take pride in their work. They are not at work to socialize and make friends. They are at work to work.

   As a Master of Success, you choose to put yourself among the elite which means being different. If you are a student, you want to be a serious student focused on your education and not your campus social life. If you are an employee, you want to be a serious employee focused on company goals and not daydreaming and bothering others with details about your personal life. Yes, as a Master of Success, you will be different. Yes, others with less ambition will not like you. Yes, some will be jealous and gossip about you as an anti-social suck-up. Unfortunately for them, your ambition and corporate advancement could mean that you could become their boss. You could become their boss very soon.

   Masters of Success are goal-oriented. They aren't afraid to work with people who are smarter, harder working or more ambitious than they are. In fact, Masters of Success are constantly on the lookout for outstanding performers as models, advisors, compatriots and friends. Associate with others who are like you, who understand you. You want to seek out other tough, spiritual men and women of action who are ready to roll up their sleeves and find solutions rather than constantly pointing blame.

   If you are hiring workers who subscribe to the Master Success philosophy, you will be working with people who have ideas for improvement. Listen to them even if their ideas may be in conflict with your own. It is very easy to surround yourself with sycophants who take no risks in always agreeing with your "brilliant thoughts." Hiring an entourage gets you nowhere. It is much more productive to engage in honest dialogue and debate with intelligent, hard working people who are encouraged to offer their opinions.

Develop A Winner's Style And Attitude

Masters of Success are doers. Analysis and research are very important. Listening to others and getting second opinions are very important. However, the time for decisive action will come. The United States Marines look for the odds to be seventy percent in their favor and then they go, go, go and adjust along the way. They aren't frozen in place by constant second-guessing. They don't insist on guarantees where none exist. Consensus is wonderful but there are times when a leader must buck the conventional wisdom, seize the initiative, make a decision and take action.

As a Master of Success, you won't constantly want to preach, berate or make a spectacle of yourself to reach your goals. Given a choice, people are going to give promotions to, work harder for, prefer to do business with and follow a person whose personal example commands respect.

Your mother may be overprotective. Go and give her a hug. Then, walk out the door and do what needs to be done. If your old friends are weak and stuck in the past, then admit that you've outgrown them and find new friends. If your co-workers are constantly moaning about the unfairness and cluelessness of management, help them by becoming a manager. Play to the winners.

Master Money

   There are many wonderful books on money management. Read them and you will realize that you already know the common sense principles:
   1. Have goals. Write down your financial goals. Separate your needs from your wants. Research and know how much money will be necessary to purchase real estate, to obtain an education, to start a family or to fund a business.

   2. Be a saver. Have the discipline to make the tough money decisions to earn enough to enact your plan. Be a saver. With your eye on the prize, embrace whatever early hard work and temporary frugality is necessary; work overtime, take a second job or delay buying a new car. Invest and delay immediate gratification. Pay off all non-mortgage debt and then mortgage debt.

   3. Live on a budget. Translate your goals and plan into a realistic budget. Live within your means. On a regular basis, log and analyze your income and expenses. As you work to raise income, try to identify ways to cut costs. Having a written shopping list will help you to resist impulse buying. Take an extra day to consider the pros and cons of major purchases.

   4. Educate yourself. Take a lifelong interest in finance. You must be able to make your own informed decisions. Read business publications. Understand your own taxes and how to pay the minimum you owe. Itemize and take full deductions. Understand and build your credit score. Hire competent financial advisers and talk to them.

   5. Marry well. This means finding a life partner, a kindred spirit, and raising a family who understand and embrace the big picture. Talk finance. Discuss options.

   6. Invest. Bet on America. Invest long term. Buy real estate and diversify with a stock market index fund.

   7. Buy quality. Research your purchases. Frugal is smart. Cheap is not smart. Look for reputable products from honest vendors who offer reasonable guarantees.

   8. Participate. Join in corporate and government incentive and retirement programs that multiply your personal efforts. These could range from credit union low interest mortgage programs, to state backed home energy rebates or matching corporate contributions to IRAs or your 401k.

   9. Protect. If you have dependents, you need term life insurance. Buying eight times your annual income is a general guideline. Have a will detailing your wishes.

   10. Give. For a Master of Success, it seems the more you have, the less you need. Be generous with those unable to help themselves.

Worry about yourself. Trying to impress others with your things is a counter-productive treadmill. You may be publically admired and privately resented.

Go Hardcore

   To master work, you work hard. The most successful people are those who love their work or clearly appreciate their work as a means to an end. Establish clearly defined career goals. Talk to veterans in your proposed field. Work part-time. Seek out internships. Decide whether your temperament and talents are best suited to working for a company, in the public sector, as a commissioned salesperson or as an entrepreneur. Research and choose a career path before you go to college wasting time and accumulating debt that will take years or decades to repay.

   If you work for others, be aware of the opportunities the job offers. If you find yourself in a dead end job you need to change employers. When you find a good employer, as you work, always be on the lookout for ways to make yourself more valuable. Those who show persistence and determination and hard work will advance.

   If you are working for others, realize that you are not in full control. Pay attention to how the business is doing. If your company is falling behind technologically, losing money, or in a dying industry, you need to look into other employment options and you need to do that now. Conversely, if your company is growing, you need to look for ways to ride the wave all the way to the top.

   In commissioned sales, if you have the courage to talk convincingly to customers about buying a quality product or service at a fair price, your success is assured. In sales, every person you meet is a potential customer or lead. Learn all you can about your product or service. Learn all you can about your customer's needs. The best salespeople believe in their product or service. Make sure you can really believe in yours.

   If you choose to succeed in small business, offer a quality product or service that is in demand and charge a fair price. Appreciate your customer. Copy success. Keep improving. Find the people who are doing what you want to do, watch what they do and do it yourself. Ignore the naysayers. If what you want to do has been done, you can do it again! Stick with the tested and tried and true. It is easier to an imitator than an innovator.

   Find the best people in your industry, observe them and talk to them. Most will be glad to share what they know. Then, when you know what to do, go out and do it.