Coaches Corner~Wages

You can thank my nephew for this short blog I'm doing today. I really care a lot about my nephew. His name is Ron Jenkins. You can look him up on Facebook, or Google him if you want to. My nephew was lamenting the fact that people at this particular business made $15 an hour, and the CEO made over $4000 per hour. Ron was lamenting this because one of the things that he addressed was that it takes way more than $15 an hour to live. You know, I agree that it takes more than $15 an hour to live.

He also went on to talk about how the CEO doesn't need to make as much money as he makes. That nobody needs that much money to live. These are all good points. You see, I love my nephew. I have a special place in my heart for my nephew, and that's why I'm doing this blog, because I want him to know some things that I didn't know.

One of the things that you do as an extraordinary coach is that you bring people to that place where they realize some things. Sometimes you get a breakdown in communication. Sometimes you get a breakdown in relationship, but that breakdown is always followed by a breakthrough. The breakthrough about which I want to talk today is what you don't know that you don't know. There are so many things that you are passionate about, so many things that you care about, and this is true for your clients as well. Much of the passion and much of the care may be misplaced.

Granted, we should all care about other human beings and how well they're living. There's no doubt that that's important, and that's also important to me. However, more important than that are certain principles that more human beings are not familiar with. The CEO of a business is not that concerned about what it takes you to live. He is more concerned about how to make his business work.

Truth is, most employers want to pay the wage earner just enough so that the wage earner will not quit. Now the government has gotten into the act and established certain things as the minimum wages  because if it was left to business people, many of them would pay you much less than what you're making now. The law of the jungle, the seedtime and harvest principle, as it were, dictates that you will be compensated proportionally for what you bring to the marketplace.

Now if you bring jobs for thousands of people, of course you expect to make more than somebody who doesn't bring jobs for thousands of people. If you cure cancer, you're going to make more than somebody who doesn't cure cancer. We must realize that the amount of money that you make, and the amount of money that it takes you to live comfortably is not related. What is related is the amount of money that you make and the value that you bring.

I'm doing this blog because hopefully my nephew, who's a very sharp young man, will catch hold of this and realize that to criticize a CEO who makes over $4000 per hour might not be the best path for making more money yourself. The simplest path for getting more is to bring more value. The simplest path for you making more money is not to ask for more money, or to have the employer sympathize with you because it takes you so much more to live than what you're making, but it is to make yourself more valuable.

It's easy to jump on the bandwagon when a lot of people are on that bandwagon, talking about how the minimum wage ought to be increased. Well, if you want to talk about what it takes you to live, then nobody should make $4000 per hour. You and I know that people do make $4000 an hour. On the flip side of that, you as an extraordinary coach must force yourself to command the value that you bring. Just because it only takes you a few hundred dollars a month to live is no reason why you should only charge a few hundred dollars. You must be present to the fact that you've got to bring value, or you shake everything up.

The balance of nature says that when you bring X you are compensated for X. I want to thank you for even bothering to read this blog, because this blog is specifically in honor of my nephew Ron Jenkins, who has a big heart, who loves people, who wants to help everyone. The biggest help that we can give people who make $15 an hour is to tell them that you don't have to work the job for $15 an hour. You can find a job that pays more, or you could bring more value to the marketplace. By bringing more value to the marketplace, you will get more. It is a law. It's a law that's more true than anything the government could come up with.

Now if this blog has blessed you, or helped you in any way, please, by all means, share it. If not, share it anyway and start following me on my blog. As I like to end all my blogs, I say to you, have a good time until next time.