THE ROAD TO RICHES: A 10-step entrepreneur blueprint to wealth by the Entrepreneur Abdallah Abu Sheikh.

LESSON THREE:

ABANDON THE SAFETY NET

As an entrepreneur the most dangerous advice you can get is “go to school, get good grades and land a safe and secure job so you have something to fall back on”. This is old advice, and financially speaking this is very risky advice. Anyone who aspires to have a financially stable future cannot play by the old set of rules.

In today’s world more than ever, most corporations try to maintain a relatively small size, as it is more efficient, less costly and easier to run and most of the bigger corporations try to downsize either by force of the market, or by influence of technology.

If you ask yourself, what happens when a cooperation announces a downsizing? people get laid off, but if you look closer, if the company is publicly traded the usual case is that its stock will go up after the company downsizes. Investors like it when a company cuts down on labor costs and become more efficient.

This as Jack Ma says is happening inevitably through automation. According to his estimate, machines will replace more than 400-600 million jobs by 2030, and they will do the job better, faster and cheaper than the people who “studied hard, got good grades and got a safe job”.

If you look at the life of the average educated person, there is usually a pattern. The child is born and goes to school where he/she pays for an education for about 12 years, and then goes to college where there are further payments for 3-5 more years of education and continues as planned to look for a safe, secure job.

That gives them an average of 17 years of spending without getting paid, after which they start getting paid an entry level salary which to start with is incomparable to the amounts spent into their “education” and of which they need to pay taxes, utilities and personal expenses.

Before they know it they are almost 30 years and they haven’t reached any kind of financial stability. Eventually they get married and have kids and start needing to save money for the kids education and start having to work the extra hours for raises and promotions to afford for the extra expenditure that is coming their way.

Without noticing it they end up working for the owners of the companies they are in. The government and the banks that are mortgaging their house and financing their credit cards. This is what Robert Kiosaky refers to as the “rat race”.

People get stuck in the rat race because they are afraid, they want to do what everyone else is doing, they want a safety net.

Entrepreneurs on the other hand are willing to give up for the sake of their visions, they see the bigger picture. That is why many of today’s world entrepreneurs give up on high paying jobs, education and many other things to start their own companies.

An interesting analysis and breakdown of an average of a mid-level salary in today’s world shows that people spend an average of 10% of their salary on transportation to get to their job. 20% of it on clothing and office suitable attire, 15% of it on job related meals and 5% on different work related expenses.

Add to that to the amount of tax and personal expenses you have and you will see that the actual payout of job is very minimal compared to the amount of hours invested into it.

As an entrepreneur, you need to be willing to give up on many things, and you need to always see the bigger picture. Many entrepreneurs give up on the immediate comfort of job because they see the end goal and realize to the full true potential of their ideas.

Ellon Musk says “we used the rent money to pay for the office and used to shower at the YMCA for 2 years before starting “PayPal” this is one of many examples that stand to show the dedication of an entrepreneur towards their goal.

Not only are they willing to give up on continuing their education and finding a job, but they are also willing to give up on their own personal comfort in order to achieve their goals.

As an entrepreneur, a defining factor of your success is how much you are willing to risk, you need to way out how much everything is contributing to your end goal and it’s on you to decide what is necessary and what is not.

Stay away from building “something to fall back on” because people who spend their time building something to fall back on usually never move away from it.  

The Entrepreneur – Lesson Three

This is the third lesson piece out of 10. The remaining will be produced in a sequential articles and lessons under the title of THE ROAD TO RICHES as part of Venture’s new column: The Entrepreneur by Abdallah Abu Sheikh, covering entrepreneurship topic and function as a guide for start-ups.

For lesson Two:

THE ENTREPRENEUR – Step Two