Secrets Everyone Should Know

by Michelle Bennett

************************************
Secrets everyone, starting out, should know - by Michael Masterson
************************************

"So, what's it like in the real world? Well, the food is better, but beyond that, I don't recommend it." - Bill Watterson

Many of my friends believe that kids today have a more challenging life than we did when we were young.

"It's more dangerous out there."
"Good jobs are harder to find and harder still to keep."
"It's just so much tougher for kids these days."

That's the view of Tamara Draut, who works for an agency that promotes government action and whose book, Strapped. is subtitled "Why 20- and 30- Somethings Can't Get Ahead." But are things really tougher for graduates today?

I'm doubtful. When I graduated from university, I was R50,000 in debt. So was my friend Eric. Peter wasn't in debt, but he was about to be married so he had different financial concerns. Back then, unemployment was higher than it is now. Bad jobs were scarce. Good jobs were non-existent.

Peter, Eric, and I were doing everything we could to make money, but it was tough. We knew we couldn't save our way out of our situation. We knew we had to earn more money. So we started a little business. An above ground-pool installation business. We had no connections and no capital, but we had spent the previous summer building pools, so we did have some experience.

We went to a local pool distributor and offered to put up his display pools for free if he'd recommend us to his customers. He let us try one pool, and it took us eight hours - three times longer than it should have - to finish it. But it was built well and he gave us a recommendation.

One recommendation led to another. And before we knew it, we were working 16 hours a day, seven days a week, running four crews and making R2,100 apiece a day. We did that for 10 weeks straight. At the end of that summer, Eric and I had fully paid off our school loans, and Peter was able to put a down payment on a starter home for himself and his new bride.

I was able to not just get rid of my debt, but buy myself a car and pay to have my parents' house repainted.

That gave me a taste for entrepreneurship that I've never tired of.

I tried to write down everything I know about starting out and becoming successful - as an entrepreneur and as an employee. Here's some of what I noted:

* Don't fret about your problems. And don't wait for the government to solve them. Create a personal plan for success and follow it.

* If you can get a great job (and it's not impossible), then get to work earlier than everybody else and work harder and longer than everybody else, and do everything you can to work smarter than everybody else.

* If you can't get a great job, start your own business. Service-oriented businesses, though they have drawbacks, are the easiest and cheapest to launch. The good habits you (hopefully) developed in college will serve you well in this competitive, primarily blue-collar, environment.

* Get an apartment with two or three roommates. And, believe it or not, you can live very well for practically nothing. Good food, wine, and entertainment don't have to be expensive.

* Save much more than the experts tell you. Pay the government first (taxes can't be avoided), your loans next, and then put 15% of your income into an investment account. If you don't make enough money to do that, get another job. Work 16 hours a day if necessary.

* If you begin to feel sorry for yourself, volunteer to work for an institution that treats people who have real problems - like cancer, AIDS, ALS, etc.

* Give yourself a little time once a week to slow down and smell the roses. Then get back to work.

This is probably not the kind of advice that Tamara Draut would like to hear, because it doesn't do much to solve the "starting-out problem" on a global level. But I'd like to think it can help individual people - graduates and young people - become wealthy despite the challenges posed by our shaky economy.

Another article I thought was really interesting.

Regards,
M.