Life is Commission-Based. Get Over It.
A $15 an hour mentality will never make you rich.
All this talk of MINIMUM WAGE as of late…
If you’re worried about MINIMUM WAGE, you’re thinking in the wrong direction.
Don’t set a price on your time, it’s invaluable, and yeah, I know that’s easy to say, but seriously, we only get so many hours in our lives— and no one knows exactly how many. Do you really want to waste one of those hours for $10, $15, $20, or even $50?
If you put in 40 hours a week, for 35 years, that’s 72,800 hours you have to “work” with. At $10 an hour, that’s $720,800 — before taxes. At $20 an hour, that’s $1,441,60o — hey, look at that, you’re a millionaire — oh wait, that’s before taxes. So what’s left?
Is that ALL you’re worth?
Of course not, you are worth WHATEVER YOU ASK.
When you HAVE to put a price on your time, NEVER settle for anything less than what you’re worth…
I tell my kids, “life is commission-based, paid-on-performance.
When you get paid for what you do, you’ll always get paid what you’re worth at that moment, and every time you do a good job, your stock (your value) goes UP.”
If I learned anything in my 40 years that I would go back and tell my 20-year-old self—which is essentially what I’m doing by instilling it in my children—it’s this:
Whatever you DEMAND of life, it WILL pay it — demand $15/hour and you will get it. Demand more, and you will get that, too.
Life is one, big commission. You get paid for what you do and how well you do it. You don’t work for THEM, you work for YOU, and that, I think, is the biggest misconception people have about work. Your boss isn’t YOUR boss, he or she is the boss of THAT business. YOU are your boss. You are the general contractor subcontracting your work to THEM.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a cashier at McDonald’s, a stock broker on Wall Street, and actor in Hollywood, or a rocket scientist at Boeing, YOU are a business.
YOU are a business. You sell TIME and everything you can make and do with that time.
But your inventory is limited to about 72,000 hours.
You can sell that time a la carte for $10 an hour, or $15 an hour, or whatever, OR you can use your time to build value, putting the hours towards creating something that will earn you far more than that — whether it’s developing a product, starting a business, or simply, making a sale.
I know car salespeople who take home more than doctors, simply because they work on commission. No experience needed, no college degree required, just the desire to succeed.
I know insurance salespeople who earn more than the President, simply because they work on commission. Again, no experience needed, no college degree required, just the desire to succeed.
I know real estate salespeople who earn more than A-List Hollywood actors. Some earn more in ONE MONTH than most people earn all year.
In all walks of life the people who earn THE MOST, always, without fail, work on commission.
Sure, in every case there’s a sales element involved, because earning commission means you have to SELL something — whether it’s a product, a service, or YOURSELF, or all three. Get over it.
I know an inventor who earns more than $25,000 A DAY off his inventions—over $9 million a year. His life is one big commission.
I know authors who earn thousands a day in book royalties before they’re even out of bed! And they only had to sell ONE person on their work — a publisher.
I know “consultants” who earn hundreds and even thousands PER HOUR simply “consulting” in-person or over the phone on whatever expertise or specialized knowledge they have.
I don’t have to tell you about countless entertainers — actors, directors, musicians, sports figures, public speakers — all making millions a year, on commission.
Not to mention, thousands of entrepreneurs who earn millions every year, simply because they live their lives on commission.
The history of the Internet alone is riddled with entrepreneurs, programmers, software developers, even everyday people with no skills whatsoever going into it, who earned MILLIONS, simply because they were willing to forego the “price on their head” and forget about hourly wages to instead focus on earning the absolute MOST they could with what little time they have.
They got over that fear of commission.
They embraced it.
They took the chance.
You, too, should get over that fear of commission.
You need to take the chance.
You have been lead to believe there’s an “uncertainty” about it; that there’s no “security” in it, yet everywhere you look, you’ll see people doing BETTER than you, enjoying their lives, living them to the fullest, with all they need and desire, simply because they live their lives on commission.
The $15-an-hour “powers that be” WANT you to be afraid of working on commission, they want you to be afraid of working for yourself, of doing your own thing, because they NEED your $15-an-hour labor. They ran out of $10-an-hour “suckers” so they’ve upped the ante a bit. You can GIVE your time to them for that, or you can live YOUR life on commission and set your own price.
So, it bears repeating:
Whatever you DEMAND of life, life WILL pay it — demand $15/hour and you will certainly get it. Demand more, and you will certainly get that, too.
I happen to demand much, much more.
Bottom line, I don’t worry about MINIMUM WAGE, I focus instead on always getting MAXIMUM WAGE — and I hope after reading this, you will, too.
Phil Autelitano is CEO of Mediarazzi — we develop TV channels and applications for Connected Television platforms like Roku, Amazon Fire TV and Opera TV. www.mediarazzi.com
@PhilAutelitano
