"Hey... you're the guy with the Viper, right?"
It's 12:45AM, the holiday weekend has ended and the 24 hour gas station is utterly dead, not one customer. The attendant actually has to walk out from the store to pump the gas. I have on muddy sneakers and dusty jeans with a huge tear in the a$$, and I'm driving my 14 year old Honda, but apparently I still can't go incognito.
"What are you doing driving that piece of s--t?"
Respect for the neighbors concerning exhaust noise, don't want to be tearing around in the dead of night, not worth pulling it out to drive 5 minutes, etc.
"So I've been wondering ever since I first saw you around, what the hell do you do for a living?"
I tell him about the internet business that's supporting me right now.
"I don't know what that means." (It's a technical B2B service niche)
I explain it in more simple terms using an analogy.
"Wow... so... you hiring right now man? I'd love to get out of here."
It's everywhere. In the news, on social media, all over your Facebook feed. People need jobs and nobody's hiring. People spend six months writing two resumes a day and get no response. People blast employers, imagining that jobs are like a resource that's being horded, or maybe outsourced to some place where people work for a bowl of rice a day and a corrugated tin roof over their heads.
Here's the problem: That's all DoD-classified weapons-grade bullshit.
I never realized this until I read TMF -If you can't get a job the problem is you, but not in the way you think. Some political pundits are fond of saying that a lack of employment is the result of laziness. I don't think that's necessarily true. What it is definitely a result of is what the gas station attendant demonstrated-A lack of understanding of how jobs works (and possibly the reason why he's pumping gas at 1AM on a Holiday).
Jobs come from businesses, from people hiring. Most slowlaners assume that businesses ape their set of motivations, just writ large-businesses get started and operate to make money just like they go to work to make money and need to "get" a job to get paid. Of course at TMF , we know that's not true: Businesses operate because they create value; businesses that chase cash go broke. You can probably see where this is going.
That guy at the gas station was so clueless about what I do that he didn't even understand industry terminology. He didn't care about the businesses I help, he didn't even ask who the customers were. All he wanted was to get paid. My car had a V10, his had a 2-liter 4-banger, and he figured that the trick to evening out that disparity was to get access to the magical money tree I had, where cash flowed without effort and jobs were given out like candy to satisfy the desires of employees.
What I took away from MJ's book, as far as the slow-lane is concerned, is this:
A job isn't something you get. It's something you give.
If that gas station attendant had said "Hey, I know how to do x, y, and z related to your field and have a track record of success in this related area, if you give me a chance for a few weeks, I'll show you how I can boost your profit and make your life easier," that would have been his last shift at the gas station. If he had approached the conversation by telling me what he could do for me, and for my customers, he would have captivated my interest and had me taking down his cell number. If he had tried to provide value to me rather than putting the onus on me, saying "you figure out how to make money, then you figure out how to fit me into that equation and make me money," his income might have quadrupled or more starting today. People complain that jobs don't pay for training when they hire workers anymore. Why should they? Did anyone train your employer when she or he put their house, their health insurance, and their children's security on the line to start the company you work for? Employers are doing nothing but holding employees to the same standard others held them to-expecting them to figure out how to add value to others without paying to teach them how to do it.
When you, as fastlaners, approach customers as a B2B service provider in the fastlane, a true win-win will have a 95+% chance of being accepted. If you can show customers how your product definitively enriches their lives, cash will roll in without trickery or arm twisting. If you apply for a job and focus on demonstrable ways that you will make things better for your employer (and their bottom line), you'll need two resumes to land your next job rather than 200.
Your life (and your bank account) will be enriched when you stop asking "how can I get?" and start asking "what can I give?"
It's 12:45AM, the holiday weekend has ended and the 24 hour gas station is utterly dead, not one customer. The attendant actually has to walk out from the store to pump the gas. I have on muddy sneakers and dusty jeans with a huge tear in the a$$, and I'm driving my 14 year old Honda, but apparently I still can't go incognito.
"What are you doing driving that piece of s--t?"
Respect for the neighbors concerning exhaust noise, don't want to be tearing around in the dead of night, not worth pulling it out to drive 5 minutes, etc.
"So I've been wondering ever since I first saw you around, what the hell do you do for a living?"
I tell him about the internet business that's supporting me right now.
"I don't know what that means." (It's a technical B2B service niche)
I explain it in more simple terms using an analogy.
"Wow... so... you hiring right now man? I'd love to get out of here."
It's everywhere. In the news, on social media, all over your Facebook feed. People need jobs and nobody's hiring. People spend six months writing two resumes a day and get no response. People blast employers, imagining that jobs are like a resource that's being horded, or maybe outsourced to some place where people work for a bowl of rice a day and a corrugated tin roof over their heads.
Here's the problem: That's all DoD-classified weapons-grade bullshit.
I never realized this until I read TMF -If you can't get a job the problem is you, but not in the way you think. Some political pundits are fond of saying that a lack of employment is the result of laziness. I don't think that's necessarily true. What it is definitely a result of is what the gas station attendant demonstrated-A lack of understanding of how jobs works (and possibly the reason why he's pumping gas at 1AM on a Holiday).
Jobs come from businesses, from people hiring. Most slowlaners assume that businesses ape their set of motivations, just writ large-businesses get started and operate to make money just like they go to work to make money and need to "get" a job to get paid. Of course at TMF , we know that's not true: Businesses operate because they create value; businesses that chase cash go broke. You can probably see where this is going.
That guy at the gas station was so clueless about what I do that he didn't even understand industry terminology. He didn't care about the businesses I help, he didn't even ask who the customers were. All he wanted was to get paid. My car had a V10, his had a 2-liter 4-banger, and he figured that the trick to evening out that disparity was to get access to the magical money tree I had, where cash flowed without effort and jobs were given out like candy to satisfy the desires of employees.
What I took away from MJ's book, as far as the slow-lane is concerned, is this:
A job isn't something you get. It's something you give.
If that gas station attendant had said "Hey, I know how to do x, y, and z related to your field and have a track record of success in this related area, if you give me a chance for a few weeks, I'll show you how I can boost your profit and make your life easier," that would have been his last shift at the gas station. If he had approached the conversation by telling me what he could do for me, and for my customers, he would have captivated my interest and had me taking down his cell number. If he had tried to provide value to me rather than putting the onus on me, saying "you figure out how to make money, then you figure out how to fit me into that equation and make me money," his income might have quadrupled or more starting today. People complain that jobs don't pay for training when they hire workers anymore. Why should they? Did anyone train your employer when she or he put their house, their health insurance, and their children's security on the line to start the company you work for? Employers are doing nothing but holding employees to the same standard others held them to-expecting them to figure out how to add value to others without paying to teach them how to do it.
When you, as fastlaners, approach customers as a B2B service provider in the fastlane, a true win-win will have a 95+% chance of being accepted. If you can show customers how your product definitively enriches their lives, cash will roll in without trickery or arm twisting. If you apply for a job and focus on demonstrable ways that you will make things better for your employer (and their bottom line), you'll need two resumes to land your next job rather than 200.
Your life (and your bank account) will be enriched when you stop asking "how can I get?" and start asking "what can I give?"
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