Leaving the Rat Race For Good
Looking back at my career and life experiences, it’s clear that everything I’ve ever learned was in preparation for a key career decision I would eventually make later on in life. Financial advice author, Robert Kiyosaki, shares an anecdotal story in Rich Dad Poor Dad, of a boy hungry to get ahead in life and earn a lot of money. Long story short, his friend’s dad teaches him a hard earned lesson by making the boy jump through a bunch of silly hoops intended to show the boy what real career frustration is, then uses the boy’s vexing experiences as parts of the overall lesson. This, my friends, is the school of hard knocks where you learn by doing.
Speaking of hard knocks, I look back at all thos all-nighters I ever pulled trying to get a campaign out the door for an ungrateful employer, or going through the creative agency ‘political gauntlet’ trying to champion one of my client’s projects, just so I could keep my job; only to have to do it all over again for the next client at zero added reward – other than getting to keep my job, of course. During all of my career in marketing I was the cobbler in the beat up shoes, watching bitchy clients walk out of my shop in a fresh pair of Manolos. And, they weren’t even my clients, they were my employer’s clients. I was the proverbial boy in Kiyosaki’s book, jumping through all the stupid career hoops, which amounted to nothing more than running in circles, earning a W2 income or consultant fee. I was the cobbler working for the cobbler.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been netting a six-figure income since the mid-90’s, so my story isn’t about rags to riches. Rather, this is a story about being deep in the game and still being fed up with the status quo, feeling trapped, and wanting more. Like every good storyline, there was a trial period followed by a moment of truth, and eventually a triumph. I’m not here to boast about my ClickBank account videos showing this month’s commissions, or a shiny expensive car. Nor am I even here to tell you about what you should want or not want because everybody wants different things. I want to share a story with you about what I wanted, and how I got it.
Isn’t it funny (as in curious funny, not “haha” funny) how it’s all so relative? I mean, think of the countless number of real problems you’ve had, which would only get dwarfed in comparison to the next really bad problem. Then by contrast, how maybe one day you got frustrated for something petty, like when the food server simply didn’t make her rounds quickly enough, or when the sommelier dragged his feet in bringing that second bottle of wine. I know I’ve been in both situation plenty of times, and what I can tell you is that neither of those categories of circumstances are very fun. Small or large, when something is a problem, it just that, a problem. Just as problems can oftentimes get worse, so can life’s rewards. After being sick of being the cobbler’s employee, I hung out my own shingle and started consulting for tech companies. The only thing that changed was that now I got to be the one who kicked my own ass when I wanted to slack off, and even all that suffering wasn’t a guarantee that my clients (read employers) would be happy. Yeah, I got to put myself into a 15% tax corporate tack bracket on pofits, which compared to a W2 graduated income tax scale made me feel brilliant. However, it wasn’t long before I’d rise to the next level of wanting more than what I already had. Life for me is about moving forward, and growing, not staying in one spot festering.
Enter the economic crisis, and I suddenly found myself not only still in the rat race, but in the race with a lot more rats! What used to be a 30-day sales cycle for landing new consulting gigs, suddenly doubled at best, but so did the work I had to do during that sales cycle just to be awarded the gig. Don’t get me started on the current mess of a job market. I’ll reserve that topic for another day. What I want to say is that whatever you want, be it big or small, if you are looking for a solution, there are really great systems out there for attaining that financial freedom.
In my case, I simply was tired of being tied down to a desk. I have a fiancé who lives on the other side of the globe now, and while we were both tied to our native lands for professional and personal reasons, life was slipping away. If I were to rename this blog post, it would be called something like, “How I Figured Out How to Not Be Strapped Down to a Job, So I Could Be Out Roaming the World With My Girl, Doing What the Heck I Want”.
What is it that you want? How much money is it going to take to make that a reality? Can you get that money by doing the same things you’ve been doing all this time? How long will that take?
I don’t know about you, but for me, simply not having to get up to go to a desk job each day is a huge reward. But to think that now I can be with the love of my life, in any part of the world, doing whatever I want is a huge shift in reality; and I didn’t have to cash out of a deflating 401K to do it, nor wait for retirement from some rat-race career.
There are only so many beaches you can lie on, cocktails you can drink, and fancy meals you can eat, before you’re ready to take things up a notch. Metaphorically, when you’ve climbed to new heights and seen how cool the view is from there, all you want to do is bring others up there with you. What is it that you would really like to have now? Is it a fancy new car? Or, is it just any car? As I said, it’s all relative. Are there people out there making money hand over fist in this lousy economy? You betcha. Can you do the same? Absolutely.
Find out how exactly I quit the rat race for good, and got the lifestyle of my dreams. What are your dreams?