Why your company’s taxi supplier is richer than your Vice President
Being successful in your career will not make you wealthy
Last month, I met a humble gentleman who is a multi-millionaire. He runs a taxi company that supplies chauffeured cars to large companies in Gurgaon. He is a villager with no college education. His company is known for extremely punctual, reliable and courteous service. He is debt-free, runs a modern fleet of cars with well-trained and loyal drivers. After talking to him for a few minutes, I estimated his income to be quite large. Upon inquiring, I was pleasantly surprised that his Net Worth is in Millions! Good for him. It was amusing to think that he is much richer than all the big-shot VPs of the company who sit in his cars!
100% of people on LinkedIn are career-minded. That means they are here to
• find a new, better job,
• make contacts that can help in their career,
• pick up advice that will help them in their career.
• And what does a better career mean for most people?
1. Bigger job responsibility, bigger title
2. Better Salary
3. Bigger Bonus
4. Promotion
5. Recognition and praise etc
All of the above will definitely mean that you will lead a decently happy and satisfied life.
But will that make you wealthy? Truly wealthy? have millions in the bank account?
I doubt it.
Let us examine people around us who have become wealthy. What are the things that have made people wealthy?
1. Receiving a large Inheritance
2. Being an owner of a growth Business that benefited from the economy 3. Having a license to do something that is scarce: building/construction permissions, mining, monopoly contracts etc. What the economists call “rent seeking”. Typically our Industrialists have done this. Not all of them were very rich before doing this.
4. Making money in a Property “bubble”: To make money in property markets is a bet and typically in stable markets, property does not give high returns. Additionally, one should know when to enter and when to exit.
5. Share markets: very few people enter this market as they do not know how to make money buying shares of listed companies.
6. Employee Stock options or selling out start-ups: a lot of lucky people in the Technology space have made their wealth through this route 7. Slow “savings” over a long period of time – saving in Small savings, Retirement plans, Deposits in banks etc. I would not call this as a wealth creating strategy because one has to save a lot over a long period of time. Typically older generation did make modest wealth through this route by living frugally. Very rare among young people to do this.
So, essentially these are 7 ways. There could be more but that is not the point. 99% of people are focussed on:
1. getting good college degrees
2. working hard – sometimes killing themselves for 10-12 hours a day 3. survival skills – trying to make friends, influencing people and pleasing the boss.
People are spending far too much effort and time to “get (and keep) a good job” and absolutely no time in learning how to be wealthy. None of them are working on the wealth-creating strategies (1 to 7) listed above!
That does not make sense to me. I am all for educating yourself and doing work that gives you satisfaction and being content in life. But that is not going to make you rich.
That is the reason the taxi operator of the company is richer than the Vice President of the company!
By all means aspire to be that VP. Also aspire to be wealthy like the taxi operator.
The million dollar question is – How does one really convert that monthly salary into your big pot of wealth?