Me, Inc. (11 page)

That one is correct.

Even if you
do
succeed, try, try again.

Keep at it.

Do it over and over again.

Keep improving what you're doing.

Always.

13

You—The Me, Inc. Business Model

“Anybody who can afford a box of business cards can afford a website. Any company with an 800 number can move its services to the Web for peanuts by comparison. The extreme case of corporate promotion is to strip away all other aspects of your business and sell goods or services via the Net alone, as Amazon.com has done with books.”

NATHAN MYHRVOLD

inventor, entrepreneur, and former chief technology officer for Microsoft

“Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.”

ANDY WARHOL

pop-art innovator, visual artist, author, publisher, and filmmaker

W
hat is your definition of “success”?

This book is about MONEY. It's called
Me, Inc.
because my attitude is this: better it's MY MONEY than anyone else's.

There's a very old platitude that goes “the love of money is the root of all evil.” The person who came up with that statement was, in my view, severely misguided, and missing a large—perhaps the largest—source of crime in the world. The implication is that money, by its nature in having value at all, corrupts people simply by being valuable.

As I said in my book
Sex Money KISS
, it's the “lack of money that is actually the root of all evil” (I've since discovered that this quote has been attributed variously to Mark Twain or George Bernard Shaw). And, no, I don't mean “all”—I often use hyperbole, so you'll have to excuse that. There are exceptions to every rule, and the usual white-collar crime suspects you hear about are, of course, greedy and evil individuals. But this platitude, “money is the root of all evil,” carries a lot of weight with people, and it's important to note that it does not take desperation into account. If I didn't have a dime, I might hold up a 7-Eleven for a loaf of bread, because I would be desperate enough to do so. But if I were worth $100 million, I would never think of doing that. The lack of money is why people hold up banks.

After you become successful, give it all away if you like—to your family, to your loved ones, to charity, whatever makes you happy. But before you have any money, you can't do squat.

The truth is that it's the lack of money that is the root of so much evil in the world. Crooks hold you up for money. And they tell us that the single biggest problem with relationships and marriages is money; even infidelity comes in second.

Money allowed me to make my mother's life easier. Money allowed me to buy her a house. And to buy her anything she wanted. Without money, I couldn't have done any of it.

And for those of you who might say, “Oh, but money can't make you happy,” well, that's patently untrue. If you're a miserable son of a bitch, it's still better to be a
rich
, miserable son of a bitch.

When Scrooge is rehabilitated at the end of
A Christmas Carol
, he can do a lot of good and make people happy, because he's got money to do it with. A rehabilitated Scrooge
without
money wouldn't be in a position to help anyone much.

But lest we dwell too much on money, I want to make it clear that it is the love of labor and not the love of money that will give you rewards. There is a big difference between going to work and loving to work. It is important that you take this to heart.

And when you embark on this great personal journey you're going to go on, I would suggest you implement my Me, Inc. Business Model.

Ultimately, even if you are well educated, it is
still
up to you to figure out how to get a job, and how to make lots of money.

The answer is, Me, Inc.

YOU are the corporation.

YOU are the one who should form a limited liability company.

YOU are the one who will have to figure out how the capitalist model works. That's something that they don't teach the masses.

The future is here.

The future is now.

The old business model had to do with a workplace: a building or an office where everyone came to work. We're speaking of nonmanufacturing entities. And we're not addressing farming.

The old way was expensive. As a company owner, you had to rent or buy a workplace. You had to rent or buy equipment—chairs, desks, computers, filing cabinets—storage facilities, parking, and all sorts of other items.

There were also many lost hours during the workday. A worker had to travel to and from work. Multiply all that travel time and cost by five days a week and fifty weeks a year, and you've got a lot of wasted time and money for one employee.

The new business model is simpler. And if you can apply it to your endeavor, it will save you a lot of money and a lot of wasted time (which also costs money). If you can, work at home. Save the time and money of commuting to and from work. And save the stress of commuting. Or if you're starting a company, you work from home and let the Internet do the rest for you.

The new, twenty-first-century streamlined company can rent a facility for a short time and refocus the business plan; then workers can go off to their respective homes to implement the program.

Working from home gives the worker a lot more flexibility and more usable hours to get the work done. Remember, anywhere from two to four hours a day are wasted on traveling to and from work.

And if you work at home, maybe you don't take a full hour off to eat. Maybe you only take half an hour.

And you can stop work at any time to do something else, as long as you finish the work.

The worker model of the twenty-first century is about going back to the basics: YOU are the boss. YOU make the rules. YOU, in essence, become the company.

But that also means YOU are responsible for getting the work done.

You may not realize it, but the Social Security system is a form of insurance. You pay “premiums” (a certain amount of money every month or every year) and later on, at “maturity,” you get to access those funds, which come to you in weekly checks. The Social Security system is your insurance that you will still be able to survive after you can no longer work. There are different forms of retirement security, including an IRA (individual retirement account) or Roth IRA. I urge you to find out what all of that is. Google it. It's simple. Educate yourself.

Your job will often automatically deduct a certain amount for your IRA. That's good, because for the most part, you won't do it. Mostly, you live in the here and now. Mostly, you spend what you earn. Mostly, you don't save for a rainy day. Mostly, you think you will never grow old and won't have a problem being able to support yourself.

Mostly.

Farmers are often smarter in their business model than the masses who work in the corporate system. And that's because a farmer has only himself to depend on. If you work at a corporate entity, there is always the company there to pay your wages. Rain or shine. Always dependable, at least until the company becomes insolvent.

Back to the farmer: He knows when to plant the seeds. He knows how much it costs. He knows what the price of goods is. And he can approximate his profit margin if all things go as planned. Of course, one bad winter or one flood can change all that. So, in a very real way, for a farmer, it's feast or famine. Which is why he absolutely must have insurance of all kinds as a farmer.

In a corporate environment, insurance isn't necessarily the first thing on your mind.

But perhaps it should be.

Health insurance. Car insurance. Homeowner's insurance. All sorts of insurance. It's all worth considering. Do the research.

You don't want to sit and stare as your house goes up in flames, or your car is totaled in a wreck you had nothing to do with, and have no financial parachute.

Farmers are smarter than you are. They have to be.

A farmer will rarely plant only one kind of crop. He can't. If he only plants potatoes, and the price of potatoes takes a huge dip in the marketplace, he will be wiped out. So he plants different kinds of crops (get ready for a Wall Street investment term—“spread the risk”).

This is the most basic form of
diversification
. Simply put, this means never putting all your eggs in one basket. If you drop the basket, all of the eggs shatter.

The same business model that a farmer uses is what's often recommended on Wall Street: Spread the risk. Invest in a few different things. Never just one.

A good piece of advice for all of you entering the corporate world.

Is what you do for a living the only thing you know how to do? If so, that's not good. What happens when that “thing” is no longer in demand? What's your fallback position? What else can you do?

Farmers also need to get along with their neighbors. It's important.

If a flood wipes out half of the farmer's crops, while his next-door neighbor is left untouched, he can hopefully count on his neighbor to help him out.

That's because the next time a tornado rips through the area, the neighbor might be hit and may need the farmer's help.

So, if you're a farmer, it makes good business sense to get along with your neighbor.

How about you? You sit in your corporate cubicle. Do you get along with the person in the next cubicle? Do you talk trash about them?

Remember, they may fly by you on the way up the ladder of success. Your “neighbor” might become your boss.

Work well with everyone.

Don't burn bridges. Don't trash-talk. Don't gossip. Not in the workplace. Not at home.

Find a hobby.

When you buy a hamburger, do you understand how much each meat patty costs McDonald's? How much do employees make? How much for the building's rent? How much for insurance? How much does the McDonald's franchisee profit with each burger sold? If you wanted to be a McDonald's franchisee, it would be to your advantage to know all that.

Do you partner up, or do you use consultants? I highly recommend consultants or short-term employees. If you hire someone, it also means that you may need to fire them, and that can get difficult. In present-day America, unions can still go on strike and shut you down.

At home,
you
are the boss. It's your home, so if you invite someone to your home, they're allowed to stay. If you decide you've had enough of your invited guest, you can ask them to leave. And they have to. After all, it's
your
home.

But if you have a business—which is, after all, still your “work home,” and which you paid for—you
invite
someone to come work for you. But in business, it's very difficult to ask them to leave. I find this astonishing.

There is also the idea that the employer has a responsibility to make sure you go on vacation two weeks every year and
still
get paid full wages, and that if you work overtime, the employer will have to pay you double and sometimes triple time per hour. The employer also has to pay for your health care, and your maternity leave. . . .

If you want to build a business in America using the
old
business model—that is, dealing with lots of employees, labor unions, etc.—the hurdles are nearly insurmountable. Instead, you can work with consultants, who get paid for the work they do, and can be fired or let go at any time, for just about any reason. Or set up your business in a “right to work” state—where unions don't hold sway, and where you are allowed to negotiate for your own wages without interference.

If you're reading this book, there's a choice you'll need to make. You can decide you just want to work for a living: pick up your paycheck every week, and have the union protect you (and your health care, your paid vacation, etc.) against the evil employer.

Or you can decide to become an entrepreneur. YOU will become the corporation. YOU will become the boss. YOU stand to make the big bucks. In order to do that, you cannot and should not build your venture on the old business model.

Remember, if you're building a business in America, YOU are the last person who will get paid (
if
there is any profit). The workers always get paid first. And their health coverage, retirement funds, and other issues are also paid first. Buildings, office space, rent, insurance, equipment—these things all cost lots of money, and
you
are the one who will pay for it all.

If, after all that money goes out, there is any profit left, you will still have to pay tax on that to the United States government. The 50 percent tax bracket kicks in, when you earn approximately $250,000 and over. So you'll wind up with
half
of that last precious dollar—
after
everyone else, and everything else, gets paid first: about $125,000.

Not much of an incentive to start a company in America, is it?