Me, Inc. (14 page)

Save the money.

You want to take out a girl and impress her? Rent a nice car. Spending a few hundred bucks is preferable to sticking yourself with a debt of tens of thousands of dollars.

If you really want to splurge, rent a limo for a night. It'll cost a few hundred dollars. You can afford it. And a limo will impress her a lot more than your new $20,000 car. You won't have to find a place to park, and you'll have a chauffeur. And it'll pick you up and drop you off. And when the date is over, the costs of car loans, maintenance, and insurance aren't your problem.

I didn't have a real girlfriend until I was twenty-nine years old, although I had had lots of “girl friends.” I also didn't have many of the costs that go along with having a girlfriend. No Christmas gifts. No travel expenses. No nothin'.

I lived at my mother's house until I was twenty-four years old. I contributed to the rent and household expenses, but I had very little financial exposure.

If you don't have the disposable cash, don't buy it. You probably don't need it and can do very well without it.

All in all, these are personal choices. I'm not here to tell you how to live your life—except, in a way, I am. Your life, in many ways, is your business—and I'm here to tell you how to be successful in business. The above list of small changes in your personal life will, I guarantee, help you get to where you want to go.

So, you saved some money, lived at home, and didn't splurge on a new car. You have graduated from Priorities 101. Now what? If you live outside or far from a large city, it's time to move to where the big dogs play. The simple fact is that you will substantially increase your chances of climbing the ladder of success in a big city.

If you don't live in a big city, move to one now.

Period.

There are more job opportunities in a big city than there are in a small town. A small town can become a ghost town overnight when the steel mill goes bankrupt, if that town depends on the mill as its main source of jobs. And the diners and clothing stores and supermarkets all depend on those workers having the money to spend on life's necessities. So if the steel mill goes out of business, the rest of the town's pieces fall like dominoes.

Big cities have more people. Millions of them. Therefore, there is more money. Big cities have more job opportunities. Many more. Service jobs for the millions of inhabitants. Construction jobs for the big buildings. It's almost endless.

As an example, in big cities you can open a pushcart hot dog stand on the street for very little money. You will make a decent living selling hot dogs to the hungry people passing by during lunch and on their way home. You won't have to go to school to sell hot dogs. You won't have to pay for college. You won't have working staff; it'll be just you, so you won't have to pay anyone else. You won't have to pay workers overtime or vacation days, and you won't have to deal with unions.

That doesn't mean you'll become filthy rich with a hot dog stand. But in a big city, you can make a living doing it. And a big city has more people, which means more customers for you.

Big cities can almost guarantee that you will at least have a job. Maybe not the job you want, and maybe not the job that will launch your entrepreneurial goals, but at least you will be able to pay the rent. And while you work at this menial job, you will hopefully have the freedom, and the spare time, to devote all your energies to your entrepreneurial goals.

In the near future, small towns may become a thing of the past. Or perhaps small towns will become idyllic vacation spots for the rich, simply because small towns cannot support or guarantee jobs.

And cities, more and more, are growing outward, so much so that they're becoming mega-cities. Los Angeles now almost touches Long Beach, which almost touches San Diego. The populations of these metropolitan areas are in the tens of millions, and therefore the job opportunities are endless. And with a huge population, it's the perfect place to launch your entrepreneurial venture.

Yes, I know Detroit went bankrupt. And while it may be hard to imagine now, New York City was on the brink of bankruptcy in the mid-seventies. But if you read the newspapers, especially the business sections—and you should, even if you don't understand most of it—you may be convinced, as I am, that Detroit is coming back. And New York came back gangbusters in a relatively short period of time. But if a small town becomes insolvent, or bankrupt, everyone moves away and it turns into a ghost town.

We've been taught to think of small towns as being safer—no gangs, drugs, or violence there. And my chances of protecting my family and keeping them safe are much better in small towns, right?

Wrong.
U.S. News & World Report
recently ran a story about a new study by the University of Pennsylvania that debunks the myth that small towns are safer than big cities. It goes on to report that death from injury of all kinds in small towns is more than 20 percent higher than in larger cities.

Hard to believe, but true.

We all hear the same stories. Big cities have higher homicide rates. Well, true and untrue. Here's the real skinny.

Get ready for this one: The study says your overall risk of being killed by a gun is the
same
in small towns and big cities!

And
if you're a child or over forty-five years old, and you live in a small town, you actually have a greater risk of dying from a gun-related event than in a big city, the study says.

To be fair, in big cities, if you're African-American or Latino and you are twenty to forty-four years old and especially if you live in a lower economic sector commonly referred to as the “ghetto,” gun-related deaths are higher.

It's no secret. In “ghettos” there is rampant drug abuse, and there are violent gangs on the streets. More deaths per capita occur there than anywhere else in a big city. It's not politically correct to point these facts out, because some people might be insulted.

But it's true. And we all know it. Why this condition exists or how it can be cured is a question for another book by another author. I'm just here to point things out to you that are true, so your decision-making process is clear for yourself and your future.

If you
are
injured or shot in a big city and you need emergency care immediately, hospitals are a few minutes away from anywhere you are.

Small-town hospitals, when they even exist, are often not close to everyone. And small-town emergency staff is not (please forgive me) on the same level as those in big-city hospitals. They are also usually understaffed.

When heads of state need hospital care, they go to big-city hospitals because they want the best care. Small towns, unfortunately, do not have the level of emergency medical care that is found in big-city hospitals.

The best doctors and surgeons are also paid more in big cities, and are attracted to big cities because there are more potential patients and more up-to-date medical facilities.

Sorry. That's the truth.

You may be asking—what is all this talk of health and safety doing in a book about successful entrepreneurship?

It's because these are all factors that need to be taken into account. Health and safety are about preserving life, and life is business. Health, crime, and everything about your life contributes to your chances of success. The more road bumps there are on your journey, the harder it is to get to where you want to go. Crime diminishes your chances of success. You might get injured, killed or robbed. Bad health services/poor hospital care diminishes your chances of success.

So, for your health.

Your safety.

Your job opportunities.

Move to a big city.

17

Single or Married? Career or Family?

“The only place Success comes before Work is in the dictionary.”

VIDAL SASSOON

hairstylist, cosmetics magnate, and philanthropist

A
s I've advised elsewhere in this book, you should let nothing and no one stand in your way on the road to success.

First become successful. Then worry about everything else.

This is why I need to address the issues of marriage and family with you at length here. I touched on it earlier, but it bears emphasizing.

Career or family? Often, you can't have it both ways.

Pick one. Choose wisely.

If he or she is demanding more of your time, and if that stops you from pursuing the opportunities you desire, you may have a life decision to make. That may mean you saying, “Right now, my career is the most important thing in my life.”

Ladies! Don't let men talk down to you. Or demand more of your attention than you're willing to give, if it interferes with your career goals.

I say career first, relationships second.

Notice I said relationships, plural. You're young. You haven't achieved your career goals and haven't made your fortune yet. So, you don't have kids, you're not married, and you didn't buy a home or car. Right? I
knew
you were smart.

The old family idea was hard on the breadwinner. Dad or Mom went to work in the morning, and the kids didn't usually see them until late at night. We survived, but it was hard and because there was a family that required more of our time, there wasn't an opportunity to try anything else, or take risks.

The more family time you spend, the less time you will have to devote to your career, and the less chance you will have of success in business.

On the other hand, the more family time you spend, the happier you will be. Perhaps. But you may not be very happy if your dream goes unfulfilled, or if an important opportunity passes you by because you spent Thanksgiving dishing family secrets at your aunt's house. In fact, your inability to accomplish your dreams can lead to the destruction of your family—people often take their resentment out on their loved ones. If you pick family over your dream, you may end up losing both.

Beyond matters of the heart, marriage costs money. Lots of it. Marriage—and divorce, which often follows—will be the biggest financial exposure you will ever have.

It will also be the biggest financial commitment you will ever make.

I urge extreme caution. For both man and woman.

Tread lightly. Marriage is fraught with failure. The statistics are not in your favor. And if and when divorce happens, the couple that once loved each other and swore that they would stay together till death, through thick and thin, through good times and bad times, are the same couple who will try to hurt each other, and fight over money and even their children when it is time to divorce.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves here. Can you even afford to get married?

I'm going to say it again, in case you're skimming this book.

Forgive me for speaking bluntly, but this needs to be said, because you, man and woman, need to go into marriage with open eyes and full disclosure before the fact.

If you're a man in your twenties or thirties, and you have yet to make your fortune, I would urge you not to get married. Not yet. You will probably not be able to afford much of anything, other than taking care of yourself.

Also, let's be honest here—you're probably not mature enough to get serious about a committed relationship at this point in your life. I know. I'm a man.

Remember, for legal reasons, I have to stress this is just my opinion. You're free to do as you like. I am here just to put the facts as I see them on the table in front of you. What you do with them is up to you.

If you, the man, get married in your twenties or thirties, you will most likely not be able to support your wife and/or kids. And that's just if you
stay
married.

Statistics tell us that in divorce, the man—if he's the primary breadwinner—will often pay as much as 50 percent of everything he's got—gross, pretax—to his former wife. That means that, at the highest tax rate, he will have to earn
twice as much
to make that money back.

Don't get married until you're mature and secure. If you have no money and no career, taking on the responsibility of supporting a spouse—and children and mortgages and car payments and taxes—just doesn't make financial sense. It may make you HAPPY. But you will be happy and BROKE, and eventually likely DIVORCED, and then you'll have to pay even more. There is a hierarchy of needs—feeding yourself comes before self-actualization, and love.

Whether you stay single or get married, it's important to
have a business plan
.

If you choose to get married, you both need to sign a prenuptial agreement, which outlines how your assets will be divided in the event of a divorce—with each of you receiving advice from your own attorney so it holds up in court. Without a prenup, when the time to divorce comes, lawyers will be whispering in your ear what a bastard or bitch the other was, and then tempers flare and costs go up.

Better wait until you build your fortune, so you can
afford
to get married or divorced.

The only guarantee you have of never getting divorced is never getting married.