Paid in Full #001: Laying the Foundation

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Hello and welcome to the first ever issue of Paid in Full. By the way, it took me hours to come up with the name of this community but I feel like it perfectly encompasses the mission I am on and what most of us are thinking about today. My guess is that if you signed up for this newsletter you fall into one of these 4 categories:

1. You are struggling to find a job because the market has been unkind recently
2. You believe that you are undervalued or unfulfilled at your current job and want to change that
3. You have a great job but want other sources of income for peace of mind (and financial freedom)
4. You have 2+ income streams but still feel like you haven't reached your full earning potential
5. You love your life but you just signed up out of curiosity

I have passed through each of these phases in the past 6 years. The concept we are going to cover in this community will resonate with you regardless of where you are currently. Some may not directly apply to you but they can help someone around you.

Before I start dishing out business ideas and execution plans, we'll start every week with a guiding principle that has helped shape my philosophy.

Guiding Principle:

You can get more money, but you can never get more time.

We spend most of our lives working and sacrificing to get to the next job, the next promotion, the next house and the next car. What we forget is that these things are infinite. The one finite thing we have is our time - the hours we get with loved ones on their birthdays, the weekends spent with our families & friends, and the memories that are made in those moments. This principle has allowed me to build a life and businesses that optimize for time so that I don't miss what life is truly about. Don't forget what truly matters.

Let's Lay the Foundation

These may serve as reminders to some of you but for others, they will be revelational. It is important to start with the right mindset that will allow you to accept things for what they are just like I have. They will be key to helping you maximize your Paid in Full journey. Here's the first layer of the foundation:

Not everybody can be an entrepreneur; but everybody can have a second source of income

There is a myth that you can just find a problem, build a solution and then start making money. Dropshipping, Amazon FBA, clothing lines, affiliate marketing and other ideas have been positioned as "easy money" if you just get started. Well, if it was that easy, you would already be doing it! Entrepreneurship is complex and exhausting at times - especially when you are working on the wrong idea. There is a reason why more than 90% of businesses fail in the first 5 years; it's because they should never have started in the first place.

On the other hand, there are a million different income sources. For example, there was an Linked employee I heard about last year who earned over $100,000 by referring a bunch of people in his community to roles at his company! That's not a typo! A 6-figure secondary source of income by submitting a resume and referral. I wouldn't exactly call that entrepreneurship - but it works.

I came across a startup last year called Candidate?that would pay you up to $4,000 to refer someone in your network for a job in a company they had a partnership with. You would receive an email like this and you could you could literally just submit a referral and get paid for it once they got hired.

p.s. Candidate doesn't seem to be accepting any users at the moment (and no - this is not a sponsorship). Just trying to open your mind to what's possible once you accept the fact that it's possible to get paid without being an entrepreneur or burning the midnight oil.

Here's the second layer:

Nobody is coming to save you

The days of companies consistently increasing your pay for 20 years, throwing you a large retirement party for your decades of service, followed by a nice pension are pretty much over (maybe with the exemption of the government and some banks). But for everyone else, our futures are in our hands. Our companies will not save us and pensions will likely not be there when we get to age 65. It's up to us to create safety for ourselves and our families. It is up to us to ensure that by the end of every year, we can confidently say we collected the full value of our worth to the market. Always remember that:

1. You are classified as a cost to the company: Giving you and all your colleagues a 30% raise because the market rate for your role has increased is just not feasible in the long term. MOST companies will not do it. And when times get tough and investor pressure starts mounting, payroll is the quickest way to slash costs.
2. Most companies have to be selfish to survive: They would rather jeopardize your life than lose the money of their shareholders and investors - if it means keeping the company alive. That means they would prefer to lay off thousands of people at a time instead of slashing the compensation packages of a few executives. Of course, there is Tim Cook and Apple who haven't done layoffs since 1997 - but they are the exception, not the rule.

Once you accept that your job is a transaction and take the emotion out of it, you will realize that you are helping them build the business they want! So it's okay to view your company as a stepping stone to build the life you want as well. It's a fair trade!

The third and most important layer as well as the recommended resources to help you take your next step are available here

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See you next Wednesday,

Tobi