The Perfect Business: An Excerpt by Eric Worre Part I

Do you feel restless? Do you feel unsatisfied? Do you feel there must be a better way when it comes to your work and the way you make your living? 

The good news: There IS a better way, but it’s different than what you were taught in school. Let me explain. 

As I travel and speak around the world, I like to play an audience participation game. I ask people to help me create the ultimate business and to tell me specific things they’d like to have in that business and things they’d like to avoid. It always makes for a very interesting list. If we were face to face, I’d do the same thing with you now. But since we’re not, let me summarize what people from over 30 countries have told me while creating what I like to call “The Perfect Career List.” 

People usually start naming things they don’t want: 

• No boss 
• No commute 
• No alarm clock 
• No employees 
• No politics 
• No compromises 
• No discrimination 
• No educational requirement 

And then, as people start to use their imaginations in a more positive way, they start to visualize some positive attributes: 

• Something positive 
• Great product or service 
• Unlimited income 
• Residual income 
• Enjoy the people you work with 
• Time freedom 
• Something meaningful 
• Personal growth 
• Lots of perks 
• International Contribution to worthy causes 
• Low risk 
• Low start-up costs 
• Economy-proof 
• Tax benefits 
• Fun! 

Now, you might add some attributes of your own, but wouldn’t you agree that’s a pretty good start? Imagine being able to enjoy a career with all those attributes! 

All “jobs” that I know of fall into one of five categories: 

• Blue-collar 
• White-collar 
• Sales Traditional business ownership 
• Investing 

Blue-Collar Careers 

Here is the Wikipedia definition of blue-collar. “A blue-collar worker is a member of the working class who performs manual labor.” My definition is someone who labors to fix something, make something, clean something, build something, or service something (or someone). 

In my life, I’ve worked many blue-collar jobs. And, for anyone who’s ever engaged in this line of work, there is a certain satisfaction in a job well done. 

But here’s the big question: Can blue-collar work deliver on The Perfect Career List? The obvious answer is no. Sure, it can deliver on some of the attributes. It might have a great product and a low start-up cost or any number of other individual items on the list, but if you really look at it, blue-collar just can’t get you where you want to be. Not “The Perfect Career.” 

White-Collar Careers

Here is the Wikipedia definition of white-collar. 

“The term white-collar worker refers to a person who performs professional, managerial, or administrative work, in contrast with a blue-collar worker, whose job requires manual labor. Typically white-collar work is performed in an office or cubicle.”

My definition is a person who is employed by someone else to do work other than manual labor or sales. 

Many people choose a white-collar career, as it is one of the most socially acceptable of the options available. It has long been viewed as the safe and secure option. Recently that has changed. The implied contract that, if you are loyal to the company, the company will be loyal to you, is long gone.

I’ve also been a white-collar worker in my career. In my experience, there are two types of people who do this type of work: Achievers and Hiders.

Achievers are the people who want to perform at a high level. They are ambitious, motivated and energetic. They are full of ideas and want to move up the corporate ladder, which are great attributes to have. But there is a downside for the Achiever.

The moment a person decides to be an Achiever, they become a target. Their boss sees them as threatening to their job, so they start to hold them down or take shots at their reputation. Their peers see them as a person who will either embarrass them or keep them from getting a promotion, so they start to do what they can to undermine their accomplishments.

So, to remain an Achiever and survive in this hostile environment, a person must become good at one thing that has nothing to do with their productivity—and that’s politics. They must learn how to navigate the political world by diminishing their enemies and strengthening their relationship with powerful people. In fact, some of the most successful people in the corporate world aren’t Achievers at all. They are pure politicians.

So if you decide to work in the corporate environment and to be an Achiever, you must accept the fact that you must become a good politician also.

Now, let’s talk about the Hiders. These are the people who HATE politics, but still need a job. They learn not to be the ambitious Achiever. They don’t stand out. They don’t speak up in meetings. They don’t bring new ideas. They HIDE. They keep their heads down and do as they’re told. They do just enough so that they aren’t talked about negatively. They survive.

And this has worked for decades. But in the New Economy, it’s becoming much more difficult to hide. And people are running out of time.

So, back to our Perfect Career List: Can a white-collar job deliver on the list? Again, the clear answer is no—certainly not in very many areas.

Sales

Some people choose to get away from being an “employee” and get involved in a sales career. This is certainly more adventurous because typically salespeople are paid on their production instead of by the hour.

I’ve known thousands of salespeople. There is a common theme I’ve noticed over the course of my career. The typical salesperson will have a period of time where everything goes perfectly. Everything they touch turns to gold and they make some really good money.

As soon as that happens, they almost always set their lifestyle to that level of income. They buy a new house, get new cars, put their kids in better schools, purchase a vacation home—the works. Everything is great for a while.

And then something changes.

The company changes the compensation plan, their territory gets reduced, a competitor shows up, they lose their best customer, the economy goes into recession, new technology makes their offer less valuable, or government regulations change their industry. These are just a few examples. There are hundreds more reasons why the salesperson’s world could (and probably will) get more complicated.

When that happens, with the big lifestyle they’ve developed, now 40 hours a week isn’t enough to pay the bills. So they go to 50 hours a week. And then 60. And then 70. And then their life gets very small. Yes, they have the stuff, but they don’t have time to enjoy it.

The other challenge for the sales career is, no matter how a person does, they still start at zero the next day. It can be tiring to live under that kind of pressure over a long period of time.

Can a sales career pay the bills? Sure. But can it deliver on The Perfect Career we described earlier? Again, the answer is no.

To be continued...