Is Your Salary the Bribe They Give You to Forget Your Dreams?

A What-If Scenario:

Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, is worth over $200 billion and is considered the first centibillionaire in the world.

What if Jeff Bezos was an employee of a company that paid him $10,000 per day, starting from 1994 until now, i.e., for 26 years?

Let's do the math:

• 2020 - 1994 = 26 years
• 26 years x 365 days = 9,490 days
• 9,490 days x $10,000 = $94,000,000
• $94 million / 200,000,000,000 x 100 = 0.047 %

What did you notice? Well, if Bezos worked for a company as an employee for 26 years (for every single day), and the company paid him $10,000 per day, he would have only made 0.047% of what he presently has.

Wait. Let's exemplify this with an intriguing scenario:

If you worked for 5000 years every day and earned $10,000 per day, it would still be 9% of what Jeff Bezos has made to date in less than three decades.

Let's do the math:

• 5000 years x 365 days = 1,825,000 days
• 1,825,000 days x $10,000 = $18,250,000,000 (let's say $18.25 billion)
• $18.25 billion / $200,000,000,000 x 100 = 9.125 %

Yes, you would make only 9% of this whooping $200 billion--even if you made $10,000 per day for 5000 years. Remember: Five thousand years--ten thousand dollars per day.

If he continuously worked as an employee for 26 years, he would make 0.047% of what he has now. Even if he worked for 5000 years at this rate, he would only make 9% of what he is worth now.

What's one takeaway from the above scenarios? He pursued his dreams by establishing a company and did not become an employee of another company--even if they paid him tens of thousands of dollars per day. And that worked exceptionally well.

Pursuing Dreams Vs. Money

If you pursue money, you might make some money. But if you follow your dreams, you're going to make a lot of money that you'll forget if money-making was your goal at the beginning.

Cristiano Ronaldo lived in poverty. Now, he is one of the highest-paid athletes in the world. Conor McGregor was reliant on government welfare until 2013. As of 2020, he is a millionaire. Two people, different directions but the directions towards achieving their dreams were similar.

From Jeff Bezos of Amazon, who established his dream business in 1994, to Elon Musk, who left South Africa, quit his Ph.D. at Stanford, and became the most successful businessman and entrepreneur in the US, one can see that pursuing dreams play a significant role.

No one was a millionaire or a billionaire from day one, except those who inherited money. Many millionaires and billionaires have had severe living conditions at the outset. Their living conditions have drastically changed over time. This is because they pursued their dreams and continue to make new dreams. The more time passes, the more records they break.

Although Conor McGregor is a millionaire and a prominent UFC fighter, he established his own brand of alcoholic drinks. Maybe that was his dream when he was working as an apprentice plumber.

Should you quit your job and pursue your dream(s) right now?

No. I am not persuading you to quit your job or studies. Elon Musk used to work as a boiler room cleaner for $18 per hour. Jeff Bezos worked at McDonalds when he was 16. It took three years for Warren Buffett to save $120.

How did they do it? They kept their dreams alive. For you, it is essential to have your dreams alive every single day. Otherwise, it's going to be a 'dream' that you might not even see at night.

How to keep it alive? Let's bring in J.K. Rowling here. She was not rich in her 20s. She had a dream to become a published writer. She was rejected 12 times, but she didn't quit. Later on, she became the world's first billionaire author after writing the Harry Potter series of fantasy novels.

My goal is not to encourage you to become another Elon Musk, Bill Gates, J.K. Rowling, Warren Buffett, Cristiano Ronaldo, or Conor Mcgregor. Just be yourself, but never stop pursuing your dreams.

The Dichotomy between Time, Money, and Dreams

In one of my articles published on LinkedIn, I discussed five types of people based on time, money, and dreams:

1) The Dead-Person-Wanted-Alive, 2) The Jobless, 3) The Employee, 4) The Self-Employed, and 5) The Business Owner

• The people in the first category have got no time and make no money.
• The people in the second category have got enough time but make no money.
• The people in the third category have got no time, but they make some money.
• Anyone in the fourth category does not have enough time, but they make some money or at least more than the other preceding types.

Here comes the fifth category: These people have enough time and make enough money. They use their free time to pursue new dreams, or they've got time for everything else.

Although most of those who pursued their dreams and became millionaires and billionaires are business owners, it might not be necessary to form a business or corporation to pursue your dreams. It sounds realistic to establish a business if you want to:

a) sell products, and b) sell your services

You will achieve your dreams, make enough money, and have enough time only if you stay out of the present mindset of working 8 to 5 for the rest of your life. If you are an employee for the rest of your life, it'll be hard to keep up with any of the above choices.

What's needed for any of the above two except money? Skills. Let's discuss them in the following paragraphs.

Skills versus Higher Education

What was the reason Elon Musk and 10s of other tech CEOs left college and university education? Well, they found that it was unnecessary to waste their time doing an MBA, MA, a Ph.D., or whatever they wanted to study. They followed the 20/80 or the Pareto principle: 20 percent of your customers contribute to 80% of your revenue. And in this case, with 20% of your activities, you can achieve 80% of the results. It's like claiming that out of 200 subjects in a field, only 40 subjects are more effective than the other 160 subjects. They applied their skills to pursue their dreams.

You might copy billionaires' lifestyles, but do you know that almost all of the above billionaires are book readers? They've built skills in their areas of interest by reading books. They knew that education might not help them achieve their dreams, although some of them did the formal education. Here is the thing: formal education wouldn't have impacted Elon Musk if he did his Ph.D. and became Dr. Elon Musk. It worked for Warren Buffett, but he didn't pursue his Ph.D. either. In fact, he started investing when he was 11. He had a dream when he was a child.

Some wisdom from China on higher education vs. skills

Jack Ma is the founder of Alibaba — "one of China’s most successful technology companies." He is a billionaire with a net worth of $61 billion as of 2020.

He believes that employers place "too much emphasis on academic results and unfairly pits out-of-box thinkers against traditional ones."

At the Forbes Global CEO Conference in Singapore, he said:

“People like me, today, if I tried to apply (for a) job in Alibaba, it’s almost impossible [...] People judge you by your diploma. They would think 'hey, we’ve got a group of people from Harvard, we’ve got people from Stanford, and you are from nowhere.”

Some employers indeed favor graduates from top universities, but the world's famous universities have dropouts. Even some of the highbrows were rejected while they applied for admission. Even Jack Ma was rejected dozens of times by Harvard, but now he has made a billion-dollar fortune. Harvard might regret it.

"Never underestimate the power of a common man" is overused so much. It's time to talk about this: never underestimate the power of pursuing a short course to learn a new skill. You need to learn outside-the-box thinking and critical thinking skills. You need to start thinking up new things and pave the ground for doing new things.

There are thousands of free and paid online courses that might help you pursue your dreams easily. And, the good news is that whatever you study is need-based. That's to say you learn a subject that you only need for achieving your immediate goals. Of course, these goals are essential parts of your future dreams.

How The '5/25 Rule' of Warren Buffett Helps You Set Your Dreams?

If you don't have a dream, make sure to develop one, two, three, or as many as you like. But if there are 25 dreams you want to achieve, omit the 20 and pursue only the 5. That's what Warren Buffett suggests.

But if you have a dream, don't just say that you want to be an Engineer, a Doctor, or an Instructor. You've to do some critical thinking. You've to create new solutions to old problems or emerging problems. Creativity and innovation guide the future of the world now-- the former "thinking up new things," and the latter, "doing new things."

Again, I'm not suggesting that you quit your job now or anytime. Amazon would be worthless without its employees. They all will be null without their customers' needs. Think of dreams that are not only your dreams but also what the world needs. The best time to think about it is now, not next month or next year when you're done with your studies. Get up and do something remarkable. Maybe, you're a trillionaire 26 years from now. Your employer hates me so much now--especially for the sentence before this.

Your employer gives you the salary as a bribe so that you forget your dream. Now, what to do about it? Let's discuss it in the following paragraphs.

Bribery: Who should go to jail?

First of all, you should be arrested for giving your precious time to your employer. You could have invested it in doing something great for yourself and the world, not only for your employer. After that, your employer should be arrested for not letting you go. That's to say, for increasing your salary every month and paying you more to stay. Why? Because they give you some money on the one hand and force you to achieve their dreams, on the other hand. They are the reason you forget about your dreams and everything else. Do you think because they love you, they give you that much? Nope. They hate you for every cent they pay to you, at least in a theoretical sense.

After your employer, they've to arrest your friends for giving you the wrong advice. "Hey, this worked for me. It's going to work for you too. Believe me." As simple as that, and you just accepted.

At least I am sure that I won't get arrested, even if I give wrong advice. Why? Because I am teaching you against bribery.

Final Thoughts:

If they gave Jeff Bezos another $5000 per day, making it $15000 per day from 1994-2020, he would still earn less than 1% of his present net worth.

If you think you're tired of 8-5 jobs and that they force you to forget your dreams, then it's time to "Think twice, and cut once." But if you hate your job, change it--not only your job but your career. That worked for Corner McGregor, who hated his plumbing job in 2013. If he didn't leave his job, he wouldn't become a famous UFC fighter now.

Let's not forget Khabib Nurmagomedov. That's because his dream had two dreamers: himself and his father. He put an end to his career (after achieving one of his dreams) when his father departed from this world. He is "The Undefeated" in the history of UFC.

"Smash" your 8-5 jobs like Khabib smashed 29 UFC fighters and became "the most dominant MMA fighter of all time with a 29-0 record." In the end, it's neither about money nor dreams, but the impact you make in the world. If Rumi worked for money, his quotes and sayings wouldn't have been famous after hundreds of years. He wouldn't be a best-selling author in the US now. If Shakespeare lived in our era, he wouldn't end with "To quit your job, or not to quit your job, that's is not the answer." Instead, he would say, "Pursuing your dreams is the answer."

Takeaways:

Let's end this long discussion with one quote:

"97% of those who quit too soon are employed by the 3% that never gave up." - Anonymous