By Rasheed Hooda, DTM
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This follow-on article from our guest speaker for the upcoming Awards Showcase offers some practical advice on just how you can set about firing your boss. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? Well, read on and see what steps you can take to take greater control of your career.
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So I did a little survey. I asked my fiends and followers at Facebook and Twitter this question: “If you’re not happy at your job, what is stopping you from terminating your boss?”
The number one response? “I am concerned about meeting my financial obligations.”
So I asked, “What will you do if you were fired tomorrow?” Their answers fell in one of these two possible scenarios.
“I’d be up s*** creek without a paddle with a hole in my boat.”
OR
“I’ll just have to find a way to deal with it one way or another.”
What blows my mind is that the same people who choose the second answer do not see it as a strategy to deal with their concerns about how to pay their bills if they were to Mind Their Own businesses. If you are in the first group, I would suggest that you get that hole fixed in your boat, just in case. I’m just saying. But if you are in the second group here are five ideas in the category of *one way or another.*
1. Establish a CYA account.
If you were fired tomorrow, how long can you survive till you have to settle for whatever you can get or be on the streets? Is that something you are comfortable with? If not, now is the time to get started or increase your contributions so you can cover your asset in case you get fired. Better yet, you can fire your boss and become a self bosser.
I established what I called a “Feel Good Account.” Actually, I had a savings account with bare the minimum in it. What I did was I renamed it Feel Good Account on my online statements, and started depositing $25 every week without failure, and now I really feel good every time I see how much I have set aside and how it is growing every week.
The key is to pay your self first.
2. Re-do your budget, or establish one if you don’t have one.
If you are like most people, living from paycheck to paycheck – or hand to mouth, as my brother preferss to call it – you probably don’t have any idea where your money is going. If you are in this boat, don’t feel bad. You’re not the only one.
One of the first things I did was to look at our family budget, because when we set the budget, it had room for monthly savings of around $400 barring any unexpected expenses. It turned out that we had no savings and we were constantly struggling to make ends meet. A re-evaluation showed that there were certain expenses we had not taken into consideration when making the budget, but more importantly, we realized that we were foolishly spending money just because it was available on things like junk food, DVD rentals and eating out.
Be brutally honest with yourself and see where the leaks are and how you can plug them. Set priorities. Do you want to go on living as you are or do you want to have a better life?
If you keep on doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep on getting what you’ve always got. – A.L. Williams
3. Add another profit center
You can take a second part time job to feed your CYA account or you can start Minding Your Own Business on a part time basis. When starting a part time (ad)venture, make cash flow your main goal rather than going for your dream business, unless, of course, you can have cash flow from your dream business as you start out part time. The whole idea in the beginning is to put yourself in the position where firing your boss will not cause undue pressure on your financial situation.
4. Invest in yourself
There is a big difference between the way an employee and an entrepreneur thinks. An employee thinks in terms of making money and trades his time for it. An entrepreneur thinks in terms of making a difference: Making a difference for himself, his family and his community and as result making a difference in the world.
An employee thinks in terms of a paycheck, and an entrepreneur thinks in terms of profit. An employee may think of creating Multiple Streams of Income, but an entrepreneur thinks of creating Multiple Profit Centers.
In order to understand this subtle difference you need to invest in yourself in terms of education and personal growth. By education, I don’t mean formal education, because the goal of the formal education is to create employees, not entrepreneurs. I mean you need to attend seminars and take classes on entrepreneurship that are designed and run by successful entrepreneurs, not by theoretical educators.
Between savings, added income and re-evaluating and eliminating unnecessary expenses, you should be able invest in yourself and feel comfortable enough to go on your own.
5. Find or create a network of like-minded people
Firing your boss and minding your own business can be a scary proposition. And sometimes it can be a very lonely one too. You need to build a community of like-minded people.
You can build the community from scratch, or you can join one that already exists. Twitter and Facebook are good places online to find people you can relate to.
In the “real” world, the world of bricks and mortar, you can search for a Meetup group in your area that caters to entrepreneurs. Go to networking events organized by the Chamber of Commerce, or other trade associations.
