Pharmacist Keith's, Keys to Success: The New Economy

The New Economy

Hi I'm Keith Abell; I just wanted to do a quick blog post about the state of employment and the new economy.

Let me start off by saying we're living in a new economy. This isn't a down economy, it's a new economy. This isn't a recession or a depression, it's a new economy.

The changes that have happened are fundamental and in most cases permanent.

Let that sink in a moment.

You think the job market's coming back?

Not the one you recognize.

You think the skills you went to school to get are going to serve you in this rapidly changing economy?

Well maybe, but not in the way that you think that they're going to serve you.

There's basically two ways that most people earn an income in this world.

One is Blue-Collar Work.

"Blue-collar work!" Making things, doing things, fixing things.

There's a certain amount of satisfaction in blue-collar work, doing something, making something look nicer than it would or making something look nicer than it did.

There's a certain amount of satisfaction there, but can you get wealthy that way? Can you?

Does your body tire there? Is it sometimes dangerous there?

Most people have had some level of blue-collar work in their lives. There's nothing wrong with that, but can you create wealth? Can you get there with blue collar work?

The Second is Corporate Work

Working for someone else.

You know what that's like.

The other way most people earn an income is through corporate work.

This is where the biggest change in the history of the world is happening and I believe in the next five years you'll see the biggest change of all of our lifetimes.

Randy Gage says, "Safe is the new risky." What everybody thinks is safe, corporate work, is the new risky.

The most frightening place to be, is working for somebody else today.

So what's happening in the work place?

First of all are layoffs. This implied contract you have between employer and employee, "If you're loyal, if you put your head down, if you'll just do your job, we'll trade that for job security."|

There's no such thing as job security. Not anymore.

Maybe your parents had it where they were. Maybe your grand parents had it.

Unemployment is approximately 20%. Those that are on the actual unemployment roles are about ten percent, but there's a lot of people who have lost their benefits and aren't even counted.

They're part-time not by choice and they don't have benefits and they need to be full-time but they're not, so they're taking the part-time job. Maybe even 2 or 3 part time jobs.

And if you're 55 today, looking for a job in this economy, what a miserable place to be. Put your whole life into somebody else, build somebody else's dream, and build up all that experience. Then they say, "We don't care about the experience because you get too much money."

So one out of five, ladies and gentlemen, are unemployed and you think that's about to change?

Most of the jobs that were eliminated the last two years were permanently eliminated. Most of them. Technology. Outsourcing. Part-time work.

So the companies that used to have a hundred people, they said, "Let's see how we do with 80. Let's call it a temporary layoff and see how we do to 60." They're still having meetings right now about you, saying, "Can we do without them? Is there any way?"

So layoffs in my opinion are going to be a around for some time. They're going to find ways to do with less and less and less and because of the costs of health care, they're going to take people from full-time to part-time.
So that's phenomenon number one. The second thing that's happening in the corporate workplace is, asking you to work harder for less money.

Income reductions, voluntary income reductions.

You used to get paid $50,000. They say, "You know, look. We'd love you to keep your job. We think you're great here, but we need you to do it for $45,000. Now if you don't agree, we understand, but there's a long line of people outside the door that's willing to do it. We'd rather have you than them but, you know, I was told by the guys upstairs if I don't do this, then it's me."

The second part to working harder for less money is, "Instead of 40 hours, we need you 45. We need you 50. We need you 55.

Oh, how about overtime?"

"What do you mean, overtime?" This is survival time. You get to stay if you come longer. True or not true?
The third thing happening in the corporate workplace is shifting to a performance-based economy.|

At every level inside of every company.

They won't pay you by the week anymore or by the month or by the year.

If you used to get $50,000 a year – they're going to take you to $12,000 a year and let you earn back the other $38,000 if you hit performance benchmarks on a weekly or monthly basis. If you don't, you don't get the 50 back again.

Or they say, "Yeah, you're going to get your 50 if you hit these milestones for 12 consecutive months. We're going to pay you three thousand a month for each month that you hit the milestones.

But if you miss one, that three thousand's gone. If you miss two, six thousand's gone.

So you got to hit the benchmarks."

Have you ever had performance-based pay?

What happens when you hit your numbers? The next year they raise the numbers. That basically forces you to do what? You work even harder for the same money again.

What if you're a rock star and you perform two years in a row?

Raise it again. Get used to it, ladies and gentlemen. The people that are cleaning the rooms in a hotel, they are very closely – if they're not already there – going to get paid by the room, not by the hour.

It's not just people serving you your food in your restaurants. Everybody's going to be on a unit-based, performance-based, wage system. Managers will be paid based, based upon the people work for them. It's going to be everywhere.

So if you're going to be in performance-based anyway, which system would you go into?

The system that is progressively going to put the screws to you. If you decide to perform – put the screws to you by increasing the work to get the same pay.
Or one that celebrates you the more you perform and takes the limits off the more you perform and appreciates you the more than you perform, that rewards you the more you perform.

And all you got to do is you've got to drop this thing that Les Brown calls "learned helplessness."

Our entire society has been trained and learned a pattern of helplessness.

In other words, we have this need from birth to be told what to do, where to go, what to say, what to – how to perform, what skill to learn. "Okay, tell me to do it."

You've got to be able to shift away from that.

Learned helplessness or freedom!

Let me show you a way that you can be rewarded based upon your performance.

A system that increases the reward as your progress grows instead of increasing the amount of work to reach the same reward.

A system that rewards you for showing others how they can do the same.

To find out more http://NoMoreBoss.info