Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons that you can reflect on in your journal so you can grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and have a better career, better relationships, and better personal finances while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
In today’s episode, we are going to discuss how we should be in situations where our talents are being used and we’re not being taken advantage of. As people, we should always know our worth. I’m in my thirties now and I’ve had a lot of different job experiences. I’ve seen different bosses and I’ve seen different co-workers. I also know my goals and what needs to be done to achieve those goals. When I was in the Marines, it was during my second enlistment that I knew I had to leave. I couldn’t stand this wait and see approach. The same thing happened in the Federal Government. You had to wait for openings to get your chance. There are exceptions, but you could be working 60 hour weeks and still be paid at the same rate as someone who works 20 hours a week or less.
I remember when I was a federal employee, there was another federal employee that pulled me aside and said I should probably find another job since you’re better than this job. I’m really glad I left and decided to start my own thing. The more I work, the more benefits I can see from my efforts. This takes a balance though. At my last financial planning firm, I had like 250 names in my database for financial planning, and there was no way I could handle all those people by myself. I was working way too many hours and not getting paid enough. I felt bad that I had to ignore these people in my database, but I couldn’t handle the work. And if I tried to do stuff to make my job easier by adopting technology, then it was shut down because of compliance.
I don’t like having a cap put on my potential and it really unmotivates me. So if I don’t like something, then I’m going to find something else. I know those situations are not going to be the best for me. Same thing when I worked as a personal trainer. I would have to give up 50 percent of my rate to the company and that’s a lot of money. They didn’t even really train me on how to become a better personal trainer. They did pay me a salary in the beginning but I had to clean the gym area as well so then I’m not prospecting for clients. So I had to leave that situation. If you look at most gyms, the trainer turnover rate is pretty high.
Now there is some personal responsibility that needs to happen, but the ambitious ones see that there are more opportunities to do something on their own and so they go do their own thing, and what is left behind is the mediocre folks. So this is a warning for myself that when I start hiring people, I need to take care of them and make sure that we’re working on our goals together. That means I can’t take it easy myself because ambition is the hardest human trait to contain. There are always going to be people who want to achieve more. That could be status, money, or the best is self-mastery. So don’t try to pay your people the least and don’t accept the least. There are times where we have to learn and work our way to the top, but know when you’re on that path and not on the path where we are being taken advantage of.
I’ve been doing my own thing as a financial advisor and now when I charge a planning fee, I get the whole planning fee instead of sixty percent of it, plus I don’t have people constantly changing the compensation structure on myself. This motivates me to work harder for myself because I get what works for me. This is why I’m constantly trying to learn new things, meet new people, and make sure that I’m not dependent on my income so that I don’t end up a trap in a situation I don’t want to be in. All my jobs seemed good in the beginning but then after I learned about the job, I didn’t like what was happening to me. So don’t accept a poor deal, and don’t stay in a situation longer than you have to when you find out that you’re being taken advantage of.
And that’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, they pretend to pay us, we pretend to work. Now there is a balance between being overpaid and underpaid. We just have to know what’s fair, and not be delusional about what we are entitled to. But if we’re journaling and exploring our lives, then we should know what is fair for our situation. Sometimes that situation is just a stepping stone and we can handle it for a year while we look for the next opportunity. Even if you’re in a situation that’s not the best for you, still give 100 percent effort because you will end up building up your skills and then when another opportunity comes you’ll be ready for it. Many times we just have to be patient until things open up, but the goal is not to be in a situation longer than we have to be in. Life is short and we don’t want to be in situations that are not taking advantage of our skills and talents. Not everyone is ambitious like me but if you are, then you’ll realize when you are being taken advantage of and you will make the change.
If you would like to get the journal questions for today’s episode, you can sign-up for my monthly journaling subscription newsletter, where you get daily journal questions Monday through Friday, and as a bonus, you will also get my time management course and my personal development cheat sheet. You can get all this for $13/mo, which is less than the cost of an audible subscription and it’s less work to gain more wisdom. You can get this offer at growwithjoe.me/journal
Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my Audiobook “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and you can download it right there.
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Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
