I remember a meeting I had when I was in line for a promotion and raise at one of my previous employers years ago. I excitedly sat waiting for my manager to call me into his office to discuss my new income amount and title. Finally, he welcomed me in with a slight grin on his face. I hurried up and followed him into his corner office where he and his boss, who was also there, greeted me. My heart kept skipping a beat and I did my best to hide my anticipation. My manager and his boss began to run down the list of my accomplishments, what a great member of the team I was, and how valuable I was to the firm. Oh man, they had me skinning and grinning at that point. After a bit of a pause, my manager’s boss told me that my new title and pay raise would be commensurate with the level of contribution I had exemplified over the past year and a half. When he said that, I knew I was about to get a nice jump in pay.
How wrong I was…
After all the flattery and poetic words about my performance were shared, my manager’s boss told me I would receive an annual raise of… wait for it…
$2,000. My heart sunk into my lower abdomen when I heard the last syllable come out of his mouth. I was a man with a 3-year-old son and one on the way at this point. My expenses were getting bigger and fast. I did my best to both be and look appreciative, but I was very disappointed, especially given how hard I worked and how both my manager and his boss acknowledged this, verbally at least. That wasn’t the worst part though. My manager’s boss then told me not to expect another promotion for at least 2 years. At that point, I realized that I could not depend on this job to help me become more financially secure. I would have to come up with another solution.
After the meeting, I went to an empty office and called my wife and told her the news. While I resolved to count my current blessings, I wanted and needed more. It was in that conversation with my wife that I decided to go harder than I ever had with my side hustles. I became more intentional about networking and reaching out to contacts that I had already established relationships with to book more shows, speaking gigs, and appearances. I sought to tap into my gifts and talents of music and speaking to create ways to earn extra income. That was also the year that I got serious about investing in dividend paying stocks in order to create a new passive income stream. At the end of the year, I had made an additional $13k outside of my 9 to 5 and boy was I proud.
This is the moral of the story. I had to face the reality that no one was going to solve my financial problems for me. Not even my employer. I had to get creative and find a way to tap into other things that I was good at to make a better way for my family. We all have the power and potential to become the solution we seek. We only have to believe in ourselves and then take consistent steps toward realizing the outcome we desire. Whether being the solution comes in the form of starting your side hustle, going to marriage counseling, hitting the gym, or developing the vaccine for Coronavirus, it falls on you to do it and, well, ultimately become it. |THIS
Philip “Sharp Skills” Jacobs is a hip-hop artist, author, business consultant, and speaker. He is the author of You Are the Solution: Awakening the Entrepreneurial Spirit Within (Rebel Firm Books, 2020) and Accuracy: A Guide to Living Skillfully and Successfully in Today’s Crazy Times (Trafford Publishing, 2014). His music has been featured on ESPN, the MLB Network, the PGA Channel, and Impact Wrestling. You can hear his music also in television shows such as Sons of Anarchy, America’s Next Top Model, The Mindy Project, Castle, Bones, Nakita, Signed and more. Philip is also a consultant and project manager for Greatheart Consulting where he leads the Racially Savvy Leadership program. He earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration from Seattle Pacific University and he was the recipient of the institution’s prestigious Medallion Award in 2019. Philip hosts The Sharp Skills Podcast which can heard on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. He is passionate about equipping creative leaders to realize their full potential and leave a positive impact on the world. He lives in University Place, Washington, with his wife, Menzelle, and two sons.
[Written by Philip “Sharp Skills” Jacobs | Follow THIS on Twitter @THISENT1]
