Getting Off The Treadmill, Part I – Vision

Millions of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck at a job they hate.  My wife and I call this “The Treadmill” and we were stuck on it for years.  We would run faster – work more hours, get a second job – but we still seemed to stay in the same place, no savings, no property, no credit…broke.  My hope is to help you get off the treadmill and get in a position where you can dramatically change your life, your children’s lives, and the lives of the people in our community.

Like many of you, I grew up broke – I mean, pouring water in the toilet so that it can flush broke, like, getting food from the church broke, like, homeless shelter broke.  But it wasn’t just my family.  Our whole neighborhood was broke.  Our only real hope for escaping the same fate as our parents was to play sports, make music, or worse – or so we thought.

People only imagine themselves in careers that they have seen someone succeed in.  We knew rappers who made it from our neighborhood.  We could see that most of the NBA and NFL looked like us.  We knew seemingly successful criminals.  So essentially that’s what we had to choose from.

I had a terrible handle and an even worse jump shot and I was so skinny that if the wind blew hard, it could knock me down, so sports and gang banging were out.  I smoked a ton of weed, so I would have made a sorry drug dealer.  However, I could rap a little so I thought entertainment was the way to go.  Notice, my focus was limited to what I had been exposed to.  In reality, the whole world was open to me, but I focused on what I had been exposed to.

So how did I get out of that maze?

Well clearly, rap didn’t do it for me.  And by the time I tried to reverse course and follow the straight-and-narrow path, I had a criminal record, no education, and no real work experience.   

What decent job could I really get?

That was the wrong question.  I needed a career not some decent job.  I needed something that I could raise a family on, something I could be proud of.  But I didn’t know how to do anything.

The key was dreaming.  I know that sounds crazy, but you can’t exactly live the dream if you don’t have one.

If you want things to change, you need a dream.  A vision.  Then you need to be relentless in pursuing that vision.  

The saddest thing to see is a person without a vision.  They are like lions caged at the zoo with no hope of returning to the wild.  That’s what I was for years.  But the second saddest thing to see is a person who has a vision but does nothing to achieve that vision.  As I often remind my mentees, the best basketball players never went to the league.  They play at Rucker Park.  They had all the talent, but none of the follow through.

So what is your first step?

Find a career that will make good money and set up the rest of your life in a way that helps you get to that career.  

For example, if you wanted to make good money you might think, “I should drive a truck for a living; they can make close to $150k per year and they don’t trip about criminal records.”  You would then figure out how you get a CDL (a simple google search can answer the “how” for every job).  Finally, you would have to figure out how to save up the money for a CDL course and how to sustain yourself (and your family) while you are taking the course.  I know, I am making it sound easier than it is.  But this blog was created to help you through this process.

For most of us, we would need a better job just to save enough money for the CDL course.  That is where I was when I first got my vision.  I wanted to go to school an get a degree in audio engineering so that I could record bands and finally get away from rappers (notice – still entertainment).  But I was ineligible for student loans and had no way to pay tuition with the job I had.  If you are unsure if you will need a new job to reach your goals, here is a rule of thumb:

If the job you have now doesn’t pay enough for you to save at least 10% of every check AND pay all of your bills and expenses, you need a new job – now.  

What you want to aim for is the job that pays you the most you can make with the education and experience (and criminal record) that you have.  For me, the best job that I could get with a high school diploma, a criminal record, and no driver’s license was as a deli clerk at a supermarket that paid $10/hour and time-and-a-half on weekends.  Today, I am an attorney making more money than I know what to do with (notice – no entertainment).

I can’t choose a career for you.  But I can expose you to careers that you may not know about.  We have put together a ton of information on good paying careers in growing industries.  Look around on our Career Resources Page.  There you can find information like average salary, average hours, required education, the steps to getting into that career, etc.  No matter the career you choose, the advice in the next few blog posts still applies: You will need to humble yourself, make some sacrifices, and follow through.

Remember, the goal is to get you off the treadmill.  We want to educate and empower you so that you can make a real and lasting impact on our community whether that be by purchasing a home, investing in businesses, sending your kids to the best schools, forcing local and national politicians to direct resources to your neighborhood or just being a fantastic example of what could be for a kid who has no one good to look up to.

And just so you know my motives, I believe in Jesus – The Real and True Jesus Christ.  The one that gets me kicked out of churches.  The one that makes Christians and heathens alike strongly dislike me.  The one that accepts people exactly as they are and then helps them change, not the one that requires people to change before accepting them.

I am a firm believer that I cannot talk to you about spiritual things while you have dire physical needs.  In my mind, if I am starving, I don’t care about eternity; I care about dinner.  Even Christ fed hungry followers.  He didn’t just preach at them while they were hungry, or handicapped, or otherwise in need.  He helped people with earthly needs.  Our communities are in need.  So here we are trying to feed you physically – fully intending to get the opportunity to feed you spiritually.  My hope is that in the process of getting you off the financial treadmill, you will also let me help you get off the spiritual treadmill.  But, let’s deal with that later.  For now, let’s break bread and eat.

 

See the next post entitled Getting Off The Treadmill, Part II – Humility.