It is not in your company’s best interest to pay you what you are worth.

Hey ladies and gents, so here goes the first part of the “how I became a millionaire before 30” series - let me know what you guys think :)

Summary: Your salary is your most important base tool to wealth. The easiest way to invest more, is to have more, and more specifically, have more from your salary. So here’s how I got my salary growth kickstart in 2010 - and how by applying the same tactic on multiple occasions in my career, got my salary to increase by 5x in 7 years 😊

First things first: a company exists to make profit. Period.

Right about now, some of you are thinking: “no Redwood88, some companies are really there to help us AND it’s not all about the money” - STOP.
I’ll repeat my first sentence, a company exists to make a profit. If a company can find a way to do this whilst also making a difference to us people on the street then what this means is that the company has found a way to earn income off of you without you MINDING or even KNOWING how they’re done it. Or, you know, they’re an NGO/not for profit org:)

Want an example of this? Think about your credit card reward system. The only reason that your credit card fees have been dropping in the past decade - and we’ve been getting a higher % of our spend back in points or cash back is because the banks make a substantial income from VISA, MasterCard etc based on how much we spend. I.e. I spend $200, VISA pays BofA $2.8 as a transaction fee, and BofA generously gives me $1 in points. In most cases, this transaction income is MORE than the interest banks earn on our credit cards (😁 gasp!!).
So in summary, corporate found a way to get cash from us, as well as to profit from our activities without us knowing , thus equaling BIG profit - and we don’t mind because hey, our loving banks are giving us $1 back... 😉

Other examples are selling our contact info to telemarketers, earning interest on our current account balances (more on that in another blog post), selling browsing history to marketers etc

“Ok, ok, corporates are money grabbing - we know this Redwood88” - let’s get back on point... what does my company being for profit have to do with my salary?

The short answer is... everything.

Simplistically, a corporate makes more profit by doing two things: growing revenue and decreasing costs (or more likely, growing revenue faster than its costs). And what is typically a corporates largest costs after raw material costs..?

Staff costs.

So it is always in the best interest for a corporate to pay you and I as low a salary as we are willing to accept.

And the realizing of this very simple corporate principle was the turning point from going from negative balances in my bank account each month to my present $150k per annum state. I realized that my company paid me and an (equally qualified and experienced) colleague vastly differing salaries about 7 years ago.

At first I was PISSED OFF. At everyone, the company, my boss, my colleague, my dog. EVERYONE!!

Until I realized WHY there was a difference between my and her salary - it was because she had been far more willing to debate and negotiate a higher annual increase and starting salary than me. That’s it. Nothing more. The minimum that she was willing to accept was just HIGHER than MY minimum.

So here’s what I did: I went back to my job the next day, and took a hard look at my job specifications and wrote down the 7 most important outputs that my job required. I was in (vehicle finanace) sales back then, so my list looked something like this:

1. Sales revenue growth
2. Total client number growth
3. Interest rate margin made on my sales
4. Repeat customer sales
5. Cross selling of vehicle insurance
6. Innovation and efficiencies embedded into business (to decrease costs, increase revenue)
7. Migration of clients to cheaper online channel

...and then I tracked my progress on each one of those points. I did this by retrieving my stats and performance (from our sales records) at the beginning and end of 2009 and 2010.

I then used this to calculate my growth in sales, cross selling etc across the two years.

But growth stats are meaningless if YOUR growth is higher than your company’s required growth - and more importantly, if your growth is not higher than 75% of your colleagues. Mine was better than 90%. (If your stats aren’t better your colleagues... then I suggest you get cracking on those sales calls :)

Finally, I got to work on completing some of the personal efficiency innovations that I had started for the company, and never had the Steem (hehe 😁) to finish.

These innovations are basically the easiest form of volunteering for more work. Companies love it when you can show them that you can reduce costs for their businesses - and managers pay attention because it’s one of the things that their bonuses are paid on 🤦‍♂️

With a few innovations under my belt, and some recognition from the companies managers and managers’ managers, I nervously took my stats with me to my next performance appraisal/bonus discussion.

I am not extremely assertive, but I’ll tell you something, walking into your bosses office with the knowledge that your bosses boss knows who you are - and having printed copies of proof of your better-than-Average sales in your hand gives you a shot of confidence like you wouldn’t believe!! Don’t HALF-ARSE your salary discussion talks people!!

Long story short, my boss was of course reluctant to give me a larger than average increase - but my recognition from the innovations as well as my sales records (in hard copy black and white) made it difficult for him to ignore my value to the company. What I did next blew his mind though...

I said that I actually didn’t care about the annual increase and that he could keep my salary the same next year... IF he agreed to conduct a salary benchmarking exercise which caught me up with my sales peer in the 90th percentile... AND IT WORKED!!!

I got a 40% INCREASE, and was on par with my colleagues! And the cherry on top? I did so well on my sales targets the next year ( because I was less concerned that I was being exploited and underpaid) that my boss didn’t mind given me the annual salary increase 😂

So moral and actions I want from you:

1. Take this weekend to think about your Top 7 deliverables of your job

2. Work out your growth, ask a maths minded friend if you think you can’t do it, AND then see whether you’re above 75% of your peers sales - if not, get cracking on those targets/deliverable!!

3.Figure out what extra mural activity will get your boss and bosses boss to recognize from everyone else - and something as simple as volunteering to be part of the company Christmas party organizing committee WORKS!!

1. Get on that extra mural ASAP!!

2. Once you’ve gotten these two big pieces of ammo’s (may take a few weeks/months)... wall into your next salary discussion like a boss (remember print your stats... you’ll never remember this the stats under pressure)

3. And don’t leave the office until you get a salary review.

Let me know how it went - your salary is your most important base tool to wealth. The easiest way to invest more, is to have more, and more specifically, have more from your salary. So GOODLUCK!! 😉