Welcome to the Club!
Soon after I was laid off last year, I visited a friend who (let's call him Mr. H) was running his own Telco service company. Mr. H was laid off 2-3 years back and after thinking for a
few months, he decided to start this company. That was another story that I want to talk about in term of starting business. What I wanted to share here is only one interesting aspects of the meeting.
We went to a coffee store at the ground level of this office building for a chat. Soon after, we were joined in by another couple of guys of middle age. I guess their ages around late 40s & early 50s. You can see their seasoned faces. Mr. H introduced them to me, but, I could remember their names (look, I have this problem of memorising people's names). But, one interesting introduction line Mr. H gave was worth pondering upon:
"Look," he said, "we belong to the group of people whose wifes are working! Welcome to the club!" Then we all laughed.
This is quite a strange phenomenom. It seems that, in Singapore, males of middle ages find it more difficult to land themselves jobs than the female counter part. In this case, my wife was laid off 10 days before me. She got a job within a month. Well the fact is her annualised income is now about 55% of the previous earning. For me, it seems different. I don't get any offer for any
kind of jobs like that even though I indicated my interest.
When I looked around me, I suddenly realised that many of my friends who are not working basically supported by their wifes. So, what is the reason? The fact that the wifes are working makes them less enthusiastic to land themselves jobs? Something else?
Anyway, the key point is, I call it survival skill number 3:
QUICK INCOME!
Key survival skill here is to get one of the couple to get a job as quickly as possible. Even if the income is not able to cover the expenses. One of my wife's ex-colleague who was laid off at the batch when into depression. He has five children and wife has never for the last 5 years. One of the children requires special attention (medically). Here is the issue. He is not willing to accept a job that will pay him less than what he needs to support the family. Many ex-colleagues tried to match him to jobs but not quite successful.
Here comes the key point of discussion: Why must employer pay you enough to support your family?
Listen up, guys, nobody owes you a living. Not even the government! Employer is going to pay you the PERCEPT value of the job. Your employer will pay you $10,000 per month answering phone calls if what you do will secure $100,000 of business every month. Otherwise, please expect $1,000 per month.
Mr. H is quite lucky that his wife's job seems to be stable and quite highly positioned, so no worries for him. He took his time to set up the company. Spending about 1 year to develop the software needed. Then, marketing the services. In total, about 2 years, he was not "drawing any salary" (not having income). Until about 2 year later that there of Net Income to the company and he started to give himself salary". That was a long wait but his business is improving.
Think about it.
Survival Skill Number 3: Get Quick Income for Family.
