Origins of The S.O.E.
That day, I noticed the other employees that were older than me, well into their 50’s and a few in their 60’s, still doing the same job: selling hours for dollars to a brick-and-mortar retailer. If they were lucky they would make a small commission from the cosmetics being sold, but most, like me, were just getting paid by the hour. What’s the problem with that? It’s impossible to scale. The first rule of building real wealth is: stop trading time for money.
For men who don’t subscribe to middle class, S.o.E. is an entirely new class of sartorial fashion that acknowledges rules to attest for the exception.
For men who don’t subscribe to middle class, S.o.E. is an entirely new class of sartorial fashion that acknowledges rules to attest for the exception.
No offense if your father is a floor manager at Best Buy, because everyone has to make a living, but is that all you want? How are you going to provide for not only your immediate family, but for your community and future generations? Imagine your grandmother needing to work at a makeup counter, standing on her feet all day because her social security benefits are not enough.
I was terrified that this would be my fate, too. There I was, working freelance at a major department store in New York City. Only a few months prior, just after the economic collapse of 2008, my “secure” full time job was gone after 11 years, and I had nothing to show for it. Lacking financial literacy, and living paycheck-to-paycheck, left me at a loss when it all fell apart. Maybe you’ve heard someone say that we’re the average sum of the five people we hang around the most. Well, all my friends were broke. So it probably wasn’t smart to take their advice.
I didn’t know what to do, but I had to do something. So I started asking my peers what they thought about my existential crisis. A few of them had college degrees and a steady job.
“If you’re broke and you want to make more money, you have to get a better job. The only way to get a high paying job is to get a college degree. The only way you can afford to get a degree is to get student loans... so you can hopefully get hired at a job that pays enough to pay off your student loan debt.”
Seems legit. So I went back to school and racked up more debt. It wasn’t long before I realized a degree wasn’t going to solve my problem. Needless to say, I hit a wall. What I thought would be the solution only led me right back to square one. While a “job” would maintain the status quo, it wouldn’t get me out of debt – and it wouldn’t get me closer to reaching my full potential. Have you ever had the feeling that you’ve been getting the wrong information?