I hestiate to use latin phrases to express myself but I thought it would be more educational than using my father's advice to me as a young child. "There's no such thing as a free lunch." He also told me, "You never get something for nothing." I landed on the Latin phrase because it is a little more elegant and is one that my daughter already knew and understood before she went to college.
While I was in college back in the dark ages I worked at the campus radio station. Yes, they had radio in those days. In an effort to decrease grafitti in the station control room, the General Manager, Gary Chew, hung a blank sheet of butcher paper and pen and encouraged people to record thier comments there. He made the first of our pre-internet postings writing, "There is no such thing as a free lunch -- G. Chew". By the next morning there was a new posting just below it, "There is no such thing as a G. Chew -- Free Lunch". That is the only evidence that I have ever seen that there is such a thing as a free lunch.
A number of years a go, daughter accompanied me to work one day on take your daughter to work day. She wanted to learn some new word so I taught her this Latin phrase and used the opportunity to explain its meaning and the life lesson behind it.
There is an obvious lesson here. You have to pay, in one form or another, for all of the benefits you get. Sometime payments are hidden or delayed but they are nonetheless payments. Some deals are better than others and some of those deals may include things that seem to be free but rest assured that there is a payment involved. A great example is the daily offers I get through emails that want me to take advantage of millions of dollars as my share of some ill-gotten gains if only I will trun over a small fee on the front end. We all know that is a dangerous and pervasive scam. Yet, on the face, it sounds like something for nothing. Rule 9 teaches that such propositions do not exist and, if one is presented with such an opportunity, one should investigate to find the real cost before one accepts the terms of the transaction.
On the surface, I simply wanted daughter to make sure she understood that everything has a price and that there really is no free ride. While that concept is fairly simple, Rule 9 says a great deal more about life in more subtle ways.
The more important lesson here comes from its application to the way we conduct ourselves in our personal and professional lives. Good marriages happen when both parties work hard at making the relationship work. Successful careers are made as the result of hard work. Good football players often have God-given talent but the best football players succeed because of hard work. The late Walter Payton is a great example. No one worked harder at his conditioning and his craft that Walter Payton and his astounding success is a testamant to the value of hard work. In short, success (at college and in life) comes at a price. That price is most clearly and regularly expressed in terms of hard work and devotion to one's craft.
I know that my daughter understands and applies Rule 9. She was only a Freshman in her high school band when she decided that she wanted to be a drum major. She devoted herself completely to that goal. She did everything that they asked her to do and more. She became the veritable picture of a student leader. In short she worked as hard as she possibly could to succeed. I was proud of her for working so hard and I told her that regularly. I wanted her to be chosen as drum major not because I wanted her to have what she wanted or I wanted the recognition that came with that post. I wanted her to be drum major so that she would really understand that hard work is the key to success. She was a drum major and that experience did more to make her understand the rule than anything I could have said or written.
There is another important life lesson here. Things that claim to be free rarely are. Indeed, all claims need to be taken with a grain of salt. I was on a cruise recently and the prize for winning one of the poker tournaments was a nice polo short with the cruise line logo and the designation on the front "Casino High Roller". It became clear to me very quickly, by applying Rule 9, that anyone who wore such a shirt (maybe even anyone who owned such a shirt) was clearly not a casino high roller. Companies that claim they are not responsible for what happens to your car while it is parked in their parking lot are wrong. They likely want you to believe they are not responsible and ceratinly some people believe that but the truth of the matter is that they are responsible for their negligence just like everyone else, regardless of whether they erect such a sign.
Another subtle notion contained in Rule 9 is the concept that one must understand the costs and benefits of their proposed actions before one acts. Successful businesses do this rigorously. We should do the same with our personal interests.
My wife sometimes misses the cost benefit analysis especially when she considers the price of gasoline. She is willing to drive half way across town to save a penny or two per gallon on ten gallons of gas. It does not make much sense to spend 50 cents in gas to save 20 cents on the total purchase to say nothing of the time and effort involved in driving across town.
To apply Rule 9 well sometimes requires that we work hard to find out the true costs and benefits of a proposed action. For example, it is not easy to understand the costs and benefits of a new job offer. One has to very carefully understand all of the elements of compensation and benefits and try to predict what they are worth before one can understand the benefits of the new job. One also has to understand the costs of the new job whether they are expressed in temrs of the amount of time away from one's family, the cost of commuting (see the gasolint discussion above), the cost to one's reputation, or the costs associated with security and insecurity if that is a factor. Any one of these costs can readily be turned into a benefit. For example, one might enhance her reputation by changing jobs or one might reduce commuting time. The entire analysis would be different for one looking for work while employed than it would be for one looking for work while unemployed or while facing a certain prospect of unemployment.
My brother recently offered a very good example of the need to employ rigorous cost/benefit analysis. He was working for a company that had been acquired by another firm. It was apparent to him that he would eventually lose his job but he was still employed. He found another job (or at least something resembling a job) but the new position would be available whenever he left the current job. The company that acquired his employer was requiring him to perform jobs for which he was not qualified and for which he did not have or expect to get adequate training. He was asked to make a presentation with the understanding that if it did not go well he would be terminated. The first effort did not go well but the new owners gave him extensive feedback that he could use to improve his performance and perhaps have a chance to keep his job.
He called me and asked for advice. His plan was to tell the old employer to forget it and leave with his dignity in tact. He had the good sense to call me and ask for advice although he clearly did not understand or practice Rule 9. I suggested to him that he do the very best he can at improving his performance and make it as difficult as possible for the new owners to fire him. I suggested that this approach would maximize the amount of income as long as he was confident that it would not negatively impact his future with the new position. He agreed and acrried on. I got another call a couple months later. He had since made two more presentations and neither was well received although he continued to get comments, continued to work on his new duties, and continued to collect a paycheck. Now he really wanted to tell the new guys where to put their job. Doing anything else was demeaning. I suggested that he stay the course and continue to do everything in his power to make them want to keep him and, in the meantime leave with as much of the company's money as he could. He took my advice and was eventually terminated but not before taking several additional months of salary.
He could have made a cost/benefit analysis himself if he had truly understood what Rule 9 means. The benefits associated with his inflated ego were cleaely not as valuable as the continued salary but he could not get there without considering one of the basic tenets of Rule 9. Since everything has a cost, you need to understand what that cost is and weigh it against the expected benefits. If you need help with this analysis, post your issue and we will help you work through it. Let us know if you want us to keep it confidential.
In some cases the challenge in applying Rule 9 comes in understanding the cost of a proposed action. In many cases, value can be gained simply by agreeing to accept a risk that someone else currently carries. nsurance companies provide an excellent example of this analysis. An insurance company will sell you financial insulation from an identified risk in exchange for your payment of a premium. How do insurance companies make money doing this? They analyze the losses that have historically happened with respect to the identified risk and, with the application of some math, determine how much money they need to collect in premiums to fund all of their loss payments, their operating costs, and a healthy profit. If they think there is too much risk, they will decline to sell the insurance or they might sell some of the risk to another insurance company. The company does not have any significant cost when it issues the policy so the premium may look like a free lunch. The cost to the company, however, is the assumption of your risk. That has a cost and the company understands that.
The college student is confronted with a similar choice whenever she makes a choice about some behavior that is suddenly available to her. Is eating whatever you want a fair benefit in light of the cost associated with adding the "freshman 15"? Does eating now do enough for you that you are willing to risk health, popularity, or whatever? Does drinking alcohol provide you with enough benefit to compensate for the risk of discipline from the school, arrest (see Rule 1), or poor academic performance? The choices at college are endless and each carries a benefit and a cost (often in the form of an identifiable risk). To be successful you must apply Rule 9 and always understand and compare the costs and benefits of your proposed actions.
Rule Nine: Quid Pro Quo. Everything has a price.
Rule for Life Number 9
Quid Pro Quo
