| Elon sort of reminds me of Tony Stark from the Marvel universe. I mean he creates all kinds of cool tech and doesn’t care what people think about him or his businesses. I guess that sort of makes his past assistant, Mary Beth, his Pepper Potts. The biggest difference is Mary Brown, affectionately referred to by Musk and his staff as MB, hasn’t worked for Elon for over 8 years! Why did she depart? Well, she had been with Musk almost from the beginning hired as his assistant over 20 years ago. She handled his schedule, picked out his clothes, helped him make major decisions for both SpaceX and Tesla. If he worked 20 hour workdays, so did she. She thought she was indispensable. So she asked for a raise. She wanted the same compensation as the top SpaceX executives. And there were a number of staff members who believed she deserved it. Elon is a very smart guy. To figure out if she was worth the money she was asking for, he told her to take a two week vacation so he could realize the value of MB’s responsibilities in her absence. When she showed up for work after the two week experiment, she was told her position was no longer needed. Elon had realized she was not indispensable and it was time for the position to change. Elon realized that in order to create the growth that was required for SpaceX, he needed several specialists versus one generalist. There are two important lessons here. First – are you indispensable? Most people think the world will come crashing to a halt if they are not working. The problem is they are not willing to put in the hard work necessary to become a specialist in their craft and become truly indispensable. People complain that work is boring or tedious. The minimum wage keeps going up while productivity keeps going down creating a push to replace people with automation and AI. Think about yourself in the real estate business and ask yourself if you are a generalist or a specialist. The Average Joe investor is a total generalist. It seems like every week there are a ton more brand new real estate investors running the same ads to the same leads telling people they will buy their house for fast cash. Lucky for you there are very few people willing to put in the time and energy to learn to become a specialist in probate. Probate has become a hot topic in real estate, but most people have a serious lack of proper understanding of how to service this specialized niche – unfortunately, they won’t become specialists which means they are set up for failure. Second – this lesson is short but powerful. Don’t go too long without getting your raise because sooner or later you might realize that you are not indispensable. Create your own raise by raising your level of knowledge and expertise and show up in the marketplace like nobody else. You deserve to make more and have more time off. But it’s not going to happen unless you make it happen. When you’re ready to become a probate specialist, I’m here to make it happen! |
| Committed to your success, Ernie “Give Yourself A Raise” Vargas | The Probate Fox |
