How Do You Want to be Paid?

Listen, my young apprentice, and I will release you from your chains.

Every door of opportunity begins as a window in the mind.

Look through that window of imagination and glimpse a world that could be, should be, ought to be someday. Keep looking… and watch it grow into a door of Opportunity through which you can pass into an entirely different future.

Opportunity never knocks. It hangs thick in the air all around you. You breathe it unthinking, and dissipate it with your sighs.

Opportunity never knocks. It appears, flickering, like faulty neon at a nondescript fork in the road.

Opportunity never knocks. It whispers, a tickle in your distracted mind.1

Yes, opportunity begins as a window in the mind through which we glimpse possible futures.

And then one day we leap through that window.

“What is sure, predictable, inevitable – the one certain thing you know concerning your future, and mine?”

“That we shall die.”

“Yes, there’s really only one question that can be answered, and we already know the answer… The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.” 2

There is a space between yesterday and tomorrow. Do you know the place I mean?

It’s called Life.

And you’ve got to make a living if you’re going to have a life.

How do you want to be paid?

Do you want to be paid for your time,

or do you want you be paid for your knowledge?

Listen, my young apprentice, to what an old man knows.

There is no future in being paid by the hour.

You must escape from that financial prison.

Become good at something.

Become astoundingly good.

Do you see a person who is skilled in their work?

That person will stand before kings. 3

Do you wait tables?

Become the server whose tables spend twice as much money as the other tables. Restaurants around the world will hire you to teach their servers how to do the same. But don’t let those restaurant owners pay you for your time. Insist that you be paid for the difference you made.

Do you stack bricks?

Stack them in a way that no one has ever seen bricks stacked before. You have sizes, shapes, and colors. Stack them so they can’t be ignored! But don’t let your customers pay you for your time. Be paid for the difference you made.

Listen, my young apprentice, to what an old man knows.

Craftsmen are paid for the quality of their work.

But craftsmen are paid by the hour.

An artist is paid for the impact of their art.

Artists are paid for the difference they made.

The only thing that separates a craft from an art

is how you agree to be paid.

Roy H. Williams

1 The Monday Morning Memo, July 18, 2005

2 Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness, chapter 5

3 Proverbs 22:29 (NASB)

Do you see a man skilled in his work?

He will stand before kings;

He will not stand before obscure men.