Everyone, I want to wish you a happy Dr. Martin Luther King Day. And in honor of the day, we’re going to do a slightly different Go Live. And what some of you might not realize is Dr. King is really known for being such a Civil Rights activist, but he was really a very wise man. And he even had some great advice on things like money. So I did a little searching and I found this fantastic quote. And this is the quote. “Money in its proper place is a worthwhile and necessary instrument for a well-rounded life. But when it is projected to the status of a god, it becomes a power that corrupts and an instrument of exploitation.”
And I thought this was just such a profound statement. And it’s so true. There’s so much truth in it. If you think about greed in our current society and how bad and evil of a force it can be, but it’s not the money itself, it’s greed. And the way I think about this as it applies to me is when I went and started my firm, did I need to make money? Yes, absolutely. I had to replace a job, a steady paycheck that I left to start my firm. So I obviously needed to make money, but it wasn’t my only way. My kids were very little. One of the things I hated about working for a big firm was that you could be working till 10:00 at night and not leave the office, which to me was not a good work-life balance.
So part of my why was I wanted to have the freedom to be able to use my time however I wanted. If I wanted to take a day and go on a field trip with my kids, I did it. If I needed to pick them up because they were sick, I didn’t have to feel guilty about it. So the money, yes, was important, but there were other aspects of building my firm and of life that also really weighed in on the decision.
And in addition to that, if you think about money, it can’t be its own goal, because what are you going to do with it? You can’t take it with you as they say, so being charitable is such a wonderful way of acknowledging, yes, I’m making a lot of money, but realizing that there are so many good things you can do with the money and just hoarding it to yourself, is it really such a great end in and of itself? So I really liked this quote. Go do some research on some of the really brilliant pearls of wisdom that Dr. King had about all aspects of life. And we’ll see you next time.
