I have been following a flawed career path.

I started thinking about career options when I was a teenager.  My parents gave me great motivation and great guidance.  They were helpful and supportive but it was very clear that they expected me first to earn a college degree and second, very soon thereafter, move out. No free ride here.  They would help but I needed to work part time during the school year and full time in the summer to help with my support.

As a high school senior, I secured a minimum wage job filling orders and sweeping floors for a local wholesaler, Ann Arbor Candy and Tobacco.  Initially, the $.95 per hour compensation covered the cost of my burgeoning social life.  I worked enough hours to pay for a few dates and an occasional trip to Crazy Jim’s for a delectable Blimpy burger.  Starting in the fall of my senior year, alcohol consumption became an important part of my life.  The added expense of buying six packs on the black market put a real strain on my minimum wage budget.  It occurred to me that, if I could find a higher paying job, I could much more easily afford beer, wine and a healthy social life. More pay would reduce the number of hours I needed to work.  I would have both the time and money needed to enjoy the sixties lifestyle.  This was real capitalism on a very micro basis. 

A friend was making three times my compensation moving furniture for the local Mayflower agency.  He said that they were really short staffed.  If I showed up at the warehouse the next morning, I would be hired.  So during my college Freshman summer, I changed careers.  Moving furniture did not require a lot of skill.  In fact, the total training I received came from the Mayflower dispatcher when he hired me.  He said “Just work fast and don’t break anything.”  The job did not pay well because it was complex.  It paid well because it was a lot of physical effort and most people either could not do it or did not want to do it. 

At this point, I achieved a lot of my career goals.  I was making plenty of money.  I could easily fund all of my partying and I was tucking away enough money to carry me through the school year.   Unfortunately, I was working a lot of hours.  If you are riding back to Ann Arbor after moving someone to Cincinnati, you can’t be sipping Pabst and dancing to the Temptations.  Capitalism and careers are not perfect.  It is hard to get all of the benefits without some drawbacks. Compromise is required. 

Before long I realized that truck drivers and “helpers” worked the same amount of hours but drivers made a lot more money.  This made sense because one guy was driving the truck back from Cincinnati and other was just keeping him company.  In addition, driving a forty foot high cube semi was a skill set that few people had.  Try driving a twelve foot high, forty foot long trailer around the city streets in Ann Arbor.  In essence, drivers earned the extra pay.  They had unique and valuable skills.  After a year as a highly paid helper, I passed all of the tests required for a Commercial Drivers License and got behind the wheel of a big rig moving van.  Now I was an extremely high paid driver.  A great career move for me. Also a great benefit for Elsifor Moving and Storage.  Moving is a very cyclical business.  Most people relocate in the summer.  I piled up a lot of hours in the summer and it was beneficial to both the moving agency and me to scale back dramatically during the school year.         

Thus far, my career choices were working out very nicely.  I had sufficient time to pursue an Accounting degree from Eastern Michigan’s business school.  I really enjoyed driving a truck and moving furniture.  My robust social life was fully funded.  There was an interesting side benefit to driving the moving van.  When I needed provisions for weekend celebrations, I would pull the van up to the front of my favorite party store and buy all the alcohol the whole gang required.  Although I was nineteen years old, the proprietor of the store assumed that I was much older because I was driving a truck. No one ever checked my ID when I pulled up in a moving van.

After a little reflection, in those formative years, I created a perspective toward working and careers that I have followed for the rest of my life.  I deduced the following:

Compensation is higher for jobs that not everyone can do.

Working competently and diligently is a given.  My first job was sweeping floors.  I had to do it well and be industrious or I would be fired.  Later in life, when I was auditing public companies as a CPA, I had to do it well and be industrious or I would be fired.  Competence and hard work are required in every job.

If you wanted to have a high paying career, you needed to develop very needed skills that few others had.

If you truly enjoyed your job, you would perform better and greatly reduce stress and anxiety in your life.

This philosophy served my wife and I very nicely.  We supported our family, worked in very enjoyable careers for more than four decades and funded a comfortable retirement.

In retrospect, I made the wrong career choice.  I should have been a college football coach. 

Coaching requires a lot of work early in your career.  However, once you garner a head coaching position for a major university, you are set for life.  There are some similarities to my classic career criteria.  Initially, a lot of hard competent work is required.  You have to learn the business and hone winning coaching skills.  A lot of young professionals have accomplished this.  Every fall weekend you can watch a twenty nine to thirty nine year old phenom put his team on the path to a national championship. 

As defensive coordinator, Bubba Einstein helped to engineer the Trine University Thunder into a top twenty five ranking in National Associated  Press coaches poll.  Einstein catches the attention of Eastern Michigan University.  He takes the head coaching reins.  After two years, he moves the Fighting Emu’s to the Mid American League conference champions and earns the nineteenth slot in the National Rankings.  Again, a lot of hard competent work involved to this point.  Bubba is now hired by Rutgers to restore the glory of the early 1900’s to the school’s storied football program.  Bubba goes ten and two in his first season and is offered a five year, $50 million, contract to continue coaching the Scarlet Knights.

At 37 years of age, Bubba has totally locked up career success for the rest of his life.

Here is where the head coaching career path differs from my classic career criteria.  The classic path requires continued expert performance.  If you can’t deliver great value, you will lose your high paying job.  Companies or clients will not pay for mediocre performance.  If you have a head coaching contract with a major University, you are impervious to financial peril, whether or not you perform at a high level.

If Rutgers goes two and ten next year, Bubba still makes $10 million.  If Rutgers fires Einstein, he gets the $10 million for another four years.  He doesn’t have to work and Rutgers is going to pay him $40 million.  What a marvelous career benefit!   This happens all the time in college football.  Penn State fires their football coach and he will get roughly $50 million if he never coaches again.  LSU is committed to paying two fired coaches approximately $140 million, whether or not they ever coach again.

What a great career option.  Work hard and smart until you are 38 years old.  Get the big, long term, contract.  After signing the long term contract, work at whatever pace you like.  If your lucky, they will fire you and you will get a pile without having to do anything.  Following the classic career criteria, I worked thirty years longer than coach Einstein for substantially less compensation.  The coach’s IRA has to be a lot bigger than mine. 

So I am recommending to all my friends, become head football coaches for a major University.  I truly believe that this is a career open to anyone who wants to pursue it.  College football is very results oriented and it is a very learnable skill.  If you can prove that you can win.  Man, women, old, young, they will want you.

Do everything required to get the multi year contract.  If you really like coaching, continue working hard and smart for as long as you wish.  The $10 million per year can continue indefinitely.  If you are tired of the coaching grind, ease off and get yourself fired.  You walk away with tens of millions and you never have to work again.  Many people have achieved this objective before their 40th birthday.   Now that is a successful career.

I have always been very thoughtful and thorough in analyzing my career opportunities.  Somehow, I over looked the incredible advantages that come with coaching a major University’s football team. 

As we say on the grid iron.  When the long term contract is signed, it’s GAME OVER.  Take a knee and run out the clock.