$1 an hour.

I was 14 years old, nearly 6 feet and close to 12 stone (stay with me its pre metric), so passing for 15 years and getting an after school job was easy. So easy in fact that the pub was no longer fascinating by the time I was 18, anyway I digress. My first pay packet (with real money in it) of close to $8.50 for a Thursday night and Saturday morning at Woolies packing and carrying groceries was just the start, to what I thought would be untold riches including yachts and round the world air travel. Well aside from the yachts I did end up with the air travel.

I was satisfied with that pay packet but as I acquired more skills, including how to operate the cardboard crusher, where to stack the bananas so they wouldn’t spoil early and how to slice open a box of beans for stacking on the shelves, it became apparent to me, I was worth more money, lots more money. Interestingly management didn’t share that view and this became one of my earliest business lessons.

So my question is around worth and your view of worth in the work place. What are you worth? What is your job worth? More importantly how can you get the two aligned??

Used to be, you had to know a lot to be worth a lot, but Google took care of that and with it the so called expert. Of course there is no short cut to earning an MBA in financial disaster but somewhere along the line Google will find a way to make even that, obsolete. So if we have Google to collect our knowledge we’ll need to get better at other things to show our worth so that electronic transfer of funds continues into our bank accounts.

I always think people who earn the money that gets you into trouble, should speak only pearls of wisdom every time they open their mouths. Of course that doesn’t happen and we shouldn’t be surprised that they in fact often know less than the workers on the floor. So we see that disconnect with senior management and wonder how they did that and why aren’t you running that company?

Your worth is wrapped up in many layers and contains more than just the work environment. The standing you have within your family, your friends and how they relate to you and the satisfaction of a job well done, all contribute to that self worth. There are so many things the dollar cannot buy you, yet it keeps raising its head tantalising you with dreams of sugar plum fairies on yachts. There are so many reasons lotteries will never go out of style.

So can you believe in self worth while still chasing that dollar? If you keep it in check and use it to motivate and aspire to greater things, all the while trying to make a difference, the dollar will align itself to your level of worth. Make a difference with your business relationships and you will discover other areas of satisfaction that no dollar can buy.

Your relationship portfolio is not something that can be bought or traded up for an extra dollar but brings with it a most important aspect of self worth, that of belonging and being able to influence thinking. Something that the top dogs at the root of the GFC were missing as they chased the dollar.

I figured this out when after many grueling hours of training in the liquor department along with doing lots of favours, I was finally allowed to carry out the slabs of beer to waiting customers over the long hot summer, all the while being the coolest kid in the fridge working for a $1 an hour.