The Expensive Training

Let's begin this blog with a small story of an experienced person who is given the highest position of the development team. Imagine you are that person and reporting to the top level executive of the company. Now, by accident the project went exactly in the opposite direction of what is to be delivered and everything looks meaningless and made a loss of $1,00,000 to the company. You are going to meet the boss thinking you are going to be fired for the damaged caused to the company.

When you meet your boss, you are apologizing for the mistake happened and feeling guilty and ready to resign for the cause. Imagine, your boss says, why to fire you. I have invested $1,00,000 in your training. Go and give your best in coming days. How will you feel and how will you perform in coming days ?. I am sure, any responsible person who gets that second chance or an option to correct their mistakes will learn continuously over and over to avoid even a small mistake in future.

Whenever we are about to do any job, imagine you are given a second chance after spoiling / screwing it completely. This mentality will make us to achieve bigger things. This is the higher level of maturity any person can get in their professional and financial life. In Personal life, not many will get a better second chance. What all a person will be cautious about when provided this second opportunity ? This depends on the type of job a person does. So, think on your area of expertise.

Many projects fail because they fail to expect the problem. Expecting the problem in advance and taking necessary precaution is most essential part of any job. In other words, this can also be called as having the proper Plan B in place. Sometimes projects get failed because of the people attitude that they know well how to do it. They are not ready for the unexpected problems. Even the experienced pilot follow all the necessary protocol before driving the aircraft. He / she will never be given the privilege of skipping any process while flying the aircraft because he / she is experienced for years. 

I entirely accept the phrase, "Failure is the stepping stone of success". Most successful people have undergone atleast few failures and years of hard work before tasting success. But the concern is how many get that second chance, third chance, fourth chance or even the fifth chance to continue. When you entirely screwed up and you got another chance to continue, then you are given the ultimate privilege by god to carry on this time with experience. 

So, every time when a person gets a chance to continue his work after a failure, he / she does it extremely well with full effort. Hence consider any first chance as the second or third chance to avoid any mistakes. In simple words, before doing any job, imagine you have lost $1,00,000 in doing that job wrong. Now, you have that amount with you and how better that job can be done ? This simple calculation not only allows you to avoid disaster, this will allow a person to plan and think well in advance before taking any job. This also keeps a person in a continuous learning phase with high amount of patience and persistence, which is the first step to success. 

Let's compare this in the financial world. Finance does not give a second chance. If you spend something, it is spend, it is gone. That's it. To get that amount back, you need to earn (Second Chance). This earning might involve your time or knowledge or it can even be some passive income but once spend is spend (once lost is lost). It can't be gained or reverted back. So, before spending something, it is very wise enough to think if this expense is really necessary. If this expense is saved and invested for future, how much would be the returns. No matter how small the amount is. Even it can be as small as Rs.50. 

Now, let's exchange that $1,00,000 with Rs.50. If you spend or lose that Rs.50, even that should be considered as you have lost $1,00,000. Because today's Rs.50 has the capacity to give you $1,00,000 tomorrow. So, the point is even if we lose Rs.50 by doing a job wrong, it is same as losing $1,00,000 by doing a job wrong. Only the value changes here. Whatever the experience / training an loss of $1,00,000 can give is also be obtained by losing Rs.50 but we need to build the mentality / maturity to accept the fact and work accordingly.

I hope and believe that this blog would have bought some insight on saving and investing. Also this would have bought the importance of continuous learning, persistence and patience to save even the small amount of Rs.50 or even less than that. 

Have a Great Day

B G Nareshkumar