“Expect the unexpected.”  Patrick Swayze uttered those words in the classic film (it is in my family room!) Roadhouse.  As he paced, smoking a cigarette, talking to some rubes he was going to have to turn into first class bouncers, while he was “the cooler”, the guy who stepped in when things got ugly.  Expect the unexpected is a good way to go through your business life.  Things happen that defy logic and explanation.  It is not unique to any business.  However, there are some things you can do to prepare, in case the unexpected happens.  That is why you should always try to have multiple sources of income.  In our business, it could be voice over work, doing as many public appearances as you can get paid to do, writing copy, writing articles for magazines, even the portable DJ business offer jocks a chance to make some extra coin.  But you can do more.

As much as it pains me to say this, the days of doing a good job to move up the ladder are all but over.  The jobs wanted posts are littered with good, hard-working men and women who are the victims of a bad economy, bad management, and I am going to say it, weasel’s.  If you don’t have the same relationship with the decision maker that the kiss ass up the hall has, you are possibly a Friday away from being Fredo’d.  Unless they lack the stomach to do it to your face, then you can be a vacation away from getting smoked. Years ago, I worked with a legendary disc jockey who would NEVER take a vacation.  He was scared they would realize they didn’t need him, and he’d get fired.  That was over twenty years ago. Sadly, he was right, but just ahead of the curve.  He was smart, he did have multiple sources of income, and almost all of them were legit, but that’s another story for another day.

There have always been office politics, and I feel confident in saying there always will be.  Doing a good job, and sometimes even the best job, is not enough to insure you will get a promotion, or keep your job during a layoff.  I cannot break a confidence, but I know for a fact this happened.  At a company in the midwest recently, they were forced to layoff some people in a technology field.  The worst, most inept person was not fired, but a far superior person was let go.  The boss explained it to a bewildered staff this way. “Person A is often late, and not nearly as skilled as person B.  He is going to have a real tough time finding a job. It shouldn’t be as hard for person B.” How would you like to go home to your family and explain that.  Sorry we may lose our house, but it is comforting to know the people I worked like a dog for realized how good a job I did.  I have heard a lot, and seen a lot, and I have to admit, that was a new one on me.

Expect the unexpected.  Things that defy logic will happen, and happen at an accelerated rate in this environment.  If you do not set yourself up with multiple sources of income, you could be in serious financial trouble on any given Friday, or while you are on vacation.

I was watching the season finale of “The Closer”, a show my wife and I enjoy watching together.  Kyra Sedgwick just won an Emmy for portraying an assistant police chief who is clearly the best at solving crimes and getting people to confess, certainly within her police department.  The ending of the show brought to mind something I think about often, multiple sources of income.  I have what I call my 3 income theory, even though it is not a theory.  I think it should be every person’s goal to have multiple sources of income their entire working life.  That does not mean having a second job necessarily.  You can start a small business, (I know, that is technically a job), learn to trade so your money is making money, or any way you can legally come up with to have money streams coming in.  I will tell you what The Closer has to do with this in a bit.

I first learned about multiple sources of income when I was a kid.  A friend of Bobby, had a dad who worked for a gun manufacturer, but he also owned a couple of strip malls.  Little did I know the 7-11 I used to frequent was located in one of Bobby’s dads buildings.  That was when I started thinking about how cool it would be to own something and have people give me their money to use what I owned.  it didn’t take me long to figure out that it also protected his dad in case he was ever a victim of a layoff, or got fired.  It is widely reported that Jay Leno has almost always had two jobs.  When he was a kid, he worked as a mechanic, and at McDonald’s.  He used one paycheck to live on, the other he put in the bank. To this day, he still flies out several nights a week to do stand up, and then flies right back to meet his writers to work on the next days Tonight Show.  He claims to have never spent any of his Tonight Show earnings, which at around $30 million a years gives him a very soft cushion to fall back on.  That is the extreme of multiple streams of income.

Brenda Lee Johnson, Kyra Sedgwick’s character in The Closer, was up for Chief of Police.  Among the people we saw as her competition, it was clear she should be the runaway favorite to get the job.  A new character was introduced in that episode, and he ended up getting the job, right after she pulled something off that should have sealed the deal for her. But it didn’t.  Which brings me to two points, one of which will be discussed in my next post.  Her boss, Chief Pope, and Brenda, now may both be looking for a job.  Chief Pope, because often in these situations, when you are a finalist for a job like that, or a CEO type job, if you don’t get it they want you out.  They figure you will be disgruntled, and disruptive, and Brenda, because she may not want to work for this person.  While this could have happened, they didn’t seem prepared for this outcome.  Often in our jobs things happen that we are not prepared to see happen.  With multiple sources of income, we can cushion the blow of suddenly finding ourselves on the outside looking in.