 I am an African and since I was a kid, I can't remember a year when there was no industrial strike or fight for a minimum wage increase in my country. Most employees simply believe that the reason why they are poor is that they are not been paid enough by their employers. Well, that seems to be a reasonable argument until you try to look at the root of the problem. I wish this video didn't offend some people because I'm a gentle guy. I'll try and tell you some real reasons why you may be poor as an employee. If you're new here, consider subscribing so that you won't miss other interesting videos like this. Why should someone pay you more? About two days ago, I was reading a blog post by Seth Glutton. In that post, he wrote something like, there are two options when it comes to having a job to do what is hard for a machine or get replaced by a machine. Let me say this again. To do what is difficult for most people or get replaced by machines and that machine is not the only machine, your fellow humans could be the machine. Yes, getting three times what you're getting monthly may change a lot of things in your life but I have a question for you. Why should someone pay you more? If they could employ someone else to do your work for less or even build a machine to do it. I've heard a lot of arguments as regards this. Some people say, but I work hard. Others say, but without employees, the company can't make money. Well the question remains, why should anyone pay you more when they can pay another person to do your work for less? So the real reason why you're not yet well paid is that you can easily be replaced. How do we solve this problem? Well the solution is difficult and only a few people can do it. If you want to be paid a whole lot of money from your employer, you must become very much valuable, so much that it's difficult to replace you. This doesn't mean that you have to work harder than everyone else, there are probably a million other people who could work harder than you. To be almost irreplaceable, you have to be valuable than most people. This can be by learning some new skill about some new technologies or by knowing what most people don't know about a certain field. Let me give you some examples here. If you're a website designer in the year 2000, then you have a great skill that can make a company want to pay you too much money. If today you know more than anyone about artificial intelligence, then you might be a bar of gold for some companies. Another example, if you're a great sales person who sells 10 times more than an average person in a company, or you're a medical doctor who seems to have some magical brain, gets in the patients to be well in the shortest time because of your skills. Then you are always in for a big deal. Hospitals and people will always be willing to pay more for you. Now, you get the point. Being on top of your game, knowing or being able to do 99% of people can't do in your field. That is the only reason why anyone will want to pay you too much money. As long as you can do the work, we can't get another person to do it tomorrow morning, there's no way we'll pay you as much as you think you deserve. I'm sorry to stare the truth in your face. Two hands are too small to make money. Another issue getting a job is that you can't get other people to do it for you. Let me show you what I mean. I've started a few businesses in the last two decades and what usually happens is that when you start a business, you do like a million things. But if you can do the right thing and get the business moving, then you can employ the first person to list some of your burdens. If you continue to grow, you can hire the second person. The third and the fourth. What happens here is that you can hire someone to do the work that gives you $1,000 while you pay them $700. This simply means that you make $300 without doing anything. And if you can make enough $300, you can become richer and richer. The problem with a job is that I cannot go out today to get a job of $70,000 a year, then look around for someone who can do that job for $50,000. If I could do that, then I can simply be busy getting jobs. By the time I get 100 jobs that give me $20,000 a year each, I am already rich. Unfortunately, that's not possible. And it's a big problem for employees. Unlike many employees in my country who think that the reason why they are poor is that their employers don't pay them enough, the reason why most employees are poor is that the job doesn't give you leverage to use other people's hands. Two hands I can tell you are too small to create wealth. So what should you do? Understand that leveraging is the blood of wealth. You can never become rich except you learn how to use leverage. This doesn't mean that you can never become rich as an employee. No, you can become rich as an employee, but you have to understand the game you're playing. The name of the game is called leverage. There are a few ways you can get leverage. One, become so valuable for a company so much that you become part of the owners. For example, Steve Balma was not one of the founders of Microsoft, but today he had made billions of dollars from Microsoft. How did he do it? Well, he was employed by Microsoft in the year 1980 and he proved himself to be worthy of becoming one of the owners. By the time Microsoft went public in 1981, he owned 8% of the company's shares And today, Steve Balma owns about 300 million of Microsoft's shares, making him the biggest shareholder in the company, even though he never started the company. Tim Cook didn't join Apple until 23 years after the company started. He was employed in Apple in the year 1998. Today, Cook is the second largest shareholder in Apple with his 901,474 shares of the company. So essentially, one way to get great leverage as an employee is to become so valuable for the company that employs you so much that you become one of the owners of the company. Don't be scared by the images of Cook and Balma. Nobody needs to be them because nobody needs billions of dollars to become rich. All you need may be 3% of a company. The second way to get leverage as an employee is to invest in other people's startups. Investments in startups could be crazy. Even if you had invested $10,000 on Facebook in January 2004, you'll probably be able to get 0.5% of the company from Mark and that today will make you a billionaire. Let's move to another reason why most employees are poor. Nothing teaches you about money. When I decided to become an entrepreneur, I knew that I had to study money. In the last 13 years, I've read more books about money than 99% of the world's population. The reason is very simple. Running a business is tough. If you don't know about money, you'll die before your business dies. Every month I have to think about the salaries of my team, the bills and a hundred other things. Because of this, I can't just spend money because I make it. For most employees, nothing in their entire life teaches them anything about money. They grew up in a family where nobody talks about money. They attended schools where nobody talked about money. Then they get a job where nobody even cares if they knew or didn't know anything about money. And since they receive a paycheck every month, it's super easy to think that other paychecks are coming. That's why employees don't learn about money. I don't know about your country, but in my own country, most people simply don't read books about money. I have many friends who have never finished a book about money. It's crazy, but true. At the end of the day, most employees are in poor because someone makes them poor, they are poor because of their own decisions and inactions. If you want your employer to pay you more money, you have to become so much valuable that it's difficult to replace you. You have to strategically increase your value, so much that you moved from just being an employee to becoming one of the owners of the company that employs you. You can do this better for a startup company. You have to learn how money works and take responsibility for your life. You can spend every dollar you earn and ever hope to become rich. If you love this video, we invite you to join our other channel about money and entrepreneurship. We call it Money TV. Look at the description box to see the link where you can join the Money TV. We love you.