To most investors, our investment portfolio is a lottery ticket.
If it works out, great.
If it doesn’t, we’ll just have to head back to our 9 to 5.
And it usually doesn’t work out.
But, hey, it doesn’t make too much of a difference anyway.
We put up with this “another day, another dollar” existence because we think we have no choice.
Everybody’s gotta make a living, eh?
After all, there are bills to pay and an identity to maintain.
Besides, what would we do with our lives if we didn’t have a job?
What Is The Meaning Of Work?
Just as with money, our concept of work consists of a patchwork of contradictory beliefs we have absorbed from our parents, our culture, our media, and our life experiences.
The following quotations from those intelligent beings amongst us shed light on the incongruity between our different definitions of work.
E. F. Schumacher tells us that the three purposes of human work are as follows:
1. To provide necessary and useful goods and services. 2. To enable every one of use to use and thereby perfect our gifts like good stewards. 3. To do so in service to, and in cooperation with, others, so as to liberate ourselves from our inborn egocentricity.
Robert Theobald gives us a more practical view:
Work is defined as something that people do not want to do and money as the reward that compensates for the unpleasantness of work.
Studs Terkel begins his book Working this way:
This book, being about work, is, by its very nature, about violence—to the spirit as well as to the body.
It is about ulcers as well as accidents, about shouting matches as well as fist-fights, about nervous breakdowns as well as kicking the dog around.
It is, above all (or beneath all), about daily humiliations.
To survive the day is triumph enough for the walking wounded among the great many of us...
It is about a search, too, for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.Kahlil Gibran, on the other hand, tells us:
Work is love made visible.
What is work?
Is it a blessing or a curse?
A trial or triumph?
Is work like a calling from heaven, or as the cartoonist Matt Groening suggests:
Our task will be to redefine work the same way we redefined money.
By looking for what we can say about work that is consistently true.
This definition will allow you to reperceive your work in ways that are more consistent with your values and your true fulfillment — as well as your bottom line.
And we’ll begin our journey by asking a better question:
What Is The Meaning Of Paid Work?
The Story of Three Bricklayers.
After the great fire of 1666 that leveled St. Paul's Cathedral in London, restoration was in full swing under the guidance of the world's most famous architect, Christopher Wren. Hundreds of bricklayers were hired at higher-than-average wages in the hopes of ensuring their quality of work. On a hot summer's day in 1671, Christopher Wren was observing three bricklayers on a scaffold. One crouched and working lazily in sweat, one half-standing and working half-heartedly, and one standing tall and working proudly. To the three bricklayers, Christopher Wren asked the same question, "What are you doing?" "I'm a bricklayer." replied the first bricklayer, "I'm laying bricks to get my wages at the end of the day so that there's food on the table for my family. "I'm a builder." responded the second bricklayer, "I'm building a wall." But the third bricklayer, the most productive of the three, replied with a gleam in his eyes: "I'm a cathedral builder. I'm building the House of God."
The obvious focus in this parable, of course, is the power of meaning.
And we can go on and on about how when one finds meaning in his work, he is able to persevere through the painful circumstances to realize his higher purpose.
But what if I told you that the truth about paid work lies in the reply of the first bricklayer?
What if I told you that there is only one meaning served by paid employment:
Getting paid.
The other “higher purposes” of paid employment, while desirable, have nothing to do with “getting paid”.
And they are all equally, if not arguably more, available in unpaid activities.
Think about the hours you sat beside your daughter as she learns to memorize the multiplication table.
Think about the Sundays ministering at your local church congregation.
Think about the afternoons practicing your favorite tunes on your guitar.
These are unpaid and fulfilling “work”.
What if we unhooked the unjustified yet deeply-rooted links between our paid employments and the “higher purposes” that we are supposed to find — like passion, service, and success?
What if we recognized that all these “higher purposes” for paid employment other than earning money could be fulfilled by unpaid activities?
In reality, the (unpaid) “work” of the first bricklayer is first and foremost a “husband” and a “father”, in which he pursues his purposes of love, selflessness, and kindness.
His (paid) “work” as a bricklayer serves the sole purpose of getting paid, the money with which he is able to realize a part of (a small yet essential part, mind you) his values of love, selflessness, and kindness towards his family.
Mistaking work for wages has meant that most of our “jobs” have gotten neither the attention nor the credit they deserve — jobs like being a good partner and parent, being a contributing member of our community and planet, or developing a wholesome philosophy for your own life.
This closes the loop in arguing that when we are “whole”, we don’t need to try to consume our way to happiness.
Thus we don’t need to be stuck in our paid work to get paid more in order to fuel that consumption.
And I know what you’re thinking right now.
Isn’t it best to love what you are doing AND get paid for doing it?
You may love your paid employment.
I’m happy for you.
Or you may hate it.
It doesn’t matter.
There is no pressure, whatsoever, to teach yourself to love your paid employment or to search for another one which you might love.
But you do want to recognize that the only purpose of your paid employment is getting paid and that your real “work” may be far bigger than this one job.
By separating work and wages you can see more clearly whether you are valuing that precious commodity called life energy — both on and off the job.
The real problem with working a nine-to-five till you’re sixty-five job, then, is not that our expectations are too high.
It’s not that we hate working per se.
It’s that we have confused work with paid employment.
Redefining “work” as simply any productive or purposeful activity, with paid employment being just one activity among many, frees us from the false assumption that what we do to put food on the table and a roof over our heads should also provide us with our sense of meaning, purpose, and fulfillment.
Breaking the link between work and money allows us to reclaim balance and sanity.
Our fulfillment as human beings lies not in our jobs but in the whole picture of our lives —
In our inner sense of what life is about, our connectedness with others, and our yearning for meaning and purpose.
By separating work and wages we bring together the different parts of ourselves and remember that our real work is just to live our values as best we know how.
So, What Is Your Dividend Growth Portfolio?
To you, your investment portfolio is something else entirely.
It’s a business.
What business?
I thought we were talking about dividend investing?
And we are.
But if you’re going to make this thing work then you need to understand that your dividend growth portfolio is your business.
You are the boss of this business and you are the only employer in this business.
Your dividend growth portfolio is a paid employment.
So it doesn’t matter whether you enjoy reading financial statements like bedtime stories before you head to sleep.
It also doesn’t matter whether looking at the numbers make you sick to the guts.
Because remember what we’ve just discussed about dismantling work and wages?
The only purpose that you’re setting up your dividend growth portfolio today is to get paid — at the next quarter, when you are welcoming your first child, on your 65th birthday, and way after when you’re supposed to retire.
We’ll cover that later.
What you need to keep in mind now is how other “investors” see your investment portfolio and how you should see it.
- Other “investors” → lottery ticket
- You → business (earn more revenue, push costs low, convert that difference into profits, capture those profits as a cash flow)
If you keep that in mind then everything else we talk about as we move forward will make sense.
If you don’t want to think of your dividend growth portfolio as a business or think that you don’t need to follow the principles of business then you don’t want to be reading any further.
I’m serious.
This guide ain’t for you.
When I say “business” I don’t mean one that you and your friends started out as a hobby.
I don’t mean one like the lemonade stand at the corner of the driveway from which you were just trying to grab a few quick bucks.
I don’t mean on that you can just give up and let it slide because it takes work.
Your dividend growth portfolio is a sustainable business that will get you paid as long as you live.
Therefore, you need to see your investment portfolio as a business.
You need to plan your investment portfolio as a business.
And you need to run your investment portfolio as a business.
This is where investing has changed and most people don’t want to accept that change.
Remember that we talked about how an increasing number of investment tactics are trying to get your money invested into them?
When you try to fit those into the 4 Principles Of Business you have a very big problem.
Not only do you have to figure out how you can apply those principles to your investment portfolio, but you also have to do so in a way that is diverse to all of those investment tactics.
That means you can try to go really big or you can start small.
Chances are you’re doing this investing thing solo so you’ll want to start small.
Even if you’re planning on going bonkers in this investing thing 24/7, trust me, you will find someone or something else that is worthier to spend your life energy with.
So you’ll want to start small.
And by small I mean aiming to pay off the daily expenses for one person — you yourself.
Your business (AKA your investment portfolio) will generate a cash flow for one person.
And to do so with minimal expenditure of your life energy.
Confused?
Don’t worry, we’ll get into that next.
It’s time to understand how a dividend growth portfolio works and you’d be surprised to know that this is where 73% of investors fail.
Let’s find out how you can be in the top 27% of investors from the very beginning.
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