Relative

When I finished up the books for 2017 and saw that our little company had sold $177, 990 in products and paid out $152,248 in commissions for the year, my first thought was “Wow, I know some people who earn in a month what our little company earned in a year.”

Sigh.

Then I thought about the vast majority of businesses that not only fail to turn a profit their first year, they don’t even make it past the first year.

Then I was like,

“WOW, we sold $177,990 of products we created ourselves from scratch, and paid out over 80% of that in commissions our very first full year in business.

That’s AMAZING!”

When Elon Musk told Salman Khan of the Kahn Academy that Paypal paid out 60 million in referral fees to customers their first month in business, Salmon Khan replied,

“Wow that’s not peanuts.”

Elon Musk replied,

“Depends on your relative scale.  Google has 50 Billion in cash and Apple has 150 Billion or so –  to them, 60 million absolutely is peanuts.”

‘Depends on your relative scale.’

Next time your feeling down about something…

Income, weight, living conditions or whatever…

Try to remember that it’s all relative. 

When I lived in a trailer I felt rich, relative to so many in the world who sleep in huts, shacks or boxes.

When my kid’s are stomping on a nerve, I try to remember how rich I am to have the blessing of family, relative to so many who don’t.

Relative – quite the game changing word.