After spending a night with a client in Chattanooga recently, Joanne and I continued driving south to Florida. We tend to wander when we travel and found ourselves on the southwest side of Atlanta in a section away from the freeway when I started to notice a massive number of similar signs:
- Rent to Own
- No Credit Check
- Title Max Loans
- Pawn Shop
- $799 down for any car
- Checks cashed here
- Tax refunds fast
- Take charge of your life – title loans
It went on for a couple of miles. And I thought, why is there such a concentration of ways to take advantage of poor people in one spot? Looking around a bit at the lack of repairs and closed stores, it was clear we were in a very poor socio-economic area.
I’m sure you know that at the base of the Statue of Liberty, there is a plaque with this famous quotation:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
And I guess we’ll take those tired and poor and make them even poorer.
I know much of my sensitivity to this comes from an embarrassing part of my own history. In 1988, while recovering from a colossal financial mess, I took a position as a commission-only sales rep for a “school” that was providing training programs for people in areas like travel agent, medical billing, front desk receptionist, dental assistant, paralegal, and truck driving.
Even back then, I had a strong desire to help people find more meaningful and profitable work. The students got a set of workbooks and could do nearly all the work just from home. We had access to plenty of Pell Grants to give the students an initial cash bonus, but they also signed on for over $2000 in student loan debt. I went to the poorest neighborhoods in Nashville and signed people up left and right, convinced I was helping them get a fresh start in new careers. I won big screen TVs, luggage, restaurant gift cards, and exotic trips – in addition to my $10,000+ monthly commissions.
And then enough time passed where students should have been churning out with new jobs, increased income, and greatly improved lives.
But that wasn’t happening. Few ever completed the easy, fill-in-the-blanks homework. Fewer still even applied for their three-week residency training. A handful got all the way through. One of those was a young gal whom I then helped with a job interview. She had a delightful personality and was hired as a travel agent in Brentwood, TN. The morning of her first day, I called her to congratulate her and ask how her day was going.
She was at home. She told me she missed the bus to her job. I was aghast – but not as much so as when she continued. She had decided that it was just too much work to get to the bus, and in addition, she had discovered that with her $12/hour job, some of her current benefits would be reduced. With the added expenses her benefits were covering, she would be worse off with this job than without it.
When I started to look at the real results of enrolling these students in this training, I was mortified. I was giving them an easy enticement, but luring them into debt that they would never be able to repay. And their lives were not better as a result.
I remember clearly the morning the gravity of what I was doing hit me. I was reading in Proverbs, as I do every morning. That particular morning was the 22nd of the month, as I was reading in Chapter 22. In verse 16, it says:
“One who oppresses the poor to increase his wealth and one who gives gifts to the rich—both come to poverty.” Proverbs 22:16 (NIV)
That verse hit me like a ton of bricks. I thought I was going to throw up. I had read that verse many times before – but this time it stopped me in my tracks. I was oppressing the poor to increase my wealth.
I was digging my way out of my own financial mess, and the income I was making I could have considered a God-send. But I knew immediately what I needed to do. I called the national office and gave 30 days’ notice that I would be leaving. I never enrolled another student. I had seen the reality of what I was doing and could not continue.
Today I enjoy the constant stream of testimonials we receive daily. I want people to get a 1000x return on any investment in 48 Days Resources – not be poorer for it.
**************************************************************
“Hey 48 Days Team (and Dan)! My name is Bjork Ostrom. My wife and I have taken to heart the messages of 48 Days and No More Mondays by creating an income around our passion. I read your books a few years ago and they planted the “idea seed” that would eventual grow into the belief that we could monetizing my wife’s food blog, Pinch of Yum. We now net between $6,000 and $8,000 a month from the blog. We also launched a membership site to help others learn how to do the same. The membership site is just over 6 months old and is earning around $2,000 a month. The concepts that you teach allowed us to “think difference” about how life and work happen. Thanks, Dan, for helping to inspire us to pursue passion, purpose, creative income and giving back.” Bjork and Lindsay
**************************************************************
“I want you to know that your book and message have changed my life. I read 48 Days to the Work You Love last April while finishing my Master’s degree. Your book helped me identify my transferable skills, market myself, identify companies to work for, and hone my interviewing skills. Since then, I have been offered professional jobs with 6 different companies! I feel like I am on top of the world. Your book and message have made a lasting impact on me and my family. Thank you for helping us. I am recommending your book to everyone I tell about my new job. God’s Blessings on you and your work.” -Paul
**************************************************************
I trust you are doing work that brings value to others – that enriches them in every way.
Check out the three free videos we just produced to help you identify where you can do that best: 48Days.com
And leave your comments about your experiences in serving the poor well.
Dan, thank you for this story and the honesty in which you talk about that time in your life when you were helping yourself but not others. Many call what I do a service business, I’m an IT Consultant, but through your books, blogs, podcasts and others I have rethought this and changed it to a serve business, that I am here to be a servant to my clients. That way I am not only serving them but I am also serving myself and my community. Once again thanks so much for something great to think about as I start my week!
Dan…Thanks to you, I learn something new about the Holy Bible that I never realized before. The quote of Proverbs 22:16 (NIV) puts a bunch of folks in leadership positions in this country in a real heap of trouble. I cannot thank you enough for this quote, it is phenomenal.
That is incredible. It’s disappointing to see what happened to those customers. But it’s inspiring to see how you reacted when you saw what was happening. I love listening to your podcast and reading your emails. Thank you for your generous spirit.
I think you were selling a good product. Might have been priced too high but the real problem was that the people decided it was easier to do nothing and live off the government than to better themselves. You were selling to the mice who kept waiting at the same spot every day for their cheese.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them only signed up to get the loans and then never used the money for the course. Just another way to cheat the system.
I absolutely agree with you John! The problem was not the product, and maybe Dan could have qualified the people a little more for desire to complete the training, if he absolutely feels he must take some blame. The product, if used, would have made a huge impact on those people’s lives. They were just so stuck in the poverty mindset to make the change. You’ve said it before, change is scarey – they were out of their comfort zone and too frozen to move from it, or too lazy.
Dan,
You are candid and 100% correct in your assessment. It is very hard for people that have not been in poverty or studied how it is perpetuated through multiple generations to say anything other than “they are lazy and looking to game the system”. There are many aspects of our current approach to helping people that result in counterproductive results. Some are government programs that actually punish people for trying to get ahead with a loss of benefits. Some are the many for profit companies and programs that prosper at the plight of the poor. Education and mentoring is the best answer. Programs like Circles of Transformation are working to make a difference. Check to see if there is a group in your area, or look at starting one.
Dan, thank you for living and teaching integrity.
Good call Dan! It is so easy to judge, but it such a precarious line. I have seen it first hand and I have personally experienced that window of decision. Several years ago when I was laid off I accepted unemployment for a time. That was neither wrong nor a bad thing. What I saw, or felt happen though, was that so many voices around me were saying, “You deserve that unemployment check. They owe this to you.” There was a distinct time, I believe a brief window, when I could realize and grasp the lie. I wanted more than just a check. I needed more than just money to pay bills and buy stuff for me or my children. I needed integrity, worth, and value, I wanted my children to know, and see, that hard work is valuable. It is work, and it is hard. I am not some huge financial success story, but I thank God I was able to make a choice. It is heartbreaking to see so many people duped into believing that a government handout is as good as it gets. And so often that handout is way too convincing!
Rae – oh my. You share so many important points here. I love this line – “I needed integrity, worth, and value.” We so quickly try to give money to someone to help them not be poor, when what they need is a shift in thinking. Thanks for sharing.
The businesses you encountered are designed to prey upon the 500 credit score (and lower) communities. Ironically, John Hope Bryant of Operation Hope (in Atlanta) recently wrote a phenomenal book called, How the Poor Can Save Capitalism. The book is phenomenal and provides a roadmap for truly empowering the poor and struggling middle class by helping them understand the “language of money.” They measure success by the number of people they help raise their credit score to 700+.
Carlester – thanks for the tip on the book. I think there is so much we can do to really help the poor.
Dan – you saw those signs in an impoverished area of Atlanta. The same kinds of businesses existed in many middle-class areas just outside of Detroit when I was growing up. That’s because the people living there had migrated up from Appalachia. They worked very well paid union jobs in the auto plants, but brought their “poor-mouth” money values with them. As a result, you would see brand-spanking new ranch homes (“no money down, low monthly payments”) with 4 junk cars in the front yard, a huge bass boat in the driveway (paid for with an easy-credit 30% personal loan) and a family with a negative net worth that made weekly trips to the check-cashing store so they could pay the light bill and buy food. Being poor is more a mindset and value system than it is an economic term. I don’t blame capitalism for “imposing” this on people as much as I blame a public education system that refuses to ensure people going through it have basic life skills that include financial literacy.
Wow – so much sad truth in what you’ve shared. This really nails it – “Being poor is more a mindset and value system than it is an economic term.” Thanks for your comments.