What you NEED to learn to work with rich people

After years of being broke I became a penny pincher.

I'd still hold on to that idea that money wasn't everything, and that you need to enjoy the money while you're still alive.

Some people would say that you can't get rich until you're a serious penny pincher. Back when I was broke they'd say that I'd always be broke because I couldn't be happy working full time if I couldn't buy a $50 game and a $30 movie each month.

Well, that wasn't the part of being broke that held me back and kept me from becoming more successful.

The first thing that held me back was working in the wrong career. It was a career where the customers couldn't tell if someone was great at that job or a BS artist.

The second one hit me after I was a freelancer for about two or three years.

Being a penny pincher stopped me from working better with rich people. We got along well enough, and it wasn't about that.

Understanding rich people helped me support them better.

Rich people, unlike your managers or supervisors, don't want to micromanage you.

You look around your house, see something that's broken or ugly and balance out the cost of replacement, how long it would take you to fix it up yourself (and how likely you're going to break it), and how much beer or entertainment you'd be giving up to do something about it.

Rich people aren't like that... AT ALL.

Adobe Photoshop right now is $21/mth, but it used to be about a one time cost of $1400. You can get an open source photo editor called GIMP for free, and it will do 99.9% of what photoshop does.

I remember so many times proudly announcing to my rich client that I had just built something new using an open source software only to be given a bunch of attitude over this choice to save money. The same clients who would go through my invoices line by line, trying to get a deal on my hours, told me they'd rather drop $200 on something so that they had support.

Sure, open source solutions always have a community of volunteer support people, but to these rich people they wanted to have the clout to be able to pick up the phone and speak to someone's boss until they got what they wanted. The one I'm thinking of definitely had his congressman and senator's direct numbers.

Write this on your hand, post it on your fridge, tattoo it on your genitals: Rich people have NO tolerance for BS.

BS has two meanings. It means dishonesty, and the other meaning is inconveniences.

Dishonesty means the same thing to everyone, but inconveniences are different for rich people.

You REALLY don't want to waste rich people's time because they have more expensive people than you who are going to waste their time that day.

They use the money they have for the most beautiful two things you can get for money. 1) Time and 2) Not having to deal with BS

They're avoiding BS, and that's why they're paying you. They're going to want to know that you understand what they want, so that they know you can make the right decision without them.

So, they'll spend crazy money when they don't have to because it's the cost of avoiding BS.