How would you like to feel better, make money, help the economy and sleep better at night?  Think this is impossible?  Expecting a sleazy sales pitch?  Well, it is possible and it does not require you to buy anything.  However, you will have to exert some effort.

So what is this wonderment that can accomplish so many things?  In a word, PRODUCTION.

According to Wikipedia, around one-fifth of the working population is engaged in manufacturing or agriculture.  If you look more closely at the breakdown by industry, it appears that the number is closer to one-tenth.  Said another way, 80-90 percent of Americans earn their livelihood in service industries with little additional value being added to the economy.

Now I am not writing this piece as a criticism of the American economy.  After all, I earn my living in a service industry.  Rather, I am writing to address a serious problem that I regularly experience in my practice, which is, a general angst in the working man about the manner in which he earns his living and a general sense of purposelessness in doing so.

Too many people feel that they are working paycheck to paycheck with no end in sight and no great accomplishment in their efforts.  Couple this with the fact that they are just one missed paycheck away from bankruptcy and you have the makings of a serious problem.  And this is happening despite their best efforts to work hard and to “save some for a rainy day.”  It just seems that life always conspires to take away their hard-earned dollars.

Perhaps I am going outside the strict limits of “financial planning” when I make the recommendation to create a PRODUCTIVE enterprise, but that troubles me not.  To truly insulate yourself from the whims of commercial change, you must diversify your earnings ability beyond your salaried employment.  As I set forth in my book,  every person ought to have four places where they store wealth: Investments, Cash Equivalents, BUSINESS ENTERPRISES and Intrinsic Worth Items.  The value of a “business enterprise” is in its ability to produce income.

Sometimes this advice gets mistranslated.  People think, “I don’t know how to create or run a business. How can I take on such a huge task?”  And the answer is:  The size or complexity of your business enterprise is completely within your control.  This can be a hobby that you start to market.  This could be a small business that you simply invest in.  This might be helping your child to start an enterprise or it might be inventing or innovating the next great product (Shark Tank anyone?).

Recently I read an article about the basketball player, Shaquille O’Neal, who went through a million dollars within minutes of entering the NBA.  This led to a call from his banker who warned him that he would end up broke like many other ex-athletes if he did not learn about finance.  Shaquille did just that and came up with the common-sense conclusion that ownership of productive enterprises is the key to earning, protecting and increasing wealth.  “As of today, Shaq is the joint owner of 155 Five Guys Burgers restaurants, 17 Auntie Annie’s Pretzels restaurants, 150 car washes, 40 24-hour fitness centers, a shopping center, a movie theater, and several Las Vegas nightclubs.”

Clearly, Shaq’s wealth put him on the fast-track to owning lots of businesses, but couldn’t some of your earnings go to making you a part-owner of one Five Guys restaurant?  Couldn’t you start a car wash or laundro-mat?  How about being part-owner of a strip mall?  What if all you could do was work a part-time job or hustle some extra sales to make an extra $100 per week.  Do you think that after one year of doing so you could put that $5,200 to work as an investment in a going concern that would produce wealth for the rest of your life?

Admittedly, this is the toughest area of a financial plan to build and fulfill.  But it is also the most rewarding both financially and emotionally.  How fulfilling would it be to look back upon your working life and say:  “You see these things?  That is what I produced.”

You can do it.  All it takes is a start!