Hourly wage and the American dream.

For most individuals around the country, an average household brought in $51,000 dollars per year. Divide that in half, and you are left with $25,500 per income earning adult household member.

Employed at an average job, that gives you all national holidays off. You will still work nearly six days per week as an adult at 47 hours on average according to Gallup.

Assuming you work 48 weeks out of a 52 week year, your paycheck before taxes will likely be somewhere around $531.00 per week. And after taxes, depending on your number of dependents, your amount of medical coverage, mortgage or rent, and the cost of owning and insuring a vehicle, the average american is looking at a hole in their wallet where money should be.

Costs of labor and literacy shrink for the average person around the country, while insurance companies, and your employers profit, and premiums soar right along with the cost of a college education. All while you flounder, too broke to do anything about it, and too scared of failure to try.

There you sit, on your couch basically paralyzed watching commercials on T.V. from every fast food chain in the country, trying to take what few dollars you have left, to make you fatter, dumber and more dependent.

That is not the American dream.

I felt that I was a broken tooth in a gear for a machine designed to fail. I lived out of my vehicle, and when it broke down, the street.

I have worked across America, mainly in construction, and oil and gas. And while at times I earned an excellent income, the labor market would swell and the bubble would burst, ask any oil and gas worker in the Williston, ND oilfield. It didn't help that I began my adult working life in the worst financial crisis since the great depression.

I went back to school after the collapse of domestic oil drilling, to stare into the mocking faces of students ten years younger at a local community college. I finished my EMT course, but despised the medical field and decided not to take the National exam. My instructors were as rude as the students, and twice as ignorant.

I was robbed of all my possessions, by actual muggers, and muggers pretending to be my friends. I lost everything. My employers laughed at my suffering, and shorted me on my paychecks.

Underpaid and under appreciated I wandered from one identical american city to the next, to see the same mocking 20 something know-it-alls that faintly resembled me at that tender age (HA HA HA) and the same abusive employers.

And then, after enduring over a decade of struggle, use, and abuse, I finally did something different. I created my own job.

Organic Endeavors LLC was born from humble beginnings. Our first job went something like this...

While my coworker and now business partner were working together on a project for a former employer, we encountered the neighbor to the home next door. She liked what we had done to the landscape and asked for an estimate. Without going into too much detail about proprietary estimating techniques, we completed her estimate, agreed to a price and down payment, and I worked as hard and as fast as I could.

We each had earned a wage, but also proved to ourselves that our business model was a working one. I did it with a shovel, I did it in roughly 45 minutes, and I made $400 dollars. Our customer was very pleased, and mentioned that we actually had done the work cheaper than anyone else had offered

. You may be thinking to yourselves. "You took advantage of that person! I don't make that kind of money in one week!" If you think that, you likely come from a similar background as me, you aren't wealthy and barring a lottery win, may never be. And truthfully, I may never be wealthy either, but I am free. Free to be wealthy if I choose, free to implement any good idea I come across, free to make important decisions.

Freedom isn't safety, so please don't confuse the two. Of course there is stress, of course there are times when I reach a breaking point, and obviously, every financial loss i personally have to absorb. But if it doesn't work out and my business fails, I can always go back to some job for an hourly wage, honestly no worse for the wear.

We have been trained to believe that no matter how hard you work, the money you should make is the same, and if you work REALLY hard after several YEARS of devotion and service you might just make a dollar more an hour, or get one more high five from your boss and a turkey on Christmas. You won't get rich that way, and if you want proof, ask your coworkers, maybe even ask your boss.

While even your boss may be making slightly more to even double your salary, he is also almost certainly in crippling debt to the education he needed and the lifestyle illusion he has to create to show everyone around hiim that he made it, only to work more hours for less than you probably do at the end of the day. But self employment shines when the operator/owner realizes that it is not the hours that they put in, it is what they themselves put into the hours.

An acquaintance I met recently asked me "Isn't being in your own business scary?" My response was "What is scary to me, is working 40-80 hours a week in a factory until I'm 65, just to make ends meet until I finally die, used up, and bitter. With a measly fixed income my retirement home will get the bulk of, and two weeks of vacation per year." That's what I am afraid of. That is what keeps me awake at night, making every one of my bosses look great, making millions for my superiors and going home to a hole in the wall I can't afford, if I'm lucky. The majority of the world is following a blueprint that only the ones at the top can truly benefit from. The hourly wage is a trap.

I remember reading over 20 years ago in a text book that in communist Russia, the definition of freedom was "the ability to work", and while I may not be able to site my sources, I believe that type of thinking has invaded the American Psyche.

I now see all of my failures as learning experience, all of my trials as preparation for the greatest and most rewarding job in the world, self employment.

I created a way to make money that rewards hard work immediately, that pays my bills, and gives me all the freedom I could ever want, and you can do it too.

And that, is the American dream.