How Chicken Nuggets and Anemia Showed Me the Way to Success and Life
Photo by James Wong. Written by Austin Sprawls. Engage with him on Tw.
I need to confess something. Something of which I’m pretty ashamed…
For a short time last year, I contributed heavily to the declining health of the people of America. I’ll tell you how in a moment, but first a story:
I was reading the ever-so-entertaining Yahoo! news when I came upon a story that made my jaw drop.
What happened is, this 17-year-old girl collapsed and was rushed to the hospital… she was struggling to breathe… and… she had swollen veins in her tongue!
So what was wrong with her? It’s pretty shocking, really.
I’ll tell you: this girl had eaten nothing but Chicken McNuggets for fifteen years! A decade and a half of pure, unadulterated garbage.
Okay, okay… I’m exaggerating a little. She also sometimes frequented the KFC. But… get this… she has NEVER in her life eaten a piece of fruit or any veggies! She had gotten anemia.
So, what does all of this have to do with making money? Well…
The Regret
You see, a few months ago I got a job at a fast food restaurant. I’m not going to name any names, but you’ve most likely eaten there before.
When I was in college I believed people were paid by the hour and were paid more or less depending on how “important” their duties are. But I didn’t truly understand how the wages were determined.
I study a lot of successful people these days, and I now have a deep understanding that people get paid proportionate to the amount of value they bring to society. But this measurement is largely inaccurate.
Which brings me to the point of this article – - namely that people in America are either way, way undervalued or overvalued for their work.
When I worked at that fast-food joint I was way overvalued. In fact, I provided negative value. I’ll explain why, and then I’ll tell you how I think we can make lots of money while at the same time improving peoples’ lives by understanding this process:
I was paid $8.25/hour to take peoples’ money and give them fast food. Let’s say I served 20 customers an hour on average. And let’s say, on average, that each person paid $5. Let’s also say that it costs the fast food joint 25 cents to fulfill that order. So $4.75 profit from every customer, on average. That means I made the joint $95 an hour! So basically I got an 8.7% commission for my work there. Not bad for a strictly profit-based analysis.
But… and it’s a big BUT… I also have to consider the impact my work had on society to get a fair view of my true work-value (or lack thereof). Let’s use that poor 17-year-old girl as an example:
Considering she ate McNuggets three times a day for 15 years, she would have invested about $54,750 on her diet over a lifetime. McDonald’s would have profited about $52,000 (talk about a good lifetime customer).
Now, let’s consider she has to pay for medical assistance for the rest of her life (she claims she can’t eat anything else but McNuggets). Oh, I don’t know, let’s just say it costs her family $200,000 in lifetime medical bills.
I read that McDonald’s serves 46 million people a day.
If only 1% of those customers eat there very frequently, that’s 460,000 people! And Sixty Billion, yes Billion, dollars in damage for frequent customers. I want to stress, this is NOT McDonald’s fault, BUT the establishment does make it easy for people to make poor health decisions.
And that’s only the monetary side of it. What’s far more of a disaster is the lack of value she will be able to provide the rest of society should she become permanently disabled through poor choices. She will be a burden to society.
Here’s what I want to take away from all this: I want to provide my people with the most value I possibly can using the skills I possess… while simultaneously improving, not destroying, lives.
Fast food will always be dirt cheap. People will generally not pay gourmet prices to destroy their bodies and live a lower quality of life. It’s a cheap thrill. Tastes good for 5 minutes, makes you feel like crap for 5 hours.
I want what I do to transform lives and give my clients and readers a much, much higher quality of life. That way, they know I can be trusted. They will be happy to pay me more and more because I truly provide QUALITY.
It doesn’t matter how much money I make… if I spend my life destroying lives to get it, then I’m a poor soul.
Peace,
Austin
About Austin Sprawls:
Austin writes to help people discover how they can design their ideal lives by developing Communication Skills, Empowering Beliefs, And Passionate Energy.
He has found something that he’s really good at which allows him to bring value to his clients’ lives. He specializes in writing direct-response copy for wellness and self-help companies.. and is accepting clients right now!
If you’re interested in skyrocketing response and results, send him an email at austinsprawls@gmail.com right now.