Money

Five years ago I did a corporate A/V gig for a big corporation. The CEO of the corporation asked what motivated his employees to work hard? He answered for them, "Money! We all like money! If we didn't like money, we wouldn't be here..." This comment sticks with me to this day. This big CEO might have been a throwaway line; however, it resonated because money has never motivated me.

From an early age, I knew I wanted to work in audio and music technology. I learned to play piano at an early age. One day in high school, my teacher Mr. Hamill took us on a field trip to Berklee College of Music. I learned what an audio engineer was during this trip, and I immediately fell in love with the job. :An audio engineer can use technology and play with music at the same time!" I told my mother. I made my life decision; I wanted to be an audio engineer.

Every class I took throughout high school and every assignment I did focused on getting into music college and a music engineering program. When I got into the Sound Recording Technology program at U Mass Lowell, my coursework focused on getting a job in the music industry. My dream was to sit behind a console, play with buttons, and have the ultimate control over electrons and sound pressure waves.

Money was never my motivation; Money always seemed to be there. I might never have had enough money, I might have been "poor" in some people's eyes, but I never was homeless, and I never went hungry. I always made my car payments, and I had some extra to take my girlfriends to a nice dinner. Money was not a motivation for working. I would have done the work for free because that's what I always wanted to do; I could never dream about doing anything different.

I wasn't a dummy, however. When I got out of college, the first thing I did was hire an accountant to do my taxes. I was lucky to have a great mentor who taught me about tracking expenses and not letting people walk all over me. "Get paid what you are worth, and don't take anything less than market value because undercutting the rest of us will get you on the 'I don't want to work with this guy' list real quickly," he said. So what did I do?

I worked for free...to a point.

When I needed more experience, I worked for free. When I felt comfortable, I used the "standard rate." This practice showed my clients that I was serious about the work, not just the money. But, I found that my clients respected this and were more apt to pay standard rates despite my little experience at the time because they saw the time investment I put in.

So, after hearing your speech Mr. CEO, I'm still ok. Money is in my account (not as much as he has) but it's there, and I am comfortable with my life and my career. So, Mr. CEO... No. Money doesn't motivate me but it's a nice byproduct of enjoying what I would normally be doing.

How about you? Would you still be doing your job if you got to do it for free?