$35-$300/Hr Jobs - Why These Jobs Are Now Available

I saw the need for a paralegal field and created it, back in 1972.

Physicians had already created their nurses and physician assistants by this time, so that my insight was not brilliant. It really was my recognition of a licensing situation which, if followed, would enable non-lawyers to do the work of lawyers at hopefully a lower cost. The proviso was that the work had to be supervised and/or at least reviewed by an attorney, otherwise the paralegal would be practicing law unlawfully, and possibly be sued by the Attorney General of the State.

It didn't take long for me to see another area in which help was needed, and since about 1982 or so (I'm guessing at the year) I have been trying to create a new career field that I see is 1,000 times more important than the paralegal field. I have followed this new career field that I have identified very closely over the years and there is no training program anywhere in the U.S. The reason is, I know from my own experience in teaching the program (in my own licensed school) back in 1993, is that one highly skilled business person has to teach the entire course, because the 1,000 components are too short for anyone else to be scheduled to teach any of the components. Colleges and universities do not have anyone qualified to teach the course, and are not going to change what they do to teach this course (unless the course becomes successful in one of NYS 62 Cities, and an enterprising college decides to compete).

At the time (in 1982), there were many colleges and universities trying to train students to become entrepreneurs. But this to me is putting the cart before the horse. We don't need more entrepreneurs more than we need help for existing entrepreneurs.

The U.S. has 27,300,000 small businesses, all owned by entrepreneurs. I have been a small business person for 73 years (since age 9, when I had a bicycle newspaper route in North Platte, Nebraska), and if I didn't collect the nickel each week from each of my 100 customers, I wound up losing that nickel, making me a businessperson without realizing that fact.

Over the past 73 years, I think I understand what I as a small businessperson need to make my business (which happens to be a small law firm) more profitable.

Let me start generalizing at this time about the owners of small businesses, whether they be attorneys, glaziers, real estate salespersons, horse traders, transmission repairs, doctors, plumbers, retail store owners or others.

Almost all of them who are actively managing their small business have developed a skill in doing the type of work (providing goods and/or services) in which the business is engaged, skills which can be translated into an hourly rate of gross income.

If a single owner works 2,500 hours per year and his/her business grosses $1,000,000 in revenue (after returns, but before expenses), the business person can say that he receives $400/hour in gross income for each hour that he/she spends in the business.

Too many of the business owner's hours are spent doing things that do not involve the skill needed for making or delivering the goods or services of the business.

Instead, the owner is calling customers who owe money, preparing deposit slips, making entries in the computer, ordering supplies, checking up on supplies, running ads for specific help, placing advertising, watching advertising results, learning how to use social media, dealing with equipment or software that fails to function properly, paying bills, monitoring credit cards and other accounts in which there could be costly late fees, answering the telephone, compiling lists, making Christmas payments to building employees, finding and storing passwords, getting new cards when old ones are lost, finding storage space, labeling and boxing records and taking them to storage, maintaining storage records, making sure toner supplies are maintained for the various types of equipment, obtaining checks and other printing, and so on, ad nauseum, for perhaps 2,000 hours per year, with only 500 hours using the skill needed to manufacture or deliver the goods and services to customers. I'm going to refer to these lesser tasks as the "Common Tasks", which are to a great extent common to most businesses. Note: see my option in the banner above entitled "Assistant Curriculum (2013, pdf)" for a longer list of many of the topics to be taught in the Assistant Curriculum (2013 edition).

To understand the problem you have to realize several things, which are:

1. The business owner does not have time to train someone to do the Common Tasks;

2. There are no schools in the country that teach these Common Tasks;

3. The business owner realizes that he/she can't spend the time needed to train someone in the Common Tasks, because almost everyone leaves their employment with a small business and goes somewhere else, which means that the owner would lose all the time he/she spent training someone, and would almost always be in the business of training persons instead of running the business; which is why the owner does the Common Tasks himself/herself in the first place;

4. The Common Tasks that occur in the course of a year number about 2,000 (which number is mere guesswork on my part; I'm sure that the number is at least 1,000, and perhaps the number could be as high as 5,000);

5. Often the owner is the only employee of his/her business, in which case you should ask yourself who does the owner ask how to do something if he/she can't do something?

6. The answer is that he/she does not ask anyone in the office, because nobody else is there;

7. So, if the owner hires an Assistant for the first time, and buys a second chair for the office, and on the first day of employment of the new Assistant the Assistant has a question, who does the Assistant ask?

8. The obvious answer is that the Assistant will ask the Owner sitting along side the Assistant;

9. However, the Owner should tell the Assistant, "READ MY LIPS - DON'T BOTHER ME - WHEN I WAS HERE ALONE I DIDN'T ASK YOU WHAT TO DO, AND I WANT YOU TO BE ME, AND FIGURE OUT WHAT TO DO ON YOUR OWN."

10. If the Assistant doesn't know how to repair the toilet, he/she would call the building or a plumber; if he/she doesn't know how to do MS Word mail merge, he/she should try to learn using Internet searches or hire someone to do the work or hire someone to teach him/her how to use mail merge, BUT DON'T BOTHER ME!

If the Assistant (who needs to be taught how to handle the 1,000 Common Tasks and the basic concept of DON'T BOTHER ME) in fact can take over 50% of the 1,000 Common Tasks, this would free up 1,000 hours of time for the Owner, which can be devoted to increasing the gross income of the business. If the Owner is able to take in an additional $400 per hour for the 1,000 freed-up hours, there would be $400,000 (less direct expenses) available as gross profit, out of which the $35-$300/hour could be paid. If the Assistant works 2,000 hours per year, at $50/hour, he/she would be paid about $100,000. There would be room to pay the Assistant much more than that.

There are I estimate 10,000,000 jobs in the U.S. in which the Owner would be willing to pay a TRAINED Assistant $35 to $300/hour, with the high risk for the Assistant that he/she would be replaced if he/she were only worth $35/hr to the Owner. The Owner's interest is in freeing up as much time of the Owner as possible, and should be willing to make a deserving Assistant a defacto partner in the additional gross revenue (after direct expenses). So, if there is $300,000 in additional gross revenue after direct expenses, the Assistant could expect possibly $75-$100 an hour ($150,000 to $200,000 per year).

As a side benefit, the Assistant would either become a full partner of the Owner, or a highly paid Assistant, or in due course would leave to start his/her own business and hire an Assistant for himself/herself.

I write this down for you to review so that you understand the importance of training persons to become the Assistant to the Owner of a Small Business. This is the way of creating 10,000,000 VERY HIGH PAYING JOBS, future small businesses, more profitable small businesses, an increased middle class in the U.S., and needed competition for the major international corporations that are causing the ever-increasing concentration of the U.S. economy.

In other words, small business is the replacement for our failed antitrust laws, and upon reflection small business owners and their trained Assistants are in a position to obtain much higher incomes than they now enjoy.

$ Trillion Impact in the U.S. Economy

I calculated the effect of 10,000,000 Assistant Jobs, assuming the jobs averaged annual compensation of $75,000, $100,000, and $125,000; and that the small businesses would enjoy increased sales averaging 2 or 3 times the amount of the annual compensation. Here are the results:

If $75,000, total Assistant compensation would be $750 Billion, and small business revenues would increase by $1.5 Trillion (at 2x compensation paid) or $2.25 Trillion (at 3x).

If $100,000, total Assistant compensation would be $1 Trillion, and small business revenues would increase by $2 Trillion (2x) or by $3 Trillion (3x).

If $125,000, total Assistant compensation would be $1.25 Trillion, and small business revenues would increase by $2.50 Trillion (2x) or by $3.75 Trillion (3x).

Big business would lose revenues in the approximate amount that small business increases its revenue, thereby apparently or probably causing a reversal of the ever-increasing concentration of the economy, and justifying my belief that small business is the replacement for a failed antitrust law.

My Contact Information

Carl E. Person
225 E. 36th Street - Suite 3A
New York NY 10016-3664
Office : 212-307-4444
Fax : 212-307-0247

Email to : Email to Attorney Carl E. Person

Revision 3/28/19 9:01 pm