The difference between greatness and mediocrity in sports is often a line so thin that you can barely see it. Who is the 500th best basketball player in the U.S.? Whoever they are, their skills aren’t THAT different from whoever was chosen last for the NBA All-Star Team. And it’s likely that the diff had nothing to do with their physical God-given talents. The diff probably had to do with intangibles, most of which revolved around how hard they worked, how clearly they paid attention to the game environment around them. Or, said another way, how much they cared.

So here’s a heavy handed message for you to think about, rolled in a question: “What is the difference between a guy who flips burgers at Mickey D’s and a UPS driver?” Answer: A life.

It doesn’t take a college degree to do either, but you’re mistaken if you think that fact means the two will lead the same sort of existence.

The burger flipper makes minimum wage, will never be able to afford a home, a decent car, a real vacation, or even a reasonably decent television.

The UPS driver could potentially wind up being a millionaire. Not a typo. They will drive a decent car, be able to buy their own home, and give their family most of what they’d ever want or need.

How much harder did the UPS driver work to get that job than the burger flipper to get his?

Same deal in corporate life. Those who succeed more often than not did so because they… cared. They actually put in the extra 10% or whatever effort was needed, and they became The Man (or The Wom), rather than having to kiss some cheek.

Reality Picture One: So you’ve graduated from high school and secured yourself a burger-flipping job at the local fast food joint, Patty’s Patties. Each morning, you rumble into work in your beat-up, ’97 Buick Park Avenue (it was bequeathed to you by your father, who decided it was easier to give to you than to bother finding someone who would pay more than $100 for it). You and your burger-flipping cronies have a simple life. You make minimum wage, work 8-hour shifts and don’t exactly take much pride in your work. Sure, you might one day turn out the Perfectly Cooked Burger, but no one is going to notice or care, and the customer will surely scarf it down without having realized that they have just ingested greatness.

You aren’t given any job duties other than to prepare the burgers and fries, and to clean up and wipe down the fryer each time it begins looking nasty. As far as your daily tasks are concerned, you do a bang-up job; in fact, you give it 100%. If only there was a way you could give more…

There is nothing else you could possibly be doing within the realm of your job, but the decision to overachieve at your place of business is what separates the rung-dwellers from the rung-climbers. It really is a decision, too. There is nothing preventing you from advancing quickly and steadily if you have the drive, the conviction and the innate hatred of flipping burgers. Quit. Or do… more. You start thinking of life as those melted marshmallow things on graham crackers with chocolate…

So you take an active interest in learning more about the way Patty’s Patties is run. You are inquisitive, although not to the point of being obnoxious. You offer to help Matt, your supervisor (who is only a year-and-a-half older than you, by the way), with any little odds and ends he could use some assistance with. You ask if you can put in extra hours, and you work your tail off for as many of those hours as they will give you. It is suddenly becoming clear to Matt that you are being wasted in your current function. With his keen eye for spotting talent, he has already decided that you are going to be moving up in the world of patties.

A month into your employment, you are promoted to work the front counter. The promotion comes with a small raise, but you’re not in the 1% just yet. Still, you can now get that $200 worth of car repairs you desperately needed to get done. You can trade in your rags for some designer outfits (from TJ Maxx). Yes sir, it feels good to be making more than minimum wage.

There are other benefits of your new position. No more slaving over a hot fryer, no more threat of grease fires. Now you are actually talking to people. As before, you go about your work with unusual vigor and aplomb. You take orders with a smile (again, without being obnoxious), listen carefully so that you make no mistakes, offer your customers anything else they may need, and be sure to thank them for stopping in, as well as express your genuine desire that they return. The customers appreciate your energy and warmth, and it isn’t long before poor Bonnie at Register #2 is picking polish off her nails while you have a line ten people deep.

The owner of the franchise isn’t in the restaurant all that often, but every time he does pop in, he notices what a great job you’re doing. He hears compliments from the customers; he hears good reviews from the manager. Over time, you give him no choice but to reward your enthusiasm and hard work. He tells the manager to promote you once again, this time to assistant manager. Matt was previously the assistant manager, but he wasn’t exactly on track to win employee of the millennium. You’ll miss him, but not that much.

Bonnie at Register #2 has more patrons to deal with again, and she does give it 100%, but not 110%, so she will continue to work the counter for many years to come. You now get to boss her around a bit, a responsibility you do not abuse or take lightly. It’s good knowing you do have that power, however. Any power at all feels pretty good to you.

So does that extra cash you’re making these days. You’ve decided to say so long to the Park Avenue and trade it in for a new – okay, used, but it’s new to you – Toyota Corolla. Your dad cosigns on it, partly because he’s your dad and that’s what dads do, but also as his way of apologizing for sticking you with the clunker in the first place. You even have enough spending money to buy yourself some toys. A PS3, an iPad, couple other small gadgets. Ah, to not yet have a family or a mortgage…

Your climb continues. From assistant manager you are promoted to manager. It takes you about a year, but your perseverance and hard work cannot be denied in the long run. You move out of your parents’ place and get yourself a one-bedroom apartment. You can actually afford a social life now – the idea of paying for a couple of movie tickets no longer causes you to consider taking out a loan.

You are still not satisfied, and now you have set your mind on owning your own Patty’s franchise. Within a couple of years, your dream becomes a reality. Of course, because you have been taking business classes on the side, you are now well-prepared to thrive in this capacity as well, and your restaurant flourishes more than most. You trade in the Corolla for a Lexus, trade in your kid toys for adult toys (although you still hang onto the PS3) and trade in your small apartment for a much, much larger one. When you are finally ready to take the plunge (we are referring to marriage, not a stopped-up toilet), you will be in a position to cover the down-payment on a house. Could you feel any more like a grown-up?

You open additional restaurants, and they prosper as well. You are now working your butt off less than ever, and yet your bank accounts are swelling as never before. You have worked your way from the bottom of all bottoms to the near-top. By putting in an extra 10% at every step along the way, you are living a life that is roughly 10,000% better than where you started.

Okay, sure – easier said than done. But the point is that all it takes is a little extra initiative and ambition to quickly and steadily improve your position out there in the real world. It’s time to trade in that junk heap you’ve been tooling around town in. We’re thinking that loud, constant hissing sound can’t be safe.

Reality Picture Two: You get a job as a driver, making deliveries for UPS. You read that right – a delivery person. Now, certainly there are big wigs at the UPS corporate offices who are making a fortune. If you got in at the “UPS Ground” level, schmoozed the right people and had a few breaks go your way, maybe you could actually transition from driver to the manager of a UPS store, and there demonstrate the people and leadership skills necessary to be promoted to regional manager, and from there maybe you even go on to fame and fortune as the CEO of the company. It isn’t likely, as at some point they’re going to look at your level of education and put a halt to your speed train of success, unless you’ve done something truly brilliant like figure out a way to catapult packages from the head office to all of their respective locations without damaging the contents. However, it is possible. Some individuals have reached great heights in the world of business without a college degree.

But that’s not even what we’re talking about. We are proposing that you may be able to retire a millionaire without ever getting out of the delivery biz. Not possible unless you own your own trucks and have a trucking company, you say? Let’s find out…

You begin at 40k a year. Not great, but a nice place to start. Remember that, because you are a member of a strong union, it costs UPS more like 60k to keep you employed. Where’d the extra 20k go? Well, 5k are pension contributions year one. (And of course you tax defer the 2k a year from your own salary into a 401k Plan.) Another 3k are health benefits. Then there’s 3k in insurance in case you end up on the losing end of a fist fight with a FedEx driver. There’s ongoing driver education. And those Keurig coffee things and the vegan donut holes? They don’t grow on trees, ya know.

You stick with the job, and after a couple of years you’ve boosted your base salary to 55k, with a few more bucks going into your pension. Other than being sick of that number because of all the speed limit signs you pass on a daily basis, you’re feeling good about your climb up the money ladder thus far. You’re no millionaire; in fact, your pay is really just enough to cover the rent on your apartment, car payments, and other basic living expenses. But your 401k Plan has compounded away in the market to now be worth $28,133. You’ve started saving a little beyond your pension, but there’s only a couple thousand in your account for the time being. At least you don’t have any student loans to pay back. For now, at least, at 20-something, you’re way ahead of all your doctor and lawyer friends. Odd that you hang in those circles, by the way… Well, you do deliver to them, and the surgeons think your uniforms are better than theirs.

However, your salary isn’t the only money you’re making. While you’re trucking along – literally – the large pension you are building is compounding away each year, tax free for now. You’ll pay taxes when you take the money out but by then you’ll be an old geezer, and for those making less than 100k, your tax rates are very low in this country.

Say you have 10k added to your pension and savings each year through a combination of UPS-granted pension, matching gifts where UPS puts in 100% of whatever you put in up to a point, and you just save a few grand from your salary.

So you save money at a decent clip and you do nothing fancy with it – you just put it in the stock market in a balanced growth fund which compounds away at a 120 year historical average of 8.5% per year net of fees and with dividends reinvested to buy more stock.

If you make that investing commitment, your results after 25 years of driving (and you’re still relatively young at that point, no matter what you may think of 45-year-olds today) look something like this:

For the first couple years, the difference may not seem all that impressive. After you’ve had 20k added to your pension, you have a total return of $22,622, meaning you’ve tacked on an extra couple grand to what you would have had without the bond interest. You’re not going to throw that money out of bed, but hardly life-changing. Here’s the lovely thing about the concept of “compounding” interest though. It compounds. Didn’t see that one coming, eh?

In practice, the stock market has ups and downs, as you probably know. But over time, it goes up. Until the mortgage crisis of 2008 era, the market compounded at over 10% historically but the bad market of the last decades has brought our average down big time. Like a big leaguer who used to be an All-Star but just went 0 for 183 at bats. His career averages will come down. Duh.

After 15 years, you’ve had 150k put into your pension but have doubled that amount once you factor in the return on your stock investments. After 23 years, you’ve tripled it. By the end of the 25th year, you have made 25 contributions of 10k or a total of 250k contributed. Yet the value of your pension is over 850k. Why? America, baby! You get to invest! And the numbers can be staggering – note that in year 25 on a base of almost 800k, your 8.5% interest made you MORE MONEY than you made hauling your ass around in your brown truck all year. The money worked for you; you didn’t work for it. There wasn’t even a leprechaun involved. Magic.

Now of course in 25 years 850k won’t buy you what it does today – there’s this ugly thing called inflation. By then a half gallon of milk will cost 4 bucks instead of 2 bucks today but you are still vastly ahead of where you would have been if you hadn’t saved.

Over the years, you also continued to receive the occasional raise, and are now making 70k, which is pretty average for a seasoned UPS driver. Because you never got swallowed up by that student loan debt, you were able to stay ahead of the game, build up some good credit, put away some savings, and… invest. No, not in the horsies at Churchill Downs… in the stock market.

And the beautiful thing about this whole ride was that you didn't need to know much of anything about the stock market other than that it goes up over time. So you didn't do any fancy hedge funds, private equity funds, venture capital funds, etc. All you did was buy ticker: SPY which is the simplest index fund of the S&P 500 stocks that you can buy. It just plunks along and has incredibly low management fees: Roughly, for every $100 you invest, you pay about 20 cents a year for that money to be managed. If you wanted to try and find a hot mutual fund or other investment vehicle – or take a lot of risk and just buy 4 stocks and hope they do well, you could compound at 20% a year or more; or you could lose everything. Risk. Reward. They sleep together (but don’t tell their spouses).

You’ve now made a killing in the stock market by simply being disciplined and investing in it. You are 62 and decide to retire. You will have worked 40 years for UPS and you will have compounded your pension to well over $2 million. Oh, and that kindly loving union has totally taken care of you: For the rest of your life, you will get 70% of the 75k salary you were making when you hung up the brown shirt.
You’ll live to 87. So those suckers at UPS now have to pay you over 50k a year plus benefits – for 25 more years! Crazy good. In Union We Trust. So now not only do you have the $2 million but you have the 50k thing going for you – given your lifelong habits of spending like a UPS driver, good luck even finding a way to spend all that money unless you do something totally stupid like attend Evander Holyfield’s week-long seminar on financial responsibility.

So here you are, sitting on top a mountain of money made from basic vanilla investments and a pension that has been piling up through the years, and you’re still getting paid 52k a year… while not working a lick. These days, the only package you’re delivering is your grandson’s birthday present. (Out of habit, you make him sign for it.)

Your old friend the burger-flipper? Unless he experienced unusual success like our rung-climber in Reality Picture One, he may have gotten a couple small promotions here and there, but he doesn’t have the opportunity to sit home and watch the checks slide under his front door. If he doesn’t have enough to retire on – and he almost certainly doesn’t – he’s still flipping. He’ll be working until he can’t work anymore.

Driving a truck isn’t much harder than flipping burgers. It doesn’t require any more education – as long as you have a high school diploma, you could be UPS material. It does take a bit more effort, but the rewards are well worth it. You will need to send in an electronic application; if the local boss likes what he sees, he’ll have you in for an interview, either with himself or possibly with the regional manager. You’ll need to impress the interviewer more than a potential burger-flipper might… this includes acting professionally and courteously, passing the skills assessment test they give you (you don’t have to be a rocket scientist, but you need to show that you can do basic things like understand rates, etc.), and pass the drug test. No matter how stellar you are in your interview, you will have 0% chance of getting the job if there are traces of anything illegal in your system. Then, if you get the job, you will be expected to perform at a high level, and to take your work seriously. You may not have a supervisor sitting beside you in the truck every minute of every day, but they’ll still know if you’re slackin’.

So does it take more work, concentration and dedication to work as a UPS driver than it does at Patty’s? Yeah. But barely so. The good jobs are out there, and by putting in the extra 10% effort to root them out and prepare sufficiently for them, rather than settling for what will usually be a dead-end job, you can put yourself on a path to success that will allow you to put in much less than 100% in your later years. You may refer to them as your “lazy years.”