Who is Snooki Polizzi? She was paid $32k to speak at Rutgers University. That’s $2,000 more than Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison will be paid to speak at 2011 commencement. Polizzi is one of the young stars of a reality show called Jersey Shores. It has been some years since I put money into the coffers of Rutgers University so my right to judge administrator’s decisions is long gone.
By comparison this could even be money well spent when compared to Charlie Sheen on the road hawking $80 tickets to see/hear the Charlie train wreck.
Still both of these are chump change and here’s why. If young Ms. Snooki were paid $32k to do a key-note everyday for a year she would earn a bit over $11mm. If Charlie puts 10,000 people in an auditorium every week for a year his revenue would only be $41.6mm of which he would still have a big chunk of expenses to pay.
Still chump change according to the NYT article regarding the 25 top hedge fund managers who collected a combined $22bb for their hard work in 2010.
Leadership guru Steven Covey advises that we seek first to understand.
There are some situations when that is an unreasonable expectation. I’m the Outsider and that’s what I think.