Skyrocketing Your Career with Minimal Stress and Big Dollars Doesn’t Have to Be A Mind F*uck Mission
Smart (ass) hacks to the job of your dreams. So you can spend time on the important things in life.
On the corporate ladder, I use to be sitting on the level immediately above the guy who cleaned the toilets.
If the truth be told, I have cleaned my fair share of public toilets.
But I much prefer doing jobs where I get paid well without the head exploding stress levels.
And I have been successfully doing it now for a couple of decades.
There is an art to it.
Are you at a point where you are sick of your current job?
Are you refusing to step up into a career that you want?
Do you feel that you could be doing a much better job than those above you?
If yes, buckle up and read on.
Deal with personal baggage
I was a stubborn ass to deal with at work. Looking back I feel sorry for my managers having to deal with my passive-aggressive behavior.
You drag your suffocating personal baggage around with you throughout your career.
If you were left alone to do your work. All would be well.
However, you are forced to interact with difficult people. Which translates into killer experiences.
Your hardest experiences can be your greatest teachers.
I had a big Greek alpha male manager who taught me through a string of traumatic experiences how I shouldn’t behave in the workplace.
Towards the end of this job I asked myself “how the hell do I improve my relationships with my managers, so this doesn’t happen again?”
Knowing what you don’t want can assist in crafting what you do want.
I noticed a warped and twisted pattern of passive-aggressive behavior toward dominant authority figure males.
Through a process of introspection, I found this relates to my daddy issues.
Use your past experiences as a compass to move forward.
Be smart in the way that you relate to your managers. That doesn’t mean ass kiss (a little does help.)
You don’t have to heal your parental issues but Be responsible for your wild rushes of blood when something pissing you off.
Before you just ship. Work with your current employer.
Know that your personal baggage will follow you like a trusty dog if you change jobs.
Applying for new jobs burns time.
The searching online. Applying. Interviews. Yada Yada Yada.
Take the lazy option is to work with your current employer for that life-changing pay increase.
Priming. Semantic priming helped me get a $20,000 pay increase.
I would babble a lot to the CFO about my money-making ideas all the time. He was never left in any doubt about how money was important to me.
This primes your manager when you ask for a pay increase as they know they will need to give you a pay increase to keep you.
Prioritize. Working smarter not harder means prioritizing. Firstly, do those duties that you and your boss consider to be important. Secondly, do those jobs that your manager thinks are important but you know are not important.
Kick the small tasks to the curb. The 80/20 rules supreme.
Prepare for annual review. When you go into your annual review do your prep work and show how you have added big value to the company.
Feel free to embellish (within reason.)
I sadly managed a lovely woman who at her annual review each year, did beg for a pay increase. Her request was to continually ask, “can I please have a pay increase, Damian?” I never gave her a pay increase as I knew she would never leave and she never went beyond her job description.
Ass kissing (but not.) I was always hopeless at building relationships with managers and clients. But I learned that being kind and helpful goes a long way.
You don’t have to be an ass kisser. But having your manager like you as a person will make your life so much easier.
Problem solution. Your manager deals with big-ass problems the whole day. Don’t add to the list.
If you need to go to your boss with a problem, go with a solution or two in your back pocket.
Getting a new job
If you do decide to split from your current gig make sure you financially maximize this opportunity.
Go into this adventure with the view you are going to get paid more for the next role.
I always ask for the highest figure on the advertised salary range figure or a bit more.
If you ask for higher than they offer, start by testing the waters by asking if they would be willing to pay more than what was advertised.
If they say maybe. That’s a big fat yes.
When you resign from your current employer be open to counter from your current employer when you resign.
Although this isn’t a house auction, if you are presented with multiple job offers make it work for you. Let the other potential employers know your current employer has offered more money to stay.
Several times I have been offered more money when put in this position.
The times of working in a company for 30 years are long gone. When you jump organizations you will get paid more. Similar to pro athletes when they change organizations they will generally get paid more to get them out of their existing organizations.
This mindset of knowing you will get paid more will serve you well. When you don’t accept less you automatically look for ways to get what you want.
In her book The Mind Strength Method, Dr. Jodie Lowinger discusses the advantages of a growth mindset over a fixed mindset. A growth mindset is based on abundance thinking and a fixed mindset sees your outcomes governed by your limited views of the world.
Be a generalist, not a specialist
You will be working or managing across several departments when you take on the bigger roles that pay the bigger dollars. Thus different knowledge packets are required.
You cannot be a world leader in all areas across a business.
But you can have enough knowledge to understand the workings and the desired outcomes.
Leave the nuts and bolts to the specialists.
When you are in the hot seat in an interview, the panel wants to know if you have either carried out the various tasks of the job you have applied for. Or if you have the transitional skills required.
You only have to give one example of doing each task that makes up this new job to demonstrate you are a capable beast. They aren’t interested in knowing you have done the same task for the last 10 years.
These hacks are more about intelligent shifts in perception that lead to transformative results.
To have that job that doesn’t suffocate the rest of your life and that pays big dollars is possible.
Follow the rules and live a (relative) stress-free life with a happy bank balance.