The Career Savings Account
You control more of your career than you think. You need to rescue and look forward to Monday. A better job begins with building a better you. This book is about building a career. Career ceilings are problems and also retrenchment is one of them. In some jobs, you know when you hit a ceiling and can’t go higher anymore. There are a few options: 1) find another job; 2) Do a job you didn’t want to do; 3) Suck it up over 30 years. Over 70% of the people felt disengaged with their jobs. Learn to embrace career transitions. How do we make career jumps, navigate career bumps, break through career ceilings, make the most of unexpected career opportunities? Learn to build a career savings account. You must keep making deposits into your career savings account. Relationships + Skills + Character X Hustle = Career Savings Account. Relationships are the people you know, skills are the things you do, character is who you are, hustle is how you work. You should have all 4 of them. Most people only work jobs, not build careers. Most people do not have anyone to turn to for career advice once they are in a rut. There are only 4 possible types of career transitions around. Some are voluntary while some are involuntary actions. When you are stuck on a career ceiling, skills will help you breakthrough. When you want to do a career jump and gain progression, your character is the most important investment. Great lives are rarely created in great comfort. Most people are afraid of the unknown. It is never too late to do a do over. It’s time to DO a Do Over.
We eat at TGI Fridays not TGI Mondays. We live for the weekends because we’ve accepted that the weekdays are where dreams go to die. Poke your head up if you’re reading this book at work. – Jon Acuff
Do This First. Fear and complacency are things we need to overcome. Choose your attitude and adjust your expectations. Don’t listen to feelings, but rather, learn to make choices. Adjust your expectations and write down what you see in a job. However, do not completely eliminate them, rather, you can adjust them.
Tomorrow at work, choose to have a good attitude. Choose not to be cynical. Choose not to act like you’re doing them a favor by showing up. Choose not to complain. Choose to cheer for the accomplishments of your co-workers. Choose to treat customers like superstars. – Jon Acuff
Relationships. Finding good people is the key for a successful business. Skills can be judged on a resume, but attitude can’t be judged. Therefore, relationships get you the first gig. During career setbacks, relationships help you too. This book provides some tips on how to strengthen relationships.
You Don’t Know Who You Know. People hate change. Most people despise networking. However, we acknowledge the importance of networking. Who is someone you can turn to for help with your career Do Over? Use note cards. Writing stimulates information retention. Please buy them. It’s okay if you don’t know what to do with your life. Find an accountability partner to monitor your progress on a skill. Answer the question ‘Who do I know that is wise about career issues?’ Answer the question ‘Who have I worked with?’ Answer the question ‘Who do I know that is influential?’ Answer the question ‘Who do I know that owns a business?’ Answer the question ‘Who do I follow online that is in my desired career space?’ Answer the question ‘What casual relationships am I forgetting that might have a career impact?’ Always remember that you don’t know who you know unless you spend deliberate time focusing on your relationships.
It’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction. – Warren Buffett
Dentists say, “Only floss the teeth you want to keep.” The same is true of career relationships; only invest in the ones you want to keep. – Jon Acuff
Gives Your Foes What They Need Most. You must know what type of relationship you want to develop. You could meet foes along the way, these people are against your dream. They do not support your dreams. Friend is someone who will cheer you along. Advocate is someone who is significant in helping you shape your career. Start to label your friends in the different categories. How do you deal with your foes? This category doesn’t matter and your best bet is to ignore them. There is a difference between an idiot and a foe. Shrink your definition of the word ‘foe’. Don’t search for foes. That’s your best solution. Compare the Internet to Real Life. People are often critics only online and they do not like to criticize in real life. If you have such people, distance yourself from them. Stop hanging out with lobsters. Lobsters just want to make others feel miserable. Distance yourself from them. How do you deal with bad bosses? The first you can do is to improve your work performance to see if it improves your relationship. Admit you’re an employee. Turn the frustration of working under a bad boss into fuel. Your boss is essentially saying ‘I dare you to get a better job’.
One of the easiest and fastest ways to turn an accomplice into a friend is to simply tell your accomplice what you are working on. Most of the time just the act of telling someone what you are trying to do with your life changes things. – Jon Acuff
Sometimes, people who hate on your dream aren’t really mad about your dream. They’re mad because you’re making them jealous. – Jon Acuff
You can’t change someone, but you can impact a work relationship sometimes if you improve your work performance. – Jon Acuff
Casual Counts. Casual friends count too and you never know when they might be able to help you. You need to have a massive collection of these people. Throw as many boomerangs as possible. If you are lucky, one might come back into your life with a work opportunity. Use social media to connect with people whom you haven’t kept in touch. You should try to do some casual relationships. I hate asking people for help. Most successful people didn’t accomplish everything alone. We have to give the casual relationship information. If you’re looking for a new job, tell them that. Start with a small table. Say things like ‘it was wonderful seeing you tonight’. You need to find a table. Put a big table in your house and invite people over for dinner. You need to be a little brave and desperate for community. This is how friendships start. Find a table first. Make new casual relationships on purpose. Casual means deliberate. It’s impossible to predict whether someone can work with you at the start. Be a first responder and do not sit on emails for days. Don’t ignore people and pick up on the first ring. Learn to own the inconvenience. Increase the frequency of your interactions with these casual acquaintances. Friendships built on selfishness never work out. Increase the frequency you see them on their terms, not yours. Own the inconvenience.
Casual relationships run on (and deepen) based on your willingness to share information. – Jon Acuff
If people don’t know you need help, they can’t help you. – Jon Acuff
Whether you’re chasing a new dream or trying to climb the ladder at work, casual relationships won’t know how to help us unless we ask for help. – Jon Acuff
Great Career Take Great Advocates. Not all your friends can give you good advice. There are 3 characteristics that advocates must have. They have to be brave and to tell you the truth, even though it hurts. They have to be respected. They also have to be trustworthy. Cheat Codes make the game a lot easier. They will tell you shortcuts which actually work. However, you must be willing to listen to them. What do career advocates need from us? What’s in it for them? Expand your definition of the word ‘expert’. There are generally 3 types of expertise: Industry, life and You. A best friend can be an advocate too. Advocate is like a mentor and the advice mostly goes one way only. An advocate must be someone smarter than you. Join people in your profession and ask for advice. Know other people in similar firms. You might also build some long-distance advocates or heroes you have read about in books.
It’s one of my theories that when people give you advice, they’re really just talking to themselves in the past. – Steve Garguilo
An advocate is only as good as the amount of access you are willing to give them into your life. The best advocate for your career can’t do anything if you stay surface level with them. – Jon Acuff
Don’t Burn Many Bridges. Sometimes, it is inevitable. However, do not burn many bridges as it might haunt you. Boomerangs will return, even bad ones. The fewer you burn, the better. Do you form hate clubs about people you don’t like. Sometimes, stupid people can be your boss also. Leave Jobs with your thumb raised. Do not raise your middle finger as the experience is not worth it at all. Keep your matches away from digital bridges too. Don’t do social media gloating. Apologize if you have to. Your industry is smaller than you think. Treat everyone like you’ll work with them again someday.
It is seldom indeed that one parts on good terms, because if one where on good terms one would not part. – Marcel Proust
I’m not asking you to be fake and give long, deep hugs to people who spent the previous day verbally assaulting you. – Jon Acuff
If you currently have a job, do not go online and criticize the company you work for. – Jon Acuff
Community Shines Brightest in the Darkness of a Career Bump. There are only 4 things which can happen: 1) career ceilings; 2) career jumps; 3) career opportunities; 4) career bumps. Relationships will pick you up. Friends will be there to help you. Rock Bottom is a Trampoline. Sometimes, you will spring back into life, just like that. A career bump will rock your boat and it will reveal who are your true friends. We need friends and advocates.
Investment 2: Skills. Relationships get you the first gig, skills get you the second. However, if you have no skills, you sink. The difference between an amateur and expert are skills. They give purpose for life. Skills are ability and provide you with natural talents. Old dogs can learn new skills. Your skills can come in handy. Skills are the key to getting unstuck.
Everybody wants to be somebody: Nobody wants to grow. – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Once you have skills, they are yours forever. No one can take that skill away from you. When you leave a job, the skills you learned there leave with you. You must keep them sharp, but a skill you put in the Career Savings Account stays there. – Jon Acuff
You Have More Skills than You Think. Most people claim they don’t have many skills. This is because they are just things you do, but you don’t classify. Get more skills. You should write down a list of current skills. Write down ideas. Look for patterns. Ask what are you good at. Do not be humble. It could be personal skills as well, need not be work-related skills. Ask yourself what comes naturally? Write down ‘what do people pay me to do?’ Write down ‘what are you afraid of?’ Write down ‘If you wrote an eBook, what would the topic be?’ Bring the cards along with you. If you do not know what your skills are, ask a friend for advice. You need to be aware of the skills you might want to acquire.
Whether you want to get better at your current job or find a new one, chances are you will need new skills. – Jon Acuff
Somewhere on the road to adulthood we decided that dreams were dumb. We stopped wanting to be firemen and astronauts and settled for stuck and predictable. We accepted the lie that Monday must be boring. – Jon Acuff
Master the Invisible Skills. Everything is a skill, everything you do at work is a skill. Communication, fixing paper jams are all skills. The small things add up. The small skills do not seem flashy. You just need some tweaks to be great at them. Many people miss these invisible skills and overlook them. Going to work is a skill as it shows that absenteeism is not value highly by employees. Go to work and go on time. You will already be better off than others who don’t show up at work. Learn to add value. In every job, there must be something that you do which adds value. Ask yourself what is the currency of your company. How does what you do add to your company’s mission? You can tell your boss: ‘I’ve been thinking a lot about the best ways for me to continually add value to this company. I’d love to hear your thoughts on how I can do that.’ Employees must add value. Own your attitude. It is not the employers’ job to fulfil your career desires. When you have a bad attitude, it shows. It’s your job to enjoy work, not your employer. Attitude is a decision you choose on a daily basis. Express gratefulness. Show consideration for others. Focus on what matters. Play to your strengths and everyone else’s. Learn to be flexible. Respect their gear. Continue with your education and learn more. If the company wants to train you, you should be grateful.
The goal of your first job is to teach you how to have a job. – Jon Acuff
Over and over again, career experts bemoaned the fact that employees who don’t show up to work get fired. – Jon Acuff
Attitude is a skill. It can be changed. It can be improved and it starts with owning it. You determine your attitude, not your day, not a job, not a situation. You. Own it. – Jon Acuff
If you need more to do, find more work to do. Finishing the work your boss thought would take you 40 hours in only 25 hours doesn’t mean you’ve just earned an extra 15 hours of me time that week. – Jon Acuff
Never Become a Dinosaur. There are people who don’t love to learn new skills. With technological advances, skills are important. If you don’t have them, you are a dinosaur. Your skills can get obsolete quickly if you are not careful. Old skills might not work all the time. New skills open the doors to wonderful opportunities. It will value-add to your resume. Sign up for classes is also a signal to your boss that you care about the job. Passion won’t show up from nowhere. You won’t find calling out of nowhere. There are hassles with learning something new. It’s not easy but you can pretend to be a tourist in a new country and ask a lot of questions to find out more. If you want a Do Over, you have to pick up new skills. It’s hard to get stuck in your old ways when you prioritize learning new skills.
I like being a beginner. I like the moment when I look at everyone and say, “I have no idea how to do this, let’s figure it out.” – Jon Acuff
If we all don’t want to become dinosaurs, bemoaning the good ol’ days, we have to stay current. We have to stay relevant. We have to stay employable and the best way to do that is by learning new skills. – Jon Acuff
New jobs always require learning new skills, even if that just means learning a different way a new company prefers to do something. – Jon Acuff
Learning a new skill can reveal a new dream. How can you know you love doing something if you don’t try it? – Jon Acuff
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