Taking time for networking and building relationships sucks!… well it does if you are not good at it.
What if you could not only get good at it, but do it in less than 20 minutes each day WITHOUT having to go to networking events.
That’s what today’s podcast episode is all about! Mark discusses with us some very tactical (and actionable) ways you can become a better at networking!
We’re all busy. and one of the biggest challenges we all have with networking is time…so Mark talks about a few ways to grow your network in 20 min a day
In this episode you will learn
LinkedIn Recommendations
Birthday calls/life events
Be a noticer
Quarterly Reach Out Emails
Also mentioned is Mark’s Call on how to become a better networker in 20 minutes a day! On October 17 (for more details) http://sieverkropp.com/call
If you want to go into deeper detail on any one of these, mark can tell you EXACTLY how to do this!
I was on his last one and I learned a whole bunch!
Our entire lives are defined by our relationships – father/mother, husband/wife, brother/sister, friend, employer/employee, author, speaker, etc.
You have things you want to accomplish and achieve.
If you don’t have everything you want in your life…it’s because you have not yet found and developed the relationships that will allow you to accomplish those things.
In the last episode we talked about Mark leaving HTYC. Don’t worry he isn’t going to far! You can still find him at Sieverkropp.com
Have you ever wondered what the right time is to pursue different work?
Sometimes it’s painfully clear! (we work with people every day that have some serious disdain for their jobs)
But what if it’s not as obvious? What if you actually like your job and just aren’t sure if you should be pursuing something more meaningful… or what if you have multiple opportunities but aren’t sure how to measure which one would be better for you.?
This is exactly the question that we just faced just recently when setting out the goals for the rest of this year and into next year!
How do you know when it’s time to move on to something else?
This is hard, even for us (and it’s kind of what we do here at Happen to Your Career.)
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
When it’s past time for you to leave your job or your business
80% of a company’s profits come from 20% of its customers
80% of a company’s complaints come from 20% of its customers
80% of a company’s profits come from 20% of the time its staff spend
80% of a company’s sales come from 20% of its products
Want some more personal examples?
How about in school when you did group work 80% of the results (coordinating, project work, making sure that one guy didn’t show up to the presentation drunk) were typically done by 20% of the people
for those non math junkies out there if you have a group of 5 that is one person that is busting tail trying to get an “A” while everyone else just sort of follows their lead and is along for the ride!
What’s that, not a big enough sample size for you?
Then what about this:
Around 80% of the United States wealth is held by 20% of it’s people. (in fact since 1989 the top 20% have progressively even gained more ground see here and here
Boom!… how do you like “dem apples”
But this carries further than that!
What about how this actually relates to your career?
80% of the things you do daily are NOT moving your career in the direction you want it to go.
How do I eliminate the 20% of stuff that doesn’t work?
In this episode you will learn
-What the 80/20 rule is
-How you can leverage it for your career (whether you have your own business or work for someone else)
When you are trying to transition from one job to another, it can feel like that transition is going to take FOR-E-VER!! The key is to find people to support and encourage you through that transition. In this episode Mark and Scott share stories from their personal experiences regarding career transitions–voluntary and otherwise–and how important having support is in those situations.
Horrible Job Situations:
Scott shares what it feels like to be fired from a job.
You feel very alone
You feel like you’ve been kicked in the gut
You feel you’ve lost part of who you are – we associate ourselves with what we do
“How did this happen to me???”
You feel embarassed
In this situation, not only do you feel alone, you begin to isolate yourself.
Mark shares how it felt to be in a job where you’re completely miserable. He absolutely hated his job…He would feel sick to his stomach Sunday afternoon just thinking about going to work the next day. Working 70 hours a week.
You feel stuck
You feel like you don’t have time to find other opportunities
You feel like you’re spinning your wheels
You feel like the transition is never ending
Situations like the ones that Scott and Mark shared would be a lot easier if he would’ve had more support, resources, encouragement during this experience.
How having support helps:
Mindset – exposure to people that understood the possibilities and knew how to make the transition happen would accelerate the process
Take action – being encouraged by those around you helps you take action quicker.
Kick in the butt – Sometimes you just need a kick in the butt…someone to tell you “Cowboy up, Cupcake!”
Encouragment – having someone to encourage you and keep you going when you get depressed or frustrated.
You can make a job transition without support…
But it’sa lot harder!!
Whenever someone wants to change, people find support — addiction recovery support groups, mastermind groups etc.
Successful people gather around them people that they can trust and that will encourage and support them!
With these things in mind, HTYC is taking a big step forward!
The Work You Love: One Stop Membership site is coming THIS WEEK!!!
What is the Work You Love: One Stop
Access to Mark and Scott (facebook, email)
Access to several career experts
“Office Hours” – times that we will be available to answer questions, bounce ideas back and forth, etc.
Webinars
Videos
Resources
Courses
You will have input as to the things that will be included in the WYL: One Stop.
Bottom line, WYL: One Stop is a one stop place to find community support, advice, tools and resources to help you accelerate your job transition.
If you have signed up for the HTYC Newsletter and/or One Stop Email Course, watch your email this week for more information on the WYL: One Stop!
If you have not signed up, SIGN UP TODAY!!Preferred pricing and first access will be give to our newsletter subscribers!!
Share this post and podcast with people you know who are looking to change careers, just got laid off, etc.
You don’t become successful by accident. You don’t get to work that you absolutely love by accident. Being successful requires focused effort. One of the things you need to focus on if you’re going to be successful is your financial transition plan.
Having a financial transition plan will allow you to prepare for changing jobs or starting a business in order to follow your dreams and move to work that you love.
Here are the key steps to your financial plan:
Get Your Spouse on Board
If you don’t have a spouse, feel free to jump to the second step!
The very first necessity of your financial plan is having your spouse on board with your goals and plans. If you are married, you need to communicate with your spouse about your goals and plans.
If you do not get your spouse on board you will make your plan, your life and your family’s life much more difficult! Here are three things to think about regarding getting your spouse on board:
1. Your spouse wants you to succeed. Every spouse wants their significant other (and their family) to be successful. Don’t get caught in thinking that your spouse just wants you to fail. Approach your conversations realizing that your spouse does love you and does want you to be successful.
2. Prove it to me. Often when a spouse says no, or tells you that something can’t be done, what they are really saying is “prove to me that it can happen”–they just don’t know how to say it in those words… Don’t take your spouse’s complaints, negativity, etc. personally. Take it as them asking you to help them see and understand that it really can happen.
3. Overcommunicate. you will have to “paint the vision” 4, 5, or 6 times probably to help your spouse understand what you are wanting to do. Do not get annoyed or frustrated at this. You need to patiently paint the vision, answer questions and help them understand why if they are going to support you.
Determine Your Budget
This implies that you know what you want to transition to. If you haven’t signed up for the free two-week email course to help determine what you want to transition, Click here to sign up (for free).
Begin planning out your budget several months prior to your planned transition.
Why is budgeting important for your career?
The decisions you make. If you are spending every single cent coming in now, it will affect the decisions you make about your next career change. You will place a much higher focus on what a job pays, because it pays more…not because you really want to work at that job.
Pay periods. When you transition to a new job, you might find that you end up with an extra week between pay periods. Making sure that you have budgeted properly so you can make that change even if it means you have to go another week or two between paychecks is absolutely essential.
In Episode 034 we talk specifically about how to budget and get some more ideas.
Budget for longer periods of time. Often times you will need to plan further ahead and have more financial cushion. Planning your budget out for 6-12 months will allow you to take those steps today that will get you where you need to be in 6-12 months.
Increase Your Income
Another way to expedite your financial transition plan is to increase your income. As Mark says, “If there’s a leak in the tub…turn on the water more!”
Here’s a few ideas to increase your income:
1. Just start. If you want to start a business, begin doing it now. Get your business off the ground late at night, or early mornings. Negotiate with your employer for some more time to work on your side business. Remember that you won’t be doing this for the next 20 years. It is short term to get things going!
2. Sell so much stuff that the kids think they’re next! (h/t Dave Ramsey) Look around your house…what can you sell? Craigslist, ebay, etc. make this so easy these days! Find things that you can part with to make a little extra $$. Last week we heard of Joel Fortner financing his dog…this week Scott talks about how they sold their dog.
3. Work on the side. Do you have a friend that owns a business that maybe needs some help on a Saturday? Often times you know someone that you could work with once every couple weeks to make a little extra.
4. Ask for a raise. Get more $$ where you are currently. If you are doing a great job at your job, and you’ve got a great relationship with your boss, you can probably negotiate a raise. Scott’s product “Get a Raise Guide” will be released soon. Scott picks a fight with Biggie Smalls… if you have a financial plan “Mo money” does not equal “Mo problems…”.
When an opportunity presents itself, you want to be ready…and in a position…to take advantage of it!
In 2008 one of the biggest things that was holding me back in my career was my finances!
Alyssa and I had all of the normal debts like car loans, student loans, a couple of credit cards but we also purchased a house with very little down in 2006 just before the real estate bubble came crashing down. We had no idea After drained our savings and borrowed money to sell a house that was underwater by over $70,000, we were left with a whopping $133,000+ in debt. This was crushing long before the house was gone, we just didn’t fully understand how much and in what ways until years later!
It was only after we paid of all that debt that we realized; You get to make different decisions about your career, your family, and really your whole life. When there’s no debt over your head you get freedom to behave in a different way. You get to make more decisions with what you WANT in mind, instead of what you ARE OBLIGATED TO DO!
For our full story of why we were being held hostage by our finances and our reasons for changing, listen to Mark interviewing me about it on episode 034 of the HTYC Podcast
You will also get to hear Dave Ramsey on our show…Well… kind of…You’ll See!!!
What we did about it (and what you can do)
We knew we were going down the wrong path for a while before we actually figured out what to do about it.
The very first thing that set us down the road was getting angry.
That sounds odd I know, but it was important. Not angry and bitter, but instead angry enough to want to make a change. Then came the decision.
Alyssa and I decided together that we needed to make a change. We mentally and verbally committed and made a decision
[box] Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen! – Ralph Waldo Emerson[/box]
After we made that decision we really didn’t know how we were going to do it. We only knew that we needed to and wanted to. We started by trying to change our environment and started planning to move to be closer to friends and family we thought might bring a different influence in our lives.
It was less than six weeks later that I found a copy of the Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey that I had downloaded on iTunes with some leftover gift cards and then forgotten about. I had long car trip ahead of me and wanted to be able to listen to something for a few hours. On my way I turned it on not expecting very much…. and then.
It was the most intense car trip I have ever had driving alone for 4 hours.
I was white knuckling the wheel! Not because it was raining or snowing. Not because I was driving particularly fast.
But instead because with every minute that passed I could see a path out of the darkness.
It laid out an entire plan, in a way that i felt I could do, to getting freedom from the stresses we had, from the money fights we were having and from Alyssa and I growing together instead of apart in our marriage. I felt like I would be able to help my kids pay for college and actually be able to get ahead for once in my life instead of living paycheck to paycheck.
More than that, I knew that if I could get on a plan for my finances, I could focus on the things I really wanted to do in my career and our life.
The “Barlow Version” of Dave’s Plan
We started out by taking Dave’s advice and trying to get ourselves on a monthly plan! This began by us attempting to budget all our money on a legal pad.
It was terrible and we were terrible at it! We got pretty frustrated when we saw how much money was going out and we weren’t quite sure what to take away to make the budget balance.
It took several months to really make progress and it was truly only that fact that we were so fed up with the way we were living our life for the past several years that really kept us going.
We decided we wanted to take out as much of the frustration as possible and remove the barriers that were making it really difficult for us and causing us to not want to budget each month. We figured that if we eliminated some of the pain we would have better success and be more likely to do it.
Out of that we created an excel version of our budget. One that auto calculated and did all the math and we didn’t have to do anything except decide where to spend money and where not to spend it.
This got tweaked and improved over a period of time and later versions even told us when something wasn’t adding up correctly.
If you want to see the ACTUAL SPREADSHEETS we used (including where we were spending our money and even the notes we added along the way) you can download our free budgeting tool by entering your first name and email. Don’t worry we won’t share your address but we will promise to send you useful stuff like this post.
Hopefully we can save you some time and effort by giving you some of the tools we had spent months creating AND you can see in the numbers where we struggled.
How to meet Dave Ramsey in person
So… if you happen to be in Nashville you can actually just stop by Dave’s Headquarters during the times where he is on air and if you wait long enough you might get to say hi!
But there is another way besides becoming a country music star, a governor, or someone else that Dave might want to have his picture with!
If you purchase that Total Money Makeover book and Actually Start to take control of your career and your finances you can be invited on his radio show out of Nashville.
For Alyssa and I, this was how we decided we were going to celebrate. We fumbled through and made enough mistakes to bring you to either laughter or tears (we are still not sure which) but we decided we wanted to make the trip and go on the show.
Listen for this in episode 34 at Itunes or Stitcher OR Listen on the player near the top of the page.
If you enjoyed this article please share it with a friend who’s finances may be stopping their career AND Leave us a comment below!
Deacon Hayes is a Financial Coach who has definitely “been there and done that”. Deacon and his wife, Kim, paid of $52,000 worth of debt in 18 months! In this episode Scott and Deacon talk about how debt and finances affects your opportunities and career decisions.
[Tweet “”If your finances are not in order..you’ll have #career issues and challenges” @WellKeptWallet”]
Three Career Benefits of Having Your Finances in Order
1. Less Stress
2. Reduces career challenges
3. Increases career options
Key Components to Getting Your Finances in Order
1. Understand your why
i.e. your dreams, dream job, starting a business, travel, give to charity
