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
In this week’s episode Scott and Mark finish off the series about determining what you want in your career and life. The culmination of everything that they’ve discussed is making a decision!
“If you’re not going to make a decision.. don’t even start!”
Mark wrote down 5 things that he would have “when his life was ideal” as he was told to do when he read The Passion Test. One of the things he wrote was that he would “collaborate with industry leaders…” and that was just fulfilled recently for Mark!
You just need to decide to take the next step…don’t worry about 30 steps from now!
We are multi-passioned people…you don’t have just one passion!
It’s NOT ok to rule out opportunities because you don’t think it’s possible
In this episode we assume that you’ve spent the time and done the work to determine what you want in life. If you haven’t, go back and listen to those podcasts and figure out what you want!
If you missed the #ShamrockShakeup webinar that Mark mentions in the podcast,
Sometimes the opportunities you think will fit with your wants don’t actually fit.
Matching your wants with your opportunities is alot like the matching toy that kids play with…
Matching these opportunities and wants takes time and work…you’ll have to do some work and some research.
Moving towards work that you love is often a multiple step process.
Sometimes it’s a process of relieving some of the contraints of a job in order to be able to take the next step forward…i.e. get out of a job that requires a lot of hours so you can move forward in your career.
Your career journey is like playing a slot machine……but a really big one…
As you start to line up opportunities, don’t rule anything out!!
Go back and listen to the other episodes listed above for ideas or sign up for the free two week email course… to work through this process of determining what you really want.
Question: What opportunities have you found that match with your wants?
This post is Day 5 of the Figure It Out – 8 Day Email Course. If you haven’t already signed up to get access to all the days, you can do that here. If you’re already signed up and loving this free resource, share it with someone else who needs it.
How different was what you described from what your reality is today?
My guess is that it wasn’t that far off.
Our minds are amazing. We can do absolutely unbelievable things with our brains! One thing we can do is we can very effectively filter and sort information. This is a huge benefit to us, but can also cause alot of problems.
When you start thinking about what you want, typically what goes on in your head is your brain auto filters out possibilities before you even really consider them. Your brain says to you “that’s not realistic so don’t consider it” or “that seems unreasonable, don’t put that down”
There are lots of reasons this occurs. I’ll bet we could even find scientific reasons that it happens. The bottom line is, it does. You are capable of so much more than you let yourself believe, because the really great ideas, the really great careers and the really great life is filtered out as “unrealistic” or “unachievable” almost as quickly as they come in!
To get where you really want to go, you will need to practice pushing beyond these self limitations and self imposed barriers.
So here’s today’s Action Step:
List JUST 3 THINGS that you want to do, that seem wildly unrealistic.
Let’s define “wildly unrealistic”: Things that you have no idea how you’ll accomplish them and you know the folks at your job would laugh at if they knew you wanted to do.
That’s it, that’s your action set for today. Only 3…and make sure that they are occupations, jobs, or even gigs that you want to do that seem out of reach. Put them down on paper or write them in the comments here.
Don’t filter, Don’t qualify, Don’t censor…. just put your 3 things down.
Here are some ideas to get you going:
What you wanted to do as a kid (and are still a little fascinated with)
Something you read about in an article, blog post, magazine or someplace else where you thought to yourself “how great would that be”
What is that one thing you like doing for a hobby that you have previously thought “I could never earn any money doing this”
You have recently seen something glamorous and had judgemental thoughts about that person and their occupation, but when you thought more you realized there was just a tinge of “I wish I could do that”
Something you have always had curiosity about
Remember, everything you write down will seem unrealistic until you actually do it…write it down anyways!
Want to get wildly uncomfortable, list one (or all 3) of the things you want to to. Don’t worry we won’t judge (well… we do judge that those willing to get out of their comfort zone are also those who will likely experience success)
This post is Day 4 of the Figure It Out – 8 Day Email Course. If you haven’t already signed up to get access to all the days, you can do that here. If you’re already signed up and loving this free resource, share it with someone else who needs it.
What do you want…in all aspects of your life?
In the last lesson we asked you to determine what you wanted. In this lesson we’re asking you to expand this question to all aspects of your life.
Strictly speaking, this lesson has nothing to do with your career…but it does!
Remember Scott’s story from the email? Read it again:
“My wife and I were almost completely out of $138,500 worth of debt which took us nearly 3.5 years to pay off. I had just negotiated a massive increase in pay at my job, Alyssa and I had just run several half marathons and I had gone from almost 230 pounds to nearly 180.
It hit me then that I had wanted to do those things for a long time before I started doing them but my career choices made it more difficult for me to do so, likewise, my bad life choices, not really having a plan and being clueless about what I wanted had caused me to gain a bunch of weight, surround myself with expensive cars and toys (and pay for them with borrowed money) and to have my self confidence suffer the whole time.
I realized in that moment running the 3 mile loop near my house, that the first step was defining EXACTLY what we wanted in each of these areas of our life!”
What was the common cause of all of the problems he faced?
Right! His career!
You can’t completely separate the different areas of your life. They are interconnected. So if your job affects your personal life — your family, your health, your pocketbook, how do you change your life?
Take a whole-person approach to your career.
Our HTYC Profile addresses the 5 areas of your life: Environment, Financial, Family/Social, Personal Development/Growth, Physical Fitness/Health.
Now let’s walk through each of the 5 areas and address them with regards to what you want.
Note: This exercise is vital. Be honest. Be thorough. You’ll be glad you were!
Environment: What kind of environment do you thrive in? Where do you want to live? What type of neighborhood is important to you? Where is your ideal area to live in?
Financial: What kind of income do you need to support yourself and your family? What financial goals do you have for your future?
Family/Social: Is family important to you? How many vacations do you want to take with your family? Do you want flexibility to attend school plays? Assemblies? Field trips?
Personal Development/Growth: What do you want to focus on personally? What areas do you want to learn and grow in? How will you do so? Books? Events? Courses? Coaching?
Physical Fitness/Health: What type of fitness program do you want to have? What kind of exercise do you want to do? What do you want to look like? How much energy do you want to have?
As you ask yourself these questions, try to write down–as specifically as possible–what you want your life to be like in each of these 5 areas.
Don’t worry if you aren’t sure how they connect to your career, we’ll tie it all together as we go.
Action Steps
Complete the HTYC Profile
Leave a comment below describing one thing you want in your life in one of these 5 areas.
For more information about how to choose what you want in your life, you can listen to episode 29 of the HTYC podcast
. One of the things he wrote was that he would “collaborate with industry leaders…” and that was just fulfilled recently for Mark!
