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You can’t make money in that — unless you’re in the 15.8%

11/24/2015

 
I’ve got a good friend who was put on this earth to do marriage and family therapy (among other things).

He’s super naturally gifted in counseling and would add tremendous value in the industry.
Except that he’s in construction.

Why? Lots of reasons. But one of them is that people close to him — and not so close — have said, “You can’t make money in that.”

Now it may be a reality that most people don’t make a lot of money in that. But not all. in fact, 2.2% — and maybe even the top 13.6% + 2.1% + .1% — are making great money in that. Exceptional money.

But it’s likely true that the rest aren’t, because career operates on a bell curve, like most anything else in life.
  • The bottom 15.8% make bad money. Like, terrible.
  • The middle 68.2% make good money, equal to their skill set — “good.”
  • The top 15.8%? Exceptional money.
So, if the majority of the industry you’re interested in doesn’t make good money, should that stop you?

Well, since when do you pursue your passion to become part of the ~75% that doesn’t make money?

The short answer is generally “no.” That shouldn’t stop you. The x factor is time — how long until you become one of the top earners in that industry. I can’t answer that for your specific situation, but I can tell you that those who are at the top all have at least one thing in common — they love the work and are good at it. They get clear about their strengths and contribute them as often as possible to add value to the world around them.

There are probably lots of other things that set them apart, but the truth is that people who love what they do rise to the top and get paid. And people who love what they do are people who choose something they love and do what they do best to add value to it.

Plain and simple.

So don’t let, “You can’t make money in that!” hold you back. Someone’s making money in that. Really good money.
​
Might as well be you.

The goal is to bring yourself to your work.

11/10/2015

 
Jobs weren’t created for you. They were created for nameless, faceless, “here’s-what-we-would-like-if-we-could-engineer-someone-for-this-job” cogs.

In other words, when a search committee develops a job, they don’t develop it with you in mind.

You have to make it your own.

A number of years ago I took my dream job at Rice University as an associate director of leadership development. The culture was a fit, the manager was solid, and the work seemed interesting. It also seemed to align with my Profile of Self.

Then reality hit.

I was doing a lot more work outside of my strengths than with my strengths.

After those first six months, I wasn’t sure I was going to make it. For the first time in years, I felt that same haunting feeling of incongruence.

Years earlier, I would have abandoned ship. But I applied what I knew about career and fit the job to me, not the other way around.

How did I do it?

I started by honing in on what I knew about when I thrived, based on my Profile of Self:
  • I help individuals synthesize information that is important to their development.
In casual conversations with students I would help them get clear about their strengths and synthesize what they do well. As they benefited, they shared what I was doing with other students and, soon, I had a slow trickle of students visiting my office to seek clarity about their strengths. Instantly my energy went up.

Then I inserted another strength into what I did:
  • I facilitate and teach something I care about for an audience that wants to listen and that benefits their life.
I contributed sessions to a two-day training for undergraduate leaders and they were a hit. Students loved them and my boss got to see me in my element. Shortly after, we had a conversation where she asked what we needed to re-arrange so that I could do more of that.

Throughout this process, I added this strength to my routine:
  • I research information about a topic that is interesting to me and that I can use to benefit others.
I would bring articles to my check-ins, share them with my manager via email, and spend a portion of each day boosting my own knowledge which yielded massive energy.

Then, I layered on this strength:
  • I can use my competitive edge and talents to take something that is good and make it better than it was before I got to it.
I did an analysis of current programs and began to make recommendations to my manager about things we could do to tweak and improve them. Because of the first three strengths, my credibility had gone up and she bought into the solutions I proposed.

I could keep going, but you get the point. During the first six months, I felt drained. Throughout the next six, I came alive. By the time I left Rice, the job was tailor-fit to me and my skill set and my energy and satisfaction was high.

Don’t be a slave to the job description you were hired for. Get clear about what you do best and do it!

The goal isn’t to do your job, it’s to bring yourself to your job. Your employer may have hired you to do a job, but they will keep you on board and reward you for bringing yourself to your work.

Oh, and your happiness and satisfaction will skyrocket, as well as your opportunities to do more of what you love.
​
NOTE: If you aren’t doing the easy things exceptionally well, you won’t have the credibility to add additional value. No value-add can make up for dropping the ball on the small stuff.

Why won’t people change?

11/3/2015

 
I just got off the phone with a college student who interviewed me for an assignment. He started by asking if I had any general advice.

Poor guy.

Little did he know that I give advice for a living and I went on a 10-minute diatribe about the complexities of career.

At the end of the call, he asked me a great question:

“What do you dislike most about your job?”

Easy.

I can’t take it when people won’t change. When they won’t do something different even when they know they should.

He followed up with an equally profound question:

“Why won’t people change? And what makes those who do change, change?”

When people change, it’s because they’ve bought into a brighter future than what they currently have that makes it all worth it.

When they won’t? It’s often because the future I’ve sold them or they’ve envisioned isn’t bright enough to outweigh the darkness of the fear that holds them back. The enemy of change 100% of the time is fear: fear of failure, of loss, of uncertainty, of judgment, and so on.

When the darkness is darker than the brightness is bright, the trade-off simply isn’t worth it to them.

If you’re stuck and feel fear about a move you know you should make, try dialing up the brightness on your vision of the future.
​
People with bright visions don’t need any pushing — their future pulls them along.

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    Hi! I'm Dustin.

    I post here once a week on Tuesdays, every week, at 4:59am. You can also sign up below to have these posts magically air-dropped straight to your inbox.

    I help people figure out what they do best and do more of it. I'm a full-time leadership trainer and coach who writes about how to dominate your career and win in life. I help people RESET their careers to do more of what they love. Sometimes that means a total career-path reset, other times it's simply finding ways to do more of what they love in their current career.

    Read more HERE.


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