I had a meeting with potential new client recently, we shall call him ‘Steven’
Steven: how much are sessions?
Me: £100 single session, discounts for multiple sessions paid upfront
Steven: Really?! For an hour?! That’s a lot.
Me: How much do you spend at the weekend on average?
Steven: Depends. Anywhere between £50-150, maybe £200 sometimes but that’s for a whole weekend, not an hour.
Me: On average £100? £400-450 a month? Tell me; are you happy with your social life?
Steven: Yeah it’s great.
Me: On a scale of 1 to 10?
Steven: I’d say 8. Like a girlfriend but you can’t have everything.
Me: And your career? Scale of 1 to 10 again?
Steven: 3. At most. On a bad day less or a good day a bit more but never more than 5.
Me: So you invest about £400 a month every month in your social life and it’s great. An 8 out of 10. But you don’t want to invest a couple of hundred a month for a few months in your career … and then wonder why it’s a 3? You don’t think there is a connection?
Steven: Ok I’d never thought of it in those terms before.
Go figure.
When did you last invest in your career?
In every walk of life you reap what you sow. Want a great social life? Socialise. A lot. Sooner or later people get the (subconscious) message you are ‘open for business’ and you will attract invites and opportunities, meet more people – which attracts more invites. Great, you’ve invested in yourself and created a beneficial feedback loop.
It works the same with careers, we want the good job, with the good salary and the great perks.
Yet too often we don’t do anything to attract that great job assuming (and I was guilty of this for nearly 20 years) that just by turning up and doing our job is enough. It wasn’t back in the day when I was an employee and it’s even truer now. We can argue about the rights and wrongs but in today’s hyper competitive work place we have to go the extra mile AND MAKE SURE THE RIGHT PEOPLE know about it to get on and attract new career opportunities.
Many large organisations offer each employee an annual ‘development fund’ to invest in their personal development. If you are fortunate enough to work for an organisation that does grab it with both hands!
What do all successful people have in common? They never stop learning; they are great back hoovers of knowledge. They are thirsty for knowledge.
Be one of them.
That’s it for today, keep warm!
Ian