book.chapter Boost your career prospects

Your initial job might not offer a substantial salary. However, it's crucial to begin cultivating strong work ethics. Once you've achieved that, strive to ascend to the pinnacle of your profession. Besides a higher salary, improving your skills will also yield more robust career choices, better networking prospects, and opportunities to connect with mentors who can further your career. Your objective is straightforward – do whatever necessary to become the highest earner in your organization. Selecting a fulfilling career is challenging due to the plethora of choices and the difficulty in understanding what a job entails until you've immersed yourself in it. Despite these pressures, aim to find a job you'll love by consulting trusted individuals, seeking alignment with your passions and interests, and pursuing roles that allow you to utilize your talents. With some fortune and possibly a few false starts, you'll hopefully land a job you love and can leverage to kickstart your wealth accumulation journey. The next challenge is to find effective ways to boost your income, transitioning from an entry-level salary to a six-figure income as swiftly as possible. Remember this hierarchy: ordinary employees form the majority, doing as instructed and disconnecting from work once they leave. Extraordinary employees exceed the average worker, proposing cost-saving ideas to their superiors, working longer hours, and putting in extra effort. They receive above-average annual pay increases as their superiors recognize their contributions. Invaluable employees contribute to the company's profit streams, generating and implementing profitable ideas. They typically work in areas like sales, marketing, copywriting, or product development. Some are professionals with specialized knowledge and education. All invaluable employees directly influence the company's primary revenue streams. To advance your career, transition from being an ordinary employee to extraordinary, and ultimately invaluable. As a guideline for negotiating raises, for every $10,000 in additional net profits you generate for your company, you could request a $1,000 salary increase. This means if you aim to increase your income by $25,000, you should be generating ideas that will boost your company's bottom line by $250,000 annually. To transition from an ordinary to an extraordinary employee, develop these work habits: arrive early at work, understand your boss's priorities, apply the 80/20 principle, never refuse your boss's requests, continuously upgrade your knowledge and skills, and regularly communicate your progress in writing. Remember, most employees are just trying to get by, so even a modest attempt to be more productive will make you stand out. As you continue to find new ways to apply your work time more productively, you will move even further ahead. If you're willing to work hard, you will eventually do better than those who are smarter, more qualified, or luckier. This kind of hard work is always focused tightly rather than scattered. Take a few minutes each morning to think about what needs to be done. Select some tasks which will move you in the right direction rather than letting your work time be driven by what ends up in your in-box. Manage your job rather than letting your job manage you by default. Also pause once a week for a few minutes and think about what you need to do in the coming week. You do want to work hard but do so intelligently so you maximize the benefits which will be derived. As you practice these work habits, you will soon be in the top 20-percent of your company’s employees. To increase the chances you will get promoted to a position where you can earn more money because you’re worth more: stand out by having a broad range of business competencies, network with people outside your department, plan for different contingencies, and look for opportunities to work alongside the person who already has the position you want. To make the final leap from being an extraordinary employee to becoming an invaluable employee, learn and master a skill that is financially valued by your company and apply your skill to your company’s profit stream. Invaluable employees get to be that way by making significant contributions to their company’s bottom lines. Day by day as you learn how to do this, you gradually become more and more invaluable to your employer.