Career Opportunity

I found an article on Harvard Business Review from Kabir Sehgal who works in corporate strategy for a Fortune 500 company, was a US Navy Seal and is an award-winning music producer!

Just reading about this guy made me tired. I have no idea how he has the time to do everything he has done in his life and continue to keep learning and growing. I work a full-time job and volunteer in my community, and I feel like a lazy person compared to this guy! As I began to read his article, I started to discover the benefits of why he was so busy.

The title of the article is Why You Should Have (at Least) Two Careers, and I was inspired by what he has to say. You can access the article here.

 

So, Why Should You Have (at Least) Two Careers?

When asked why Kabir had multiple careers he stated “Quite simply, working many jobs makes me happier and leaves me more fulfilled. It also helps me perform better at each job. Here’s how.” He then goes on to talk about how his corporate job was able to help subsidize his record career. A critical part of this paragraph that I think can be life changing is when he talks about how he got started in his career as a record producer and the reason behind wanting to become a producer. He states that “I volunteered so that I could gain experience in this new industry” and the reason he wanted to become a producer was that he had a “passion for jazz and classical music.”

 

The Power of Volunteering

He was passionate about something, and he wanted to learn how to become better at it. What is the best way to learn how to become a professional at something? By learning what professional people do in the field by volunteering for them! This idea makes so much sense! You aren’t getting paid in money, but experience, which is even more valuable if you have little to no expertise in the industry you are passionate about. If you are looking to start a new career or go into a field you are interested in; volunteering is the best way to accomplish that goal. People normally are willing to accept free help and getting hands on experience is incredibly valuable.

 

Benefits of Social Circles

Kabir then talks about how he met people in different social work circles and how he was able to use these circles to his advantage in his corporate job. But not only to his advantage but his clients and friends as well! The more you learn about different jobs in different fields, the more people you meet, which increases the number of life changing opportunities that could arise. Which is why your primary motive shouldn’t be money.

 

Discover Innovative Opportunities

The last point that Kabir makes in this article is how working in multiple different careers helped him Discover Real Innovations. He states that “When you work different jobs, you can identify where ideas interact – and more significantly, where they should interact.” Just food for thought ?

I don’t want to break down the whole article for you because I believe that you would get a lot of benefit from reading it for yourself. I think it is essential to have more than one professional skill. You never know what is going to happen in the future with the development of new technologies and how quickly our world is changing. But if you know how to work at a professional level in different industries, you should always have a secure future.

How to Select a Different Industry

A lot of people reading this are probably thinking that they don’t have time to learn another trade-craft or they have no idea where to start looking. Well, I have some tips to help with that. When you are looking for a new career in a different industry, I would look at what you are passionate about. What drives you to get out of bed every day? What job would be your dream job? Then create a goal to learn more about it and become a professional in that field. Do what Kabir did and volunteer! Learn more about the industry and discover how to become successful!

If you choose something you love to do, then the extra work won’t seem like extra work…it will seem more like you are doing a hobby or exploring a new interest. A big hint that Kabir gave was that he was PASSIONATE about music. If you find your passion and work towards it, then you too will be a working professional in different industries, and you will have a lot of doors open for you. Who knows, maybe your passion will become your new full-time job!

Additional resources if you can’t find a way to volunteer are to sign up for classes! Classes are a cheaper alternative to college and are more specialized. You can also sign up to watch webinars, find Facebook groups, and try to be a more active member of the community that you’re passionate about. You can also read books from professionals in that industry to learn what they did to become successful in your passion.

So what are you passionate about?

Let us know in the comments!

I found an incredible article about careers that I think will help a lot of people.

It ties into some important life lessons my parents had taught me, and I wanted to share my experiences with you because it ties into the article really well.

Have you ever wondered if you are making the right choices in your career? Thinking about my future career was always something I never really was concerned about for most of my life.

My parents taught me that if you work hard, you get to play hard and you will be successful. They defined success as being able to hold a job and earn a steady income. But that was the extent of what I was taught. My parents didn’t go to college, and I grew up in a very tiny town where going to college wasn’t important to a lot of people. What was important to them was spending time with their families and making enough to support their families. But my parents wanted me to be different. To have a better life than them and pursue college if it was what I wanted.

I decided to go to college, and I was opened up to a whole world I didn’t know existed. This world had the same values that my parents had taught me, but I was introduced to other values that I never even thought about. A lot of what made the values possible was the rise of the current digital age we live in. My parents didn’t grow up with the technologies we have today. Careers that people have today were unheard of back then.

As I worked different jobs and worked to start my career after graduating college, I saw that what my parents said had been paying off. The hard work and long hours was producing the results I wanted! But I noticed that the 6o-70 hours a week over 4 years was burning me out. I was stressed, tired, angry, and upset. I realized that it was not healthy to feel that way. I wasn’t living a healthy lifestyle, and I could see how it was affecting my mental health.

So I did what any normal person would do, and I consulted my parents. They told me that work could be that way sometimes and that you need to work through it. That what was important was that I had a job and was able to support myself. But if I was burning myself out and my mental health was at risk, then I needed to consider making some life changes. I needed to figure out what was causing these problems for me and try to eliminate those problems to help simplify my life. The following are 3 things that my parents taught me about career life lessons that I think provide a lot of value:

1. Nobody On Their Deathbed Wishes They Worked More

At first, this was a difficult idea for me to understand because I come from a culture of the working class people and work was an essential function of life. A lot of people love to work, and I didn’t see why someone would regret trying to become more successful or make more money.

At certain times in our lives, I saw how poor my family was compared to other families and kids in school. From a young age I have always been concerned about money and if we had enough. I remember asking my mom if she was sure that it was okay if we went to the movies or out to eat on the weekends. I always valued money because I felt like it was something that we never had. Now I am not saying this because I want anyone to feel bad for me because you should’t. I was lucky enough to never have to go without anything. I just wanted to explain why I felt the way I feel about money and why it was some important to me. But very wise mother explained to me that there are more important things in life than money. More important things than material objects that won’t last as long as the people in your life. Your best friends, your family, and the memories you create with them are far more important than any amount of money. It’s something that you can’t even put a dollar value on in the long run because those things makes us truly happy. If you don’t do enough of what makes you happy in your lifetime, you will regret it in the end.

2. The Need To Disconnect

Our family didn’t have money to travel, so we spent the majority of our weekends in the mountains camping. We would go hunting, four-wheeling, fort building, and shooting. When I was little, it was the best thing in the world, and I didn’t understand how important it was to be in nature, and to disconnect from our connected world.

My mom reminded me that we are more connected today than we ever have been. With emails, phone calls, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and event reminders I realized that the amount I was trying to keep track of was making life seem more complicated than it needed to be. And the best way to get away from all the stress and connection is to go to a place where there is no connection. A peaceful, quite place called nature. She explained to me that the reasons we spent so much time in the mountains was because it was how my parents disconnected from their work lives. Without the ability to be outside my family may have gone crazy. I don’t think people utilize nature enough, but it is an incredibly powerful tool.

3. Simplify Your Life

A common theme that I have talked about throughout this article is the idea of simple. My dad pointed out to me that life is way more simple than it seems. We complicate our own lives and bring in a bunch of extra stress and complications that we really don’t need.

We have a lot of nice apps that serve great purposes in life like Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, but you don’t NEED them. What is important is discovering what is really making you happy and doing those things. Focus on those hobbies that make you happy and differentiate you from everybody else. Don’t let outside influences determine what you like and what makes you happy. You get to choose your life and what you love can only be decided by you. Figure out what they are and spend a lot of time doing them. And the things that you thought were important, won’t seem so important anymore.

I was incredibly fortunate to grow up where I did because the idea of a simple life is something that I learned from the culture I grew up in. I was lucky enough to get the education I wanted but to also understand the importance of living in the now and experiencing life now because we may not be here tomorrow.

The following article talks a bit about this, and it comes from Bernard Marr who is an influencer on Linkedin, and he is a pretty incredible guy. It’s about “10 Important Career Lessons Most People Learn Too Late.” I believe that this article he wrote will truly help you change your ideas about your career and help you in finding happiness within your career.

Let me know what you think in the comments! Thanks for reading.

 

Hey Everyone!

Today I am here to review this article that is trending on Facebook with 1.2M Engagements, Linkedin 141.3K Shares, and Twitter 4.5K Shares!

The article is 7 Reasons the Best Employees Quit, Even When They Like Their Job!

By Lolly Daskal President and CEO, Lead From Within

It doesn’t matter if you are a boss at work or an employee working for someone; all this information is valuable!

The article starts by talking about how terrible it is to lose a great employee. How there are more than just financial expenses associated with losing a great employee and how your team suffers trying to replace that employee. I love how this article starts because it already hints at the idea that losing a great employee can give the company more problems than just financial.

Some other problems that arise when you lose a great employee are that production slows down for training, the staff may miss the person and question why they left, the cost of re-training; the list goes on and on. Losing a great employee is not easy on a company.

That concludes the introduction of the blog so lets move on to the 7 reasons why the best employees quit!

*All images are screenshots from the original blog

Review of 1. Stagnation

I LOVE what Lolly say’s here. Absolutely incredible. In my personal career I have seen stagnation happen and employees that experience what she says in the very last sentence “they’re far more likely to be bored, unhappy, and resentful—things that affect performance and the entire team’s moral” and these employees didn’t want to stick around. When people become resentful towards the company, work performance decreases and it can cost the company more in the long run if they lose a great employee. When you add the performance drop over time with the cost of replace that employee, the overall cost is actually much higher. Seems like a high price to pay for something as simple as stagnation.

Review of 2. Overwork

In my eyes, this is the perfect paragraph. I feel like a lot of people can relate to how this feels because no one likes to feel like they have been taken advantage of. Normally it’s your best employees that are overloaded the most and when your best employees are not compensated for it because the company doesn’t want to pay them more, the company just created the perfect equation for losing its best employees.

Review of 3. Vague Visions

This. Is. Amazing. Make sure you create goals in your business to help reach those big dreams and visions. Make sure the goals you set are attainable to reach because otherwise you as an employee will become burned out and feel like you have been failing.

Review of 4. Profits Over People

Enough Said. Smart people, who are good employees do research and generally know when they are taken advantage of. When this happens, the smartest employees leave the bad situation. When that good employee leaves, I believe other employees notice and this can strike low morale and under-performance because those employees start to feel undervalued.

I found this cool article about why happy employees are more productive at work! I think it ties into this idea and its interesting! Check it out!

https://www.fastcompany.com/3048751/happy-employees-are-12-more-productive-at-work

Review of 5. Lack of Recognition

Enough said, why continue to produce great work and not be rewarded to continue creating great work. This doesn’t mean money necessarily because like Lolly says, “there are lots of low-cost ways to provide recognition.”

Review of 6. Lack of Trust

I love what she says in this paragraph and especially the last sentence. “The rest, even worse, will stay behind and follow your lead.” This is how companies fail. Dishonesty in management leads to good people leaving and the people who are okay with dishonesty staying. It creates a company culture of people being taken advantage of and no one can work for a company like that.

Review of 7. Excessive Hierarchy

I have experienced this is in my personal career in past jobs. I would also add that it feels like you are being crushed by pressure and can lead to depression. The last paragraph is all you need to hear to better understand how important this is.

“Ultimately, many people who leave their job do so because of the boss, not the work or the organization. Ask yourself what you may be doing to drive your best people away, and start making the changes needed to keep them.”

My analysis of this blog is that it is accurate and that is why it is so popular. People do not like to feel like they are being taken advantage of or actually being taken advantage of. Companies are more successful when they treat employees with honesty, respect, proper compensation, and when they treat employees how they want to be treated. They also save money in the long run and perform more precisely. Just look at companies like Google. If you feel like this is happening to you, talk to your boss about it and try to come to a resolution. If you can’t, then it’s time to leave and find a better job for your personal needs.

Let me know what you think of this in the comments and thanks for taking the time to read! If you want also share this message on Facebook to continue helping people with this message from Lolly Daskal!

People may need to hear this.

Thanks for reading guys!

I often hear people say how unhappy they are in their current job and that they wish they knew what they could do to find a job they love.

My advice is simple, here are three key ways you can distinguish for yourself a career choice you would love whole heartedly.

1. Choose Happiness. 
No matter where you are or what you are doing, decide to be happy. In all jobs, there will be times when something might happen, and at the moment you are left frustrated, angry or upset with the situation. In my experience, there have been numerous times, which I blamed the job, or the career that I was in for my feelings of discontent.  I have come to realize, over many years of being in the same career, which I do love, that there will be times I hate the job, and that is life, happening, at the moment, and that it is not going to be rainbows and butterflies all of the time.

2. Choose Your Passion.
If you want to do what you love, choose a job that allows you to express your passion for life. What is something you love to do and would love doing every day? Wayne Dyer has an excellent quote, “Do what you love and you will never work a day in your life.” We often think that we cannot make money doing what we love. Realize, this is lack thinking. Reframe that statement and pose it as this question “How can I earn an income doing what I love?” Today the world is riddled with people stepping out of their comfort zone and challenging the social norm of a 9-5 job. Moms are building businesses from their personal PC; people are creating online stores, kids are starting businesses and using social media as a tool to generate income. You too can do what you love and make money doing it.

3. Take Action. 
Albert Einstein said, “Nothing happens until something moves.” In life, to get anywhere, you must act. Commit each day to taking actions that will continue to move you forward into the career and job you love. With today’s technology, you have the entire world at your fingertips. If you do not know how to do something, you can type it into Google, and you will have pages of information to comb through and learn. It takes one action, typing in a question, keyword or phrase and resources are immediately available to you.

Choice, Passion and Action, three key ways you can love your job and have happiness and fulfillment in your daily life.