November 23, 2016 Seven Things to Think About When It Comes to . . . The Biggest Work-Related Money Mistakes People Make

As we enter the season of spending, socializing with family and friends, and giving thanks and gifts, we often feel a huge drain on our bank accounts. However, personal finances are not the only ways that people develop money problems. This week we are looking at seven of the biggest money problems people face in their professional lives. Avoiding these common pitfalls can actually free extra cash for you to use this holiday season

1. Failing to negotiate your starting salary or a salary increase when you accept a new position or promotion: The best time to talk about increasing your salary is before you start a new job. However, many people fail to optimize this opportunity to get the extra money they deserve. Even if you’ve been unemployed for a while or are desperate to get any kind of work there are a few things that you should do before you accept the new position. 1. Brush up on your negotiating skills to secure an extra few thousand dollars. 2. Justify the increase by explaining the expenses associated with moving to a new city or increased transportation costs. 3. Explain that the longer hours/travel associated with your new gig will require you to quit your part-time job and/or give up a consulting job. 4. Prepare a great argument by doing your research, including checking out the Living on Purpose Project archives for our August 6, 2016 post on how to ask for a raise or promotion!

2. Not understanding that the only way you will ever be paid what you deserve/are worth is by working for yourself: Stop giving 110% and expecting to be paid what you’re worth. Truth is, people who have great wealth and bank accounts usually work for themselves. You might not be ready, willing or able to launch your own business, however, start exploring ways that you can also work as a paid consultant/freelancer to even out your salary deficit.

3. Trying to keeping up with the Kardashians: Don’t feel pressured to have to keep up with colleagues. Dress, hang out, and eat lunch, where you can afford to do so. Even in your professional life, find ways to live within your means such as buying a suit or dress from a high-end consignment store, bringing lunch at least three times week, and doing what you can to pay down your student loans.

4. Giving the milk away for free: Although this saying often applies to something else, it also relates to your work life. If you’re a consultant who has been asked to develop a proposal – only give a high level overview. When I first started working as a consultant, I developed a 10-page proposal that virtually gave the prospective client both the strategy and the detailed tactics to execute the project.) When I followed up a week later, I was told that, “I’m going to go in another direction and would no longer need my services.” Instantly I realized that I had given away the milk for free, and that he had never planned on hiring me. If someone asks for a comprehensive proposal or plan, charge them for it.

5. Not putting everything in writing: Whether you are working for or with a family member, or involved in a six figure venture or pro-bono project, outline your working arrangement in writing. I have seen many people of all ages and stages of their career not sign contracts or agreements, “because they were family or a close friend and I trusted them.” You can trust people but what you should trust even more is a contract or piece of paper that spells out how and when you’ll be compensated. Download a general contract from the Internet and make sure that you include major contingencies such as the client canceling the job or project. For example, I once worked on an event that the client canceled seven weeks into the project. Luckily, I had a clause in my contract that stated the client still had to pay me a certain amount per hour for all of the time I worked up until that point.

6. Lacking a clear focus about money, success, and youth: Defining success by how much money you make is a slippery slope to unhappiness. Sure you should work towards goals, but you need to first remind yourself that youth fades and there will always be someone who has/makes more money than you. Build your financial goals on talent and things that truly matter and have personal meaning. Letting a dollar figure represent your happiness or success is a sure way to fail.

7. Not knowing when to “fold ‘em:” Statistics show that regardless of industry, a majority of new businesses don’t make a profit in the first five years, and almost half go out of business in less than three years. Since almost every small business owner invests personal savings into their business, you may lose more than just your business when your venture fails. If your business is clearly sinking with no way of saving it, don’t let your pride cloud your business judgement. Filing a business bankruptcy can sometimes prevent vendors, subcontractors, and creditors from seizing your current assets.

Money doesn’t make you happy but it sure gives you better choices, and not having money can make you miserable. Be aware of how you approach and manage money not just in your personal life but when it comes to your professional affairs. This week take a look at how you can prevent making these and similar career-related money mistakes.

Career Confidence :“Will the real (fill in the blank) please stand up?”

Some days I feel like a fraud. Don’t you? The shoes I’m supposed to fill are too big even for me. I’m doing my best to be and act like the given or chosen “title” I’m wearing at the moment – parent/child – CEO or currently unemployed – self-employed/working for “the man” – whatever it may be.  It doesn’t matter. At times, I’m hanging on by a thread getting everything done, and I simply feel like I don’t measure up.

Starting this blog is an amazing lesson that is continually unfolding. There have been many days when many things have gone wrong or someone has “passed” on the opportunity to participate. Of course, I’ve asked myself many times, what the heck do I know about writing a blog and book about anything, let alone living life doing what you love and exploring meaning and purpose?  I’ve gone there, and then some.

But at the end of the day, I’m doing this for me. I am confident in myself and my vision, and desire to make a difference in the world (let alone in my life) – in this particular way. That’s it!

I’ve been asked many times, and in many different ways, where does my or anyone’s confidence come from? Truth is, I don’t know. But I do know all things being equal – ability, opportunity and support (in my opinion the three pillars to successfully doing what you love) – the one thing that makes the difference in who swims and who sinks, is confidence.

Confidence is not to be mistaken with arrogance. Arrogant people are insecure and overcompensate, not to mention project how they feel about themselves unto others. Sure, some arrogant and even narcissistic people are very successful.

What I am proposing here is that confident people simply know and are excited about the great things that make you, you. What are the skills (no matter how random) or the talents and abilities you bring to whatever you do in some unique way that creates value?

And, if you don’t know what these things are, you’d better figure them out, and soon – because life and career requires not only knowing it, but also the confidence “to make things happen.”

I know many talented, bright, energetic people who don’t know their professional or personal self-worth. They lack confidence. They are looking to others to give them some 10-point roadmap on how to have a successful career in (fill in the blank). It’s a map that simply doesn’t exist.

Here’s a question for you. If you don’t know what makes you special (i.e., what is your point of differentiation), then how in the heck (not to mention why) is the person you want to work for or with supposed to figure that out for you?

And here’s another. If you can’t point to at least one thing you’re good (and interested in), then how can someone else believe great things about who you are and what you can do for them? That’s where it all comes down to: a mental game that’s rooted in your self-confidence.

We all need to restore and, at times, simply find confidence in ourselves.  Sometimes we fake it to make it, and at other times we hold onto the tiny bit we have and just run. Like all skills – confidence comes easier for some but takes practice for us all to really get it right. And as some food for thought, here are my top three “how-to” ideas.

1. Listen to people who genuinely compliment you, and take it in. I can recite many things my nursery school teacher Ms. Guida said to and about me that made me believe to this day that I can do almost anything I set my mind to, including, “Patrice may be the only two year old I’ve met who could be dropped in the middle of the woods and somehow figure a way out.”

2. Think of the times you thought you would never get through XYZ but somehow did anyway.

This (especially for you analytical types) means you actually have a greater statistical probability of being successful in the future, because you previously succeeded. So what the heck, try it – the odds are in your favor.

3. Find one thing you are really good at it and bring that “thing” to others.

This third and perhaps most important/difficult point is first realizing that your “thing” can be the smallest thing. It could be that you make one darn good cookie or pretzel. Perhaps you’re magnificent at managing egos and music careers. Or like me, maybe you’re simply good at talking (especially on your feet) and have a way of getting others to listen in a way that connects you to them, and them to others.

We all know the stories of the Beyoncé, Benjamin Franklin (my favorite person from history) and Beethoven. For us mere mortals, don’t expect big abilities and talents because they must likely won’t appear in that form. Instead, our “it” will be a series of many “little” things about us or just things that we do very well. I love Josh Quittner’s line: “The things we are good at, are the things we tend to do.” In themselves our “things” are not huge, but some have huge “potential value” for others. You may think one thing, what’s the big deal, how is that one thing going to change anything? Well here’s a newsflash … one thing can change everything.  

Let’s say you find something you’re confident you do really well. I can’t promise that it will lead you to a life and career full of purpose and passion. But I can guarantee you that if do just one thing really, really well – people will ask what else you can do well, too. It’s basic economics and supply and demand. Build great demand for one thing (i.e. your business “cash cow” that supports the largest segment of market share/profit) and then it will be very easy to convince people you can deliver when they need something else that you might “be just perfect for.”

Start today by exploring and ultimately being clear about one thing you do well and can bring to any table with confidence. But do the whole process with confidence as well. Next we’ll figure out ways to find or create opportunities, not to mention that actual “table(s)” for you to bring your confidence to.

I confidently know some days I don’t know what the heck I am doing and figure it out as I go.  But instead of fearing what I don’t know, I claim this fact with as much confidence and exclamation as I can muster.  

Confidence is that turn on the path that leads many of us to the very thing we’re supposed to do or enables us to do the current jobs or careers that aren’t going anywhere with greater sense of purpose.

When you really think about it, it’s not that hard because at its core confidence is simply knowing who you are and who you’re not – and being ok with both. All it means is doing something you’re really good at that makes you feel proud and happy with a sense of accomplishment. Be confident in being yourself because it’s the one thing at which you can never fail.

Professional Acts of Kindness

One of the many lessons I learned about life and careers is, “If you see things before others, be strategic and look for what else they may be missing.” In 1993, I had just left Burson-Marsteller where I did media relations for IBM. I became a junior PR manager, slowly moving up the proverbial corporate ladder at AT&T. Two years later, I was bold and crazy enough to pitch senior PR management to hold its first (and only)

Internet conference for many of its 800 global PR managers. In fact, it seems silly to say this now, but the initial memo may have called it the “Information Superhighway.”

A key part of my pitch was connected to Josh Quittner – this “masters of deception” guy, who according to tech folklore, had “hijacked” the McDonalds.com domain and then made them “an offer they could not refuse” for its release. Or perhaps like the kids game, that was the message that was passed along to me over the “telephone” wire. I loved the principle and story (and Quittner!) and instantly ran with it. I found the WIRED article and threw his hat in the ring as the unique and unconventional keynote speaker we needed.

The best part of the story is the other lesson Josh Quittner taught me about recognizing those who are normally kept behind the scenes. When he agreed to participate, it was Josh who insisted that I be the one to introduce him because it had been my idea to hold the conference and secure Quittner. That act of professional kindness was a defining moment of my career, bringing me out of virtual obscurity into a visibility that helped me secure amazing assignments, including almost a year in Amsterdam.

I emailed Josh in December 2014 after more than 15 years to tell him this story that he may not or even should have remembered. I simply wanted him to know that I have never forgotten him, nor those two lessons!

Truth is, we all have people who’ve taught us volumes through their personal and sometimes quiet wisdom. Often, they have no idea that they ever said or did something that left a lasting impact. Josh Quittner is one many, many people I have encountered who have been that for me.

The Living on Purpose Project is a collective personal thank you to people who are exploring what they love. My conversations with everyday folks, celebrities and accomplished individuals – are not about talking to people who “have it all figured out,” or only for those who want to do some major career 180. It’s just real people sharing what we’ve learned (often the hard way) about life and career.

We can all learn from someone else’s lessons learned, “hard but necessary” advice once heard, or even failures. When we all share not just what we do, but rather why we do what we do, and how we came to do it, it is then that everyone can make better choices as we navigate similar paths and travel universal experiences. These choices are what will enable us to seek and maybe even find our purpose.

The Living on Purpose Project is part of my path to purpose.

What’s yours?