November 20, 2021 | Business Minded

Defining your Career

Unless you're the beneficiary of a reclusive billionaires' estate, you're likely going to have to work. Your career is therefore an essential part to your success plans for the future. Are you on track to reach those career goals?

Knowing if you are on track to reach your career goals starts first with designing the career, and the life, you want to live. So what is the process to design your career?

The process of designing your career falls into 3 steps:

Set your career Goals
Modelling the success of others
Investment in your skills

The first step to leading a successful career, the first step to success, is to work out what your goal actually is. The importance of this first step cannot be stressed enough. Often times our careers are treated haphazardly, accepting work and jobs based on a select few criteria. Settling into a career because "that's what my parents wanted", or following in their footsteps. Or we chase career progression for the paycheck, and the prestige we think that buys us.

How many times have we answered that "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?" question with where we think that job will lead? How many times have we looked into the future without asking if our path is heading where we actually want to go?

Once we have taken some time to determine where we want to be professionally, we need to evaluate what it will take to get there. Fortunately, every next step that we want to take has already been taken by someone else. At one point in time or another, someone has walked a similar path to the one we're headed down. And this is excellent news. Now we have an example to follow, the skills, the knowledge, and the understanding that our dreams are possible.

The second step to designing your career is best summed up by Les Brown, as he reflects on a lesson his mentor taught him,

"Success leaves clues. Always listen to, and follow people who are doing what you want to do, at the level you want to do it."

Les Brown

Studying those who are standing where you want to stand will provide a clear picture as to what skills you will need to develop. That knowledge is invaluable. Write down those skills. And on the page before you will be a list of skills, a road map to the successful career that you hope to live.

Finally the third step; investment in your skills.

This is by far the most time consuming, expensive, and exhausting step. To learn the skills needed to be successful, we need to continually invest in ourselves. Investment in the audio programs, the mentors, the books, and the courses that develop our skills. These investments are essential to becoming more valuable, more capable of following the road map to our success.

The first two steps have provided you the road map to the career you aspire to. But the blueprints to your career are only valuable if you put in the time and effort required to build the skills necessary. This third and never-ending step of investing in yourself and your abilities will result in you working, and living the life that you desire.

The Roller Coaster of Emotional Investing

What happens when the emotional roller coaster of investing runs out of control? Are you at risk of losing thousands?

Illustrated in a 2018 Forbes article, The Cycle Of Market Emotions: Where Are We Now?, the emotional roller coaster was presented in emoji form. The dangers of falling to any emotional bias when investing is something everyone should be aware of. While we looked at an extreme example in our Three Parts to Growing Your Investments, falling victim to emotional investing can have catastrophic consequences.

The most prevalent form of emotional investing is relying too heavily on the market timing lever. As you can see in the above image, when the market is on the rise (a bull market), investor confidence is high. When this happens, most would logically assume that it is a good time to invest. After all, why not? The 6 o’clock news keeps telling us that the market is hitting new record highs every day. And with all that happiness and wealth being generated, it sure sounds like a good idea to jump on the ride!

But record highs mean that prices are up. You are actually paying a premium to enter the market. While we drive the extra 10 minutes to a store further away to save 10% on shoes, we’re suddenly prepared to pay extra for our investments?

On the other hand, when the markets are crashing (bear markets), our confidence is low. Prices are dropping and the Wall Street media yells and screams day after day that the end of times is near.

Looking at the above rationally, the best time to get in is when stocks are on sale, or at the lowest price point. This of course goes contrary to our emotional preferences, since when the prices are lowest we’re stuck somewhere between the anger, frustration and sorrow of how much we’ve “lost”.

Taking rides on the emotional roller coaster, trailing the ups and downs of the cycle of market emotions is exhausting. While the highs are euphoric, the feeling when the market, and our stomach drops out from beneath us is exhausting. Financial success is therefore not climbing on the emotional roller coaster. Instead, routine, automated investing will help average out the cost of our investments and capitalize on long-term economic growth. All while weathering, and prospering, through economic winters.

Don’t lose your money and your mind. When the roller coaster of emotional investing sends others into a spiral, trust in your automated system to steer you to financial freedom by the end of the ride.

Dissect your Successes

Setting goals puts us on the right road. This we know. Success only ever lies down a path we choose to walk. But once we achieve those initial successes, the journey is far from over. There are two essential elements that must follow each achievement, Celebration, and Dissection.

Taking time to celebrate our successes adds to the reward of achievement, and helps motivate us to continue achieving so that we can continue celebrating. And celebrations are fun. The road to success is often difficult, grueling, exhausting, and sometimes demoralizing. Pausing long enough to smell the roses and raise a glass to our accomplishments helps us to center ourselves for the next challenge.

The other element is dissection. As iconic billionaire investor Warren Buffet has been heard saying, we need to dissect our successes, and failures. The dissection process shines a spotlight on what went right, and what didn’t. This learning helps us understand what we do well, where our skills and abilities are strongest, and what needs to be improved. This dissection of our successes leads us to capitalizing on strengths, outsourcing or improving on weaknesses, and ultimately leads to more success.

But how do we dissect our success? If you have a Success Coach, talking through the challenges and obstacles will help you process your efforts, your accomplishments. Regular check-ins will keep you focused on the important elements, identify strengths and weaknesses, and put together an action plan to perform optimally.

Our Business Minded coaching program has the touch points and insights to help dissect your successes, to set yourself up for even more accomplishments in the future.

Even if you don’t have a Success Coach, you should still be dissecting your successes and failures. At regular intervals, you should pause and reflect, writing down the challenges you are facing, and the progress you’ve made towards your goals. This focused journaling will help you structure your thoughts, letting you objectively look at the challenges you’ve faced and those you are still facing. And why write this down? Even if you never plan on reviewing your notes, the process of writing causes you to slow down. If you’re anything like me, your mind can race ahead at a million miles a minute, and at that pace it’s very hard to pick up on the small details, the small wins and losses you see during every step. The forced slow down with a pen and paper, or even the rhythmic keystrokes, will apply the brakes just enough to see some clarity while you dissect your successes.

Like anything, this process gets better over time. The more you practice, the better you become at learning your own strengths and weaknesses. Armed with these insights about yourself, obstacles become easier to overcome in the best way for you. Those achievements start becoming more frequent, giving you more to dissect, and perhaps most importantly, more to celebrate.

Dissecting your successes and failures helps illuminate your strengths and weaknesses. Spend time with your success coach, or grab a pad of paper and scalpel, or pen in this case, and begin dissecting. As you practice, you sharpen your skills and abilities, bringing more success into your life.

The Three Parts to Growing Your Investments

In a healthy financial strategy, investments are one essential element for achieving financial success. When looking at where and how to invest, there are three essential elements that need to be considered. These are asset allocation, market timing, and time.

Asset allocation is simply how you have invested your funds. Here is where diversification comes into play. A well diversified portfolio enables you to avoid some risk, while taking advantage of economic growth on a large scale. To illustrate, let’s look at the portfolios of two friends, Bill and Katelyn. Bill invests in the S&P 500, as a diversified portfolio that tracks the movement of the 500 largest companies traded in America. Katelyn however has invested her money in a company she is betting on for the future, Tesla.

A chart showing the impact of one asset vs a balanced portfolio.

By allocating your assets in an undiversified portfolio, you can expose yourself to massive risk. In Katelyn’s case, having $10,000 in Tesla on March 1st led her to see an unrealized loss of $ 3,044.88 by May 21st, 2019. This could be devastating to any portfolio, especially if life circumstances required her to sell at the low point. Bill on the other hand saw moderate gains in the same period. His more diversified portfolio wasn’t exposed to massive gains, but also was protected from the huge losses his undiversified friend.

As this rather extreme but not unheard of example illustrates, the volatility of investments makes it very risky to keep all your eggs in one basket. For those without immense knowledge of the market, that risk is usually not worth the potential reward.

The above example also works well when looking at the second element to growing your investments, market timing. Timing the market means buying low, and selling high. Knowing precisely when to buy and sell is impossible for even the most talented stock trader. Taking a look at the S&P 500 again as our benchmark, we can look at the price on the first of every month for the last 9 months.

A graph showing S&P 500 market volatility.

No investor has ever accurately predicted the right time to buy and sell on a consistent basis to be able to beat the market regularly. By looking at the graph above with only 9 data points, we can see that it would be hard to time exactly. If we looked at the daily market prices, the graph is even more sporadic.

The final element to growing your investments is time. In the long run, historically investments have increased in value. This can be seen when looking at the market price of the S&P 500 since its inception. For our example purposes, we are only looking at the last 5 years.

A graph showing S&P 500 market growth over 5 years

Even in the last 5 years, despite economic fluctuations, the price of the S&P 500 has increased 43%, or 8.6% annually.

The three elements that are essential to growing your investments are asset allocation, market timing, and time. Diversification of your investment portfolio helps mitigate risk, while combined with the final element, time, leads to consistent growth. Market timing is risky, as knowing when to buy and sell is impossible. And by staying out of the market thinking you will buy at the lows, and sell at the highs, leaves you missing out on the one main element you can control, and that is time.

Investing part of your monies for the future is the only way to reliably achieve financial freedom, and that is something not worth gambling over. Investing in a diversified portfolio regularly, automatically, will help you stay in the market. This capitalizes on the time element you can control, and takes the gambling out of market timing.

Setbacks vs. Step Backs

At the surface, there is a vast difference in suffering a setback, and taking a step back. Step backs are a conscious realization that your current approach is not yielding the results you want, and that you need to adjust your efforts. Step backs are needed to get perspective on what is truly important, and chasing after it with renewed fervor.

Setbacks on the other hand, setbacks hurt. Setbacks sound like failure, like the challenges you face have knocked you down. And maybe they have. But now that you’ve stumbled, now that you have been knocked back, maybe even flat on your back. When you stand up, and you will stand up. Take a moment, take a look around. Notice where you are?

You’re standing in the very place you would have been if you had simply decided to take a step back. Sure you hit that problem hard. Sure it hurts. But you’re in the same spot as you would have been if you hadn’t charged so hard. So stand up. Look around, refocus on what is truly important to you. Adjust your approach, and keep on chasing that dream.

And remember this lesson, there really is no difference between a setback and a step back.

And you will stand up.

So charge. Charge after what you want. Because if you take the time to decide what is important to you, plan your approach, and charge. If you do that, the pain you could feel is minimal, or you could bust through those challenges that might otherwise have caused you to hesitate. You could knock those obstacles aside with the power of decisive action.

You might charge headlong into a setback. Or you just might charge right on through. You might charge over that obstacle that would have caused a step back. Or not, and you’ll end up in the same spot you were heading for all along. Only faster. Because at the end of the day, there is no difference between a setback and a step back. But you could just arrive where you want to go a whole lot sooner if you don’t fear the setback.

Why you need an Emergency Fund

We often hear about Emergency Funds in personal finance texts. A fund of easily accessible cash put aside for emergencies, if they should arise. Sometimes, especially when savings seem hard to come by, it might sound tempting to invest all our extra reserves to take advantage of economic growth. Certainly these past few years (currently 2019) have seemed an opportune time. But it wasn't always so.

Recently we had the opportunity to speak with some more seasoned life travelers. One story in specific stood out among the rest.

Francis (name changed to protect identity) grew up on the other side of the tracks. Don't leave the house after dark kind of tracks. But after going to college and starting his life, he got out from that circle of viciousness. He had a job, a tidy sum invested in the stock market. Things were on the up and up for Francis and his budding family. But then 2008 hit.

In 2008 the stock market crashed, as the US economy entered the worst recession in recent history. Jobs were lost, housing and stock prices plummeted, for some, it was the end of days. And bad luck has a way of following some people around.

Francis had recently had his second child, a sublime cause for celebration! Except there were complications at birth, and suddenly that exhilaration turned to concern. And a hefty doctors bill.

Not to worry! Francis had investments.

But in 2008 during the stock market crash, his investments were at an all time low. Liquidating at this time was ill-advised. But with mounting doctors bills, necessary. See Francis didn't have an emergency fund. He was enjoying the upward trajectory of the economy, right up until he wasn't enjoying it any more.

An emergency fund would have helped Francis weather the storm, and would have saved him from extraordinary losses as he paid off doctors bills.

Fast forward 10 years, and Francis has recovered economically, but his learning were paid for the hard way. And those lessons? Keep a little stashed away on the side for those sudden curve balls life throws. With a little emergency fund, you can be sure to weather economic storms and not see your fortunes washed away in a tidal wave.

Who are the three people we all need in our lives?

When we set about building our professional networks, there are a few key roles that we need to fill to set ourselves up for optimal success. These three roles are: a mentor, a coach, and a cheerleader.

Finding and engaging with a mentor is one of the more popular professional development elements. These mentors are individuals who have the expertise in one or more areas of focus for our professional lives. They have the knowledge of the mistakes that they have made on their journey, and that wisdom can help us avoid the same mistakes. A smart person will learn from their own mistakes, the most successful persons will learn from others mistakes, so as to avoid those pitfalls. Mentors are relied on for advice, and looked up to as examples of what you hope to achieve.

When dealing with mentors, they are best utilized with smaller, more infrequent interactions at critical times. Most of the mentors that we seek out are busy professionals themselves, and therefore lack the time to help with the day-to-day challenges we face. And their role isn’t to hand hold and do the work for you, a mentor gives solid advice based on their experiences, and lets you take action yourself. Based on these actions, a mentor will also help you pull out the useful lessons learned. Learning from their mistakes, acting upon their advice, and extracting your own lessons learned will help you optimize your relationship with your mentor. And be sure to share all the successes and failures with your mentor! People love hearing of the successes that their advice helped you achieve.

"There are few obstacles capable of standing against human willpower, but when that willpower starts to fade, you need a coach to keep you pushing forward."

The second person you need in your life is a coach. Coaches are more hands-on than mentors, and while you are still the one putting in the effort, your coach will help you stay accountable and focused on the goals. The best coaches will help provide the focus to achieve your goals, working out what obstacles you are facing and helping determine the next steps to overcome those obstacles. By keeping you focused and accountable for both action and results, a coach is an essential component of any successful persons team.

Coaches are also great for telling you the hard truths that other friends and colleagues won’t tell you. A good coach isn’t concerned about hurting your feelings, they want you to succeed, sometimes even in spite of yourself. This doesn’t mean they’re a drill sergeant, but if that’s what it takes, your coaches are the ones to yell, scream, and push you to be better. Your coaches are in your corner, pushing you to surpass any obstacles. There are few obstacles capable of standing against human willpower, but when that willpower starts to fade, you need a coach to keep you pushing forward.

The last person you need in your life is a cheerleader. These are the people that you can talk with, who support you no matter what. They are always in your corner, encouraging you to be the best you can be, but also there to help you up when you stumble. Your cheerleaders are often friends who are genuinely excited for your success.

Of the three people you need in your life, the cheerleader is the hardest to find. Mentors that you have a connection with are excited at the prospect of sharing their knowledge and experiences, especially when they see how it helps you succeed. Coaches are always eager to push their clients to greater successes. Holding you accountable to yourself and your dreams is an exciting prospect for the best coaches, and we’re eager to push you to greater heights. Cheerleaders on the other hand, these are the friends and partners that support you no matter what. Certainly the most valuable, but also the hardest to cultivate because they can’t be bought or sold. Ingratiating yourself into a community with similar interests and aspirations helps you meet like-minded individuals who you can support, and whom will in return support you.

So as you build your team, your professional network, keep in mind these three roles. Who is your mentor? Who do you trust and respect, whose advice will guide you through the tough choices? Who is in your corner, coaching you to greatness? The coach(es) who push you past your limits, the coaches who hold you accountable in your journey for success. And who is your cheerleader supporting you and cheering you on? Who will be there to lend an ear when the times are rough, and to raise a glass when successes are realized?

Your mentors, coaches, and cheerleaders all have one thing in common, we all want you to succeed.

What is the best investment?

There are so many options for investing, the choices can be overwhelming. Stocks? Bonds? Real estate? Foreign currency? Or, weed stocks because we overheard a tip from our local barista? Oh! And don’t forget bitcoin, we could all be rich with bitcoin! Or we could be broke. Depends on the day. So when we invest in our future, which option is best?

The list above has actually left out the best investment you can make. And no it isn’t rare metals, stamps, watches, or baseball cards. The best investment that you can make is, you.

Investing in yourself is the safest investment that you can make. And the ROI on that investment is unbeatable in the marketplace. And the best part? That investment can come in many different ways.

When you consider where you are in your career, does someone in your company make more money than you? Your boss, or their boss? Or for the self-employed, is there anyone doing something similar who is more successful? Investing in your skill set makes you more valuable, which you can use to command higher earnings. And those gains, just like investments, they compound. The better you get, the more valuable you are, and the higher your earnings will go.

The best investment that you can make is, you.

You can also invest in yourself in other ways, that aren’t solely based on career progression. Take fitness for example, the more physically active you are, the lower your risk of costly health issues. These investments cost little more financially than a pair of running shoes, although a personal trainer might be handy for some. But these investments come more in the form of time and mental energy dedicating yourself to a healthier lifestyle. The return on investment (ROI) you will see here comes in the form of cost savings, with lower healthcare bills. And a not insignificant opportunity cost of being productive when you would otherwise be sick.

Any area of our life can be improved with investment, and the returns can be exceptional. Want to eat healthier? Hire a nutritionist, or take a cooking class. Want to be more spiritually in tune? Go on a retreat, or speak to a counselor. No matter what area of your life you want to invest in, there are options and/or coaches for that. Find a coach or teacher that will help you become a better version of you, and enjoy the return on investment for the rest of your life!

You may find yourself asking; if investing in ourselves is the best investment possible, why are these investments overlooked so frequently? The returns on investments in ourselves aren’t track able the same way as investing in stocks or real estate. Those have real purchase prices and selling prices, the difference being our gains or losses. When we invest in ourselves, how much of our gains, or savings from living healthier, can be attributable to our good decisions? How much of our “gains” would we have experienced naturally? The ambiguity of personal development causes many people to fail to invest in themselves as much as they should.

Part of any solid financial plan involves investing in yourself. So whether that’s an extra course, hitting the gym, simply reading more, or hiring a coach - be sure that you invest in your future success by investing in you.

The Staircase to Success

Previously in The Appetite of Success I shared the pathway to becoming an achiever. For the sake of brevity, I omitted two crucial elements, which will be dealt with here. If you haven’t read The Appetite of Success, I would strongly recommend doing that first.

If you recall, we looked at the journey from Newbie to Achiever, following the Motivated Equilibrium line. (Refresher image below:)

The journey, as we discovered, was a series of increasingly challenging goals, causing us to develop our skills further. Each of these becomes a step along the path. But in this case, “step” is a literal translation.

Pick a goal that is more challenging, and build the necessary skills.

The staircase we see is our skills building to surpass each new challenge we set before us. Each step pushes the boundaries of current achievement, the Motivated Equilibrium line, then we continue to grow our skills incrementally before taking the next challenging stair up the staircase. As we take each new step, conquer each new challenge, we gain a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. This feeling of accomplishment helps us look towards the next step, and grants us the perseverance to stick with our craft, building more skills to take us to new heights.

When taking stairs, in life and in our metaphorical sense, too many stairs at one time will leave you stumbling. This is why you cannot simply jump up entire staircases. Nor can you build skill and charge up too many steps at once, as fatigue will set in and cause you to falter.

And faltering brings us to our next crucial element, landings. Not all skills and endeavors are destined to bring us to greatness. Indeed, we need to focus on just a few core staircases that lead us to our highest levels of achievement and success. That means some of our areas of interest we need to either abandon, or at least hold at a level that is acceptable. Let us quickly define acceptable in the instance of this article as: the point where desire equals effort + time. The landing we hold should maintain our desired skills without costing too much effort and time. If it costs more time and effort than we want (desire) to dedicate, then we need to scale back to a landing that is comfortable.

Maintaining your skills requires consistent practice at the same level of challenge.

Landings require some effort to maintain our skill level, but we are no longer devoting extra time and effort to grow our skill base. This means we are holding skills constant without striving for achievement in this area of focus. To tie this back to our guitar playing example, progressing along our motivated equilibrium between challenge and skill, but recognize that we would rather be an exceptional <insert profession here> mother, father, teacher, athlete, entrepreneur, lawyer, developer, salesperson, etc. Our efforts should be focused on that staircase, but since guitar playing is still important, we need to continue to practice to maintain our skills. Instead of playing Through the Fire and the Flames by DragonForce, perhaps we’re comfortable strumming out some Beatles around a summer campfire. This means we still need to practice, but to a lesser extend, freeing up time and energy to continue along the path of who we truly want to be. To thrive, to continue to climb upwards along your chosen staircase that is important to you.