Step 2

Step 2 .... please read below for the prior steps to this process.

Now, the next step is to recognize that achieving your target income is a process. The next question is how do I get from where I am now to where I want to be?

Well, you have established a goal, now you need to identify the path. That path can include education, special projects, volunteer work, and mingling with the right crowd just for starters.

THE BIG SECRET: It is very important to realize that the people around you, who have not established a goal, may not be supportive of your planning. This may not be open arguments, but may take the place of negativity when you talk to them about what you are doing. Please, if you take nothing else away from this, take this: DON'T LISTEN. Nothing about this is rocket science. Nothing about this requires a Genius level IQ. You only need three things to succeed: A Goal, A plan to get there, and enough drive to keep working at it.

That's it. That's the big secret.

The difference between people who achieve their goals and people who don't is the last two things. The drive to get there and a plan for making it happen. If you don't have the drive, well, I doubt I can help you. But I can help you to establish a Plan.

So .... we've talked about the goal, let's talk for a moment about how come up with the plan.

The question you need to ask is what type of job skills do you need to have the type of roles you are interested in. How do we find this out?

Well, the Internet can be your friend, but you can talk to people in that field, read magazines, and look at want ads. Yes, I said want ads. Look at job postings on-line and take notes on the wants and needs that they are asking for. Do they want a degree? Do they want someone who has worked retail, handled money, done financial work?

Write these top level things down. Build a list of the top 10 attributes that these types of positions are looking for. WRITE DOWN THE TOP 10!

Perhaps the TOP 10 for a retail store manager might be: Experience in retail, proven track record of success, experience with profit and loss, experience leading a team, Associate degree required, people skills, and so on ....

What's important is that you translate these things into something you can take action on, but we'll talk more about that later.

We're going to work with the top 10 going forward, so please, take a few days and write these down. These 10 things are going to be a focal point in your life for the next few years, so take the time to get this step down. If you only come up with 5 or 6 right now, well, that's ok at this step of the game.

I'll be out for a couple of weeks, so you'll have time to work on this. Write any questions in the comments section and I'll get to them as I can.

Next we get into the exciting stuff of formulating the plan, so stay tuned.

Mark

copyright 2009 by the author

How to Start

Step one.

Most career planning processes start by asking you your interests. This assumes that if you find something that suits your interests, you will be happy in your work.

The reality is that it is a bit more complicated than that. The first question I ask is always: What type of lifestyle do you want to lead?

If I asked you how much money you would need to be happy most would come back with a big number, like $5 million dollars, for example.

That number lacks context, however. What does $5 Million dollars provide in terms of your monthly salary?

Most people can define what they want out of life in terms of how big a house they want to live in, what kind of car do they want to drive, how many kids do they want to have, and the like. In fact, these may be the only concrete things you can define. Many would think of these things as superficial, but the reality is that they are the only things that we can quantify.

These things all come with a price tag. For example, if you are currently living on a salary of $2500.00 a month and you are not happy with your current lifestyle, then what would it take to make you happy. Not in a whole dollar amount, but in a monthly or weekly salary?

Would $5000.00 be enough?

What would be the monthly mortgage cost of the type of house you would like to live in. If you are married, then make sure your spouse is part of this, including their wishes as well. Now take that mortgage cost number and triple it. This is the minimum monthly salary you'd need to support the lifestyle that type of home would suggest. To be comfortable, I would quadruple the number, but that's just me. I like to eat well.

So .. if your desired monthly mortgage cost was $2000 a month, then you would need a minimum of $6000.00 a month to support it. $6000.00 a month, or $72,000 a year, is your lifestyle cost amount. To do so on less will be a struggle, but it could be done, just say hello to Overtime.

Now we can ask what you are interested in. If you are interested in becoming a medical assistant, for example, and you have no additional sources of income other than your salary, then your career choice and lifestyle cost may very well be out of sync. Most medical assistants are NOT going to make $72,000 a year. Most would be doing well at half of that.

What does this mean? Well, once you have your lifestyle cost amount calculated, you then need to ensure that jobs that you are interested in can provide for your desired lifestyle. If not, you are setting yourself up for disappointment from the beginning. Let me assure you, being unhappy with your job because it can never provide you with the lifestyle you desire is not a good thing.

Of course, you can go back and modify your lifestyle to the types of jobs you are interested in, there is nothing wrong with that logic. However, if you make a conscious choice to live a particular lifestyle because you find a particular job rewarding, then you have removed your frustration in advance by making an informed decision.

There are a number of other steps in this process, however, this one may very well be the most important. If you can not define the lifestyle you want to live and it's associated cost, how can you set any type of achievable goal?

Please. Give this some thought before going on to the next step.

copyright by the author, 2009

Career planning

Introduction

The Alarm buzzes and it's 5 am. Do you jump out of bed, excited to face the day, or do you hit the snooze until the very last moment, dreading the day looming before you. If your answer is the former, count yourself lucky. Most people don't have a job that they like, let alone love. I've even heard about people who get physically and violently ill because they hate their job so much.

I've been there. I worked my way through my first year of college flipping burgers at a popular fast food chain. Believe me, nothing screams career like scraping out a half dozen five gallon pails of grease with a spatula, into a recycling bin at 8 o'clock in the morning. There is no other smell like it in the world. Throw in a hangover and you can only imagine the total career satisfaction you experience.

After that experience, I stumbled accidently into a job working for a small engineering firm, which led to the next job drawing plastic parts for a automotive supplier. I had a career!

But was it what I wanted to do with my life?

That question was one I couldn't answer. How, at the age of 20, could you possibly answer that question. Life is simple at the age of 20 because you haven't had the opportunity to figure out just how freaking complicated life gets all on its own. However, this isn't about my life story, this is about helping someone else avoid the pitfalls that I, and so many other people, fall into when your faced with that immortal question: 'What do I want to be when I grow up?'

Funny how by the age of 30 I still couldn't answer that question. At 35 I needed the answers. I needed them bad. Life was passing me by and I had no idea what my final destination looked like, career wise. So, I began to ask questions of people I respected. I began to read everything I could find on the subject of career planning. I thought long and hard about it for years and played with different tools to help me do what I wanted to do.

Over time, I developed a process that help me get to the answers I sought.

Since then, I've helped a lot of people, friends, co-workers, and people I have had the privilege to lead alike, to figure out how to be excited about getting up in the morning. You can not imagine the rush that I get when someone comes up to me years later and tells me what a difference I made in their life.

So, that is what this blog is going to be about. It's about helping you to find your way in the big bad business world, finding a job that makes you happy, and finding your own answer to 'what I want to be when I grow up'.

I hope you find it useful, if nothing else, it should make you think.

copyright by the author, 2009.