Are You in the Wrong Job? (Career Roadmap)

Welcome back friends. We are talking about your career. I have made a bunch of videos on career planning, because I know how difficult it can be. Especially if you are young and just starting out, you think to yourself a lot “Is this the right job?” “Am I in the right career?” It can be very stressful. In this video, I will share with you some tips that will make those worries a lot easier.

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VIDEO SUMMARY

Introduction

How many of you like to take road trips? You hop in the car with a bunch of your buddies and you head off to some amazing location. Imagine you were to start out your trip, but you did not have a map. You would be driving around lost, and you would not know where you were going. You probably would not make it to your destination. A map is essential. The same thing applies to your career. You need a career roadmap.

The Career Roadmap

The typical career experiences five main phases. This is the big picture, and I find this is a simple model you can use as your roadmap.

• Student
• Worker
• Manager
• Entrepreneur
• Investor

Phases of Your Career

• Student. This phase is about learning and acquiring skills. This could be high school, college, a training program. Whatever field you are in, you will have to spend some period focused on gaining the knowledge you need to be productive.
• Worker. Once you have enough knowledge, you can start contributing to the workforce. This is the worker phase. This includes any non-manager position in a business.
• Manager. Eventually you will be promoted to a manager position. In this phase, you focus more on being a leader, and letting your staff perform the work. But you are still an employee yourself and taking direction from business owners.
• Entrepreneur. In this phase, you own the business, and you hire workers and managers. Everybody should become an entrepreneur.
• Investor. This is the final phase, when you stop working all together. Instead, you invest your money in other people’s businesses. This is essentially what happens when people retire and rely on passive income.

This is a general guideline for the typical career. Now you do not have to follow this exactly. You can skip steps. You can do them out of order. But it is helpful to understand the big picture, and have a roadmap of where your career is going.

Three Key Concepts

With this model, we can learn some key concepts that will help you.

• Think long term. Everybody usually focuses on getting a specific job, but your career is 30-40 years. So it is not about just one job. It is a series of jobs, and the journey you take. As soon as you get one job, you are still learning and growing, which prepares you for the next job. When you get the next job, you are still learning and growing again.
• Each phase is important. Most people are so focused on getting to the next phase, they miss the importance of the phase they are currently in. If you look at this model, each phase requires radically different skill sets. To be successful as a worker, you need different skills than a manager or an entrepreneur or an investor. Each phase you learn completely new set of skills that help you in the subsequent phases. My point is that every job you have is important in this model. Even if you are just working in retail in a mall, you should be soaking up every lesson you can. You are surrounded by best business practices, and procedures, and understanding your customer’s needs. And I guarantee you, that if you go on to become a successful CEO of a Fortune 500 company, you will be so thankful for the lessons you learned as a front line worker. So realize that wherever you are at, is important.
• The process happens naturally. This is the most shocking concept. As long as you continually learn and grow, this process happens naturally under two conditions.
  1. You save your money
  2. You make responsible life choices

Let’s look at this. If you are a worker, and you work hard, you will eventually get promoted to manager. As a manager, you start making more money. If you save your money, it will eventually make sense to start putting your money to work in a business. If your business is successful, it will eventually make sense to hire someone else to run your business and live off your investments. This is a natural progression that happens. But if you do not save your money, you will get stuck, and never become an entrepreneur or investor. If you do not make responsible life choices, like using drugs, hanging out with the wrong people, or acting unethically, that can also stop your progression.

Conclusion

If you are stressed out about your career. I would encourage you to think about this roadmap, and remember these three concepts:

• Think long term.
• Each phase is important.
• This process happens naturally.

In general, this career roadmap paints a really wonderful story that I do not think many people appreciate. It shows that where ever you are at is an important moment in a continuous journey of learning and growth. As long as you are learning and growing, you are headed in the right direction.

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Neither Zach De Gregorio or Wolves and Finance Inc. shall be liable for any damages related to information in this video. It is recommended you contact a CPA in your area for business advice.