Career Fulfillment is a Crucial Part of the Wheel of Life
Welcome to Day 8 of the Titanium 16-day Challenge. Can you believe it? We’re halfway done with this thing; only 8 more days to go and this challenge is going to be over. But let me tell you, the effects of this challenge, the things that you learn on this challenge, the habits that you create during this challenge are going to be with you for an absolute lifetime.
So today we’re here to talk about your career, because for most of you out there, you’re spending more time in what I call your ‘career zone’ than anything else in your life. You’re probably spending more time working than you are spending with your family. You probably spend more time working than even sleeping in a lot of cases. Well, it depends, I guess. It depends on how many days a week you work and how much you like to sleep. But for many of you, those are the two things you do the most of, by the way.
You’re probably spending more time in your business than you are with your kids if you own your own business and you have children, right?
The thing is this is an area of our lives that affect so many other areas. Why? Because your finances suffer when your career is not where it needs to be. Or if your career is frustrating you every day, it starts to affect your emotional health and your spiritual health. If your career is not going right, my God, it’s sad. But the number one reason for couples to get a divorce is because of finances and typically, that’s as a result of something going on in their career.
There’s so many more things to it. If you’re a parent like me, you want to give to your kids. But the way you give to your kids is you’ve got to kick butt in your career so you can have the financial means to give to your kids in ways other than love. Sometimes you just want to be able to give them things. You want to be able to create things for them, buy things for them, and that takes money. The way you get that is through your career. That’s why today is such an incredible day.
Recapping the First Seven Days of the Titanium 16-Day Challenge
Now let’s recap what we’ve touched on here already. We’ve talked about the fact that you want to grow every single day. In your career, this is a place where you’d better be growing every day. We’ve talked about your intimate relationship, and of course the intimate relationship is such an important part of all of our lives, whether we’re in one or we’re looking to get into one.
The next part we talked about was finances and how we’ve got to get our financial situation in order. But what we talked about is there’s an order of operations, and if you remember, the number one step to getting to those massive financial goals is you’ve got to learn how to use money, meaning you’ve got to cut your expenses.
Cut your expenses, live within your means and below your means, so that you can go out there, invest your money and then you focus on going out and making more money. Then yesterday we talked about spiritual health.
Here we are today, talking about your career. The first thing I can tell you is this: the most important thing I can teach you about your career is if you are not happy in your career today doing what you’re doing, you will not be happy no matter what you do.
Yes, let me repeat that: if you’re not happy in your current career, you won’t be happy in a different career. If you work for someone else and you’re unhappy, you’ll be unhappy if you work for yourself.
If you work for one company and you’re unhappy, you go to work for a different company, you’re still going to be unhappy. If you own a business today and then you close your business, you go work for someone else, you’ll still be unhappy with that job.
The Importance of Finding Fulfillment in Work
The reason for that is because human beings were programmed in this way that makes it that it doesn’t matter as you change the surroundings. Yes, for the short term, you may get this boost by going from one job to another.
But the reality of it is you will always go back to that same way you feel about your career in general, regardless of what you’re doing. Now some of you are going to say, “Arman, that is not true and I’m living proof of it because I used to have a job that I hated and then I got a different job and I loved it.”
Here is what I would tell you: I guarantee you between leaving that other job and going to the new job, you had a massive change and a massive breakthrough.
See, if you don’t change, changing jobs will not have an effect on how you feel about it. I see people going through this all the time, where they complain about what they’re doing. They’re like, “Arman, I sleep in in the mornings because I don’t like what I do. I don’t like the business I’m in. I don’t like my boss.
I don’t like this. I don’t like that,” and they complain. Then they come and get coaching from me and I tell them not to do this, but they do it anyways and they go and they’ll leave their job and they’ll go get a new job. In the first few weeks, oh my goodness, they’re so happy.
“My boss is the best! I love my job! I love this! I love that!” Six weeks, eight weeks, ten weeks – you know, sometimes two days into it, by the way – they’re coming back to me and they’re complaining about the same things. Now they’re starting to oversleep again, right? They’re not going to their meetings, they’re not taking care of their work, they’re not loving what they do.
The reality is that you have to love what you do before you go to find what you love. Listen to that and make sure you take note of this. Love what you do before searching what it is that you love to do.
So don’t go out there and say, “I want to do what I love,” thinking that if you go save puppies for a living, that will make you happy. Now, you may love puppies and you may love saving puppies, but if you don’t like doing what you do today, whatever it is – if you work at Burger King and you’re miserable there, you will be miserable saving puppies. Part of it is you’ve got to understand work is still work.
Some people look at professional athletes or musicians or actors and actresses. They’re like, “Oh my God, if I could only have that person’s life.” Hey, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. It’s still working.
When they’re doing it, it’s work. See, a professional basketball player loved to play basketball his or her entire life. But see, now that he or she plays for the Lakers or whoever the play for, it’s not the same as when they were playing on the playground.
They don’t get to choose when they play and when they don’t play. They have to go to practice. They have to get in an airplane and travel to a city far, far away, go playing on a team that they may not even like their teammates. Or they may play on a team where they don’t even get to play; they’re sitting on the bench. See, we only think of the superstars. How do you think the bench players feel?
Complaining isn’t Going to Get You Anywhere
So the bottom line then is you’ve got to love what you do because if you love what you do today but you want more, hey, now if I give you something better, you’ll love that and you’ll still want more which will help you grow every single day.
But complaining about where you’re at now in your career isn’t going to help you get anywhere. The key is this: whatever career you’re in, whatever job you’re in, learn to fall in love with it. When I say “fall in love with it,” I don’t mean you have to love everything about it.
I mean you have to learn to love the fact that you’re there. If you’re there for eight hours, enjoy those eight hours and be the best that you can possibly be. Once you do that, now you can go look for a new job. Now you can go start your own business. Now you can change businesses and get from one industry into a different one.
The Four Groups of the Career Zone – Achieving Career Satisfaction
But at this point, what I want to do is there are probably four groups of you out there that I can talk to. By the way, when I talk about the Career Zone, I want anyone who’s a stay-at-home parent to understand. For me, a stay-at-home parent, your time with your children is the Career Zone.
I know, because I haven’t been a stay-at-home parent, but I stayed at home with my kids once or twice, and let me tell you, it’s friggin’ work, okay? There’s a difference between – say for example, I do Daddy Day with my kids. On Thursdays, typically I take them out and we have Daddy Day. Well, we go eat, we have ice cream, we play, we have fun. That’s not really taking care of the kids.
See, as a stay-at-home parent, you’re actually responsible for all their stuff, right? Making sure what they’re supposed to do, they get where they’re supposed to get, and all that stuff, so that really is a career. So as a mom or a dad who’s staying home, what you’re really doing is your kids are split up into two.
There’s the time that’s your career, which is when you’re taking care of them, and then there’s the time where they’re your kids and you just have fun with them. Those are two separate things.
But what I do is for most traditional people. I’m going to put you in four different groups.
Group One are the people who have a job; you work for someone else.
Group Two are people who have a job but they want to be in business. They’re like, “Nope, you know what? I want to be in businesses. I’m an entrepreneur. I want to start some sort of an entrepreneurial venture.”
Group Three are those who’ve already made that leap and are in the process of starting a business but they’ve either just recently started it or they sort of started it while they still have a job, or it’s sort of a business in its infancy.
Group Four are those of you who are business owners.
I’m going to talk to all four of you and I’ve got some advice regardless of where you fall in with those four groups. Let me tell you, I’ve been there and I’ve done that. I’ve done all four of those things and I coach hundreds of people in all of those categories, so I can give you some incredible, incredible guidance and advice and some things that are going to stick with you for a lifetime and will help you massively grow in your career.
Group 1 – People Who Have a Job
First, I want to talk to the people who are out there who have a job. If you have a job already, number one, learn to love your job. I know you want another job. Learn to love this job. I know you want to make more money. Learn to love your paycheck now. I know you don’t like your boss.
Learn to love your boss. Figure out all the ways that the current business that you’re in, the current company that you work for, think of all the things that are great about it.
In fact, what you’re going to do today and if you have a job, this is where in a second you’re going to pause this audio and you’re going to jot down all the things you love about your current work situation.
Now, if it’s really, really bad, the list might be “They’re located near me. The walls are purple and I like purple.” I don’t care what that list is. Make a list and I bet you there are way more things that you like about this job than you thought. Think about all the things that you love and jot those things down.
For those of you, for example, you work Monday through Friday and you work long hours and you sit in traffic. Well, guess what? As I’m recording this, I’m doing this on a Saturday. So as a business owner, this is what I do.
Tomorrow, I’m going to be back in here recording, so understand that it’s not as easy as you think sometimes being a business owner. If you have a job, love that job. Go right now and what I want you to do is make a list of all the things you love about your job. Now, if you currently don’t have a job, keep listening. Everyone else, you’re going away. Go now.
Okay, and now you’re back and now we have everybody together again. I want to go back and still talk to the people who have a job. So you just made a list of all the things you love about your job. Now, the next thing I want you to understand is most people, the number one thing they want when they have a job is they want a pay raise. They want to know how to make more money.
Here’s how I’m going to tell you that you need to go about making more money. The most important thing you need to do is this: you have to earn that additional pay by doing more than that company or your boss could ever expect of you.
That means every single day you have to come in and you have to go massively above and beyond the call of duty. See, what most people don’t understand is typical inflation is very low – it’s a couple percent. On the average, most people are going to get about a 3% a year pay raise.
That is not a lot of money, my friends. That means if you start out making $55,000 a year – let’s make the numbers easy — $50,000 a year. That means a year later, the average is you’re going to be making $51,500 a year. That’s not much at all. After two years, you’re going to be a little over $53,000.
After four years, you’re going to be somewhere around $55,000. After five years, you’re going to be somewhere around $57,000. Okay, that is not huge movement. How do you go from making a certain amount of money to making massively more? How do you double your paycheck?
Yes, that’s right. For anybody listening out there, how do you double your paycheck? How do you triple your paycheck? Well, here’s the way you double or triple your pay, my friends. The way you do it is you do more than could ever be asked of you by your boss and by your company.
In fact, I have some people who’ve come to me for help and guidance and the people who are in an hourly job where they’re not allowed to work more than 40 hours a week. You know what I tell them to do? I say, “Clock out and keep working. Come in on the weekends. Don’t clock in and work.” Then some people will tell me, “Well Arman, at my company, they don’t allow us to do that. They force us to leave because they’re worried about labor disputes and things like that.”
I say, “Great. Are they going to know if you go to a coffee shop and you work? Leave work, clock out, and go to a coffee shop and sit there and work for four more hours. On Saturday and Sunday, spend seven hours a day working offsite.” Now it’s even better because now they think you’re getting all these results working 40 hours, whereas you’re cheating and you’re working like 80 hours.
See, my friends, that’s what it takes. If you want to double your pay, you’re going to have to get out there and take massive, massive action. By the way, some of the business owners out there who are listening to this, they’re listening to this going, “Oh my goodness, Arman. Can we have a thing where all the people who actually follow through with this, can we make a list of them so I can hire them?”
The thing is they would love to hire you and the business owners listening, if they have an employee who loves his or her job so much and is so committed to growth that they are going way above and beyond what anything is that we could ever ask of them, those are the people who are getting the big raises, and we as business owners love those people.
Some people listening to this challenge may even be one of my employees. I’m telling you now, do what I just told you and you’re going to double your pay. There’s no question about it. You just have to go way above and beyond the call of duty doing way more than could ever be expected of you. The key is it’s way more than it could ever be expected of you. Just doing what you’re asked is just doing what’s expected of you, but going above and beyond is what gets that job done.
Group 2 – People Who Want to be in Business
Now, I want to move on and talk to those of you who want to be in business. If you are currently working for someone else and you want to be an entrepreneur, my best advice to you is this: think twice about it. Think three times, think four times, think five times – think ten times about it.
Entrepreneurship is not all it’s cracked up to be. Don’t become an entrepreneur just because someone told you that it’s better. Don’t become an entrepreneur because somehow you think it’s going to be easier. Don’t do it because you think it’s going to give you freedom. Don’t do it because you think it’s going to make you more money.
In fact, I can tell you – and the business owners listening to this podcast can guarantee you this, because they lived it for the most part. When you start a business, often you make less money than you did as an employee. You work way more and way harder than you ever did as an employee and you have absolutely no freedom.
A business typically takes all that stuff away from you. Now, it doesn’t mean you can’t get it back at some point. But for the most part, you’re going to make less money, work harder, and have almost no freedom. So don’t go into a business because that’s what you want. What I call entrepreneurship is this: I call it a disease.
As a guy who went to medical school, I talk about this stuff, right? Entrepreneurship is a disease; think of it as a virus. Think of it as a bug. If you’ve got the virus, if you’ve got the bug, well then you know what? You have no choice but to live with it, and if that’s the case, then go become an entrepreneur. That’s my best advice for that second group and those are the people who want to be in business.
Group 3 – New Business Owners
Group Three are those who are at the beginning of starting a business. They could be people who are just about to start, people who just registered a business, or those of you who are in the infancy of your business. Let me tell you this, the number one biggest mistake that new entrepreneurs make that causes their business to crumble and fall apart is that they put most of their time, their effort, and their money into the things that make them think they’re doing business, as opposed to the things that actually grow their business.
The best example of this is many people who start a business, they go out and what do they do? They get business cards, they get letterhead, they get envelopes with their address on it, they buy a desk, they buy a computer, they buy all this fancy stuff. Let me tell you, do not print business cards if you just started a business.
What do you need business cards for? The best business card is asking someone for their phone number and then text messaging them your information. That is the best business card in the world and it forces you to have true communications with people, not just handing over a business card. In fact, I don’t carry business cards just for that reason, because it forces me to connect with people at a different level.
You can’t just go around and give business cards away. Don’t waste your money on business cards early on. Don’t waste your money on letterhead. Don’t waste your money buying a new computer and a new desk and setting up this pretty office.
Listen, if you’re serious about your business, whatever business that is, that’s what you need to be focusing on. Save your money, keep every single penny that you can, because you’re going to need it to grow your business and focus on what your business needs from you. In 90% of your cases, what your business needs from you at that early stage is sales.
There are very few exceptions where you could actually – there’s another part that the business needs from you – but in almost every single part, what the business needs from you is sales. You’ve got to go out there and sell, sell, sell, so that you can actually start this business or grow this business. Don’t do this stuff that gets in the way, the fancy stuff that makes you feel good but doesn’t give you anything at the end.
Group 4 – Established Business Owners
Number Four, I want to talk to my people out there who are the business owners, the CEOs, the entrepreneurs, the people who are like me who are doing what I have been doing for the last quarter-century of my life. You know who you are out there and let me tell you, you signed up for this stuff, so stop friggin’ complaining. It’s true! As a business owner, I know how hard you have it. I know how tough it is. I know you deal with lawsuits. I know you deal with people stealing from you. I know you deal with getting stabbed in the back. I know you deal with people being unappreciative of you –customers, vendors, employees. I know you work harder than you’ve ever worked before in your life and often you’re not even getting the financial rewards you used to get.
But what I want you to know is this: you signed up for this because you have a disease, my friend. You’ve got this virus that makes you love business, and if you’ve got this business disease/virus/whatever you want to call it, then you know what? Let’s get out there and work as hard as we possibly can and as smart as we can to make this business bigger and better, more powerful, more profitable, so that you can enjoy this thing. You signed up for it and now is the time for you to step into action.
Now, when it comes to business, I’ve got so many podcast episodes, I’ve written a book about this called The Business Bible, there’s so much I can share with you. But today as part of this challenge for my business owners, what I want you to understand is you’ve just got to step up and do the things in your business – and listen to this carefully – you’ve got to do the things in your business that you don’t want to do.
Right now, if you are a business owner, I want you to pause this audio and I want you to write down three things you know you should be doing in your business but you don’t do on a regular basis. I want you to commit today to doing those on a regular basis. I want you to pause the audio recording and write those things down right now. Go do it now.
Okay, now we’ve got our business people back with us. Let me tell you, if one of those things, if you’re like 90% of the people I coach – maybe 95%, maybe 99% of the people I coach – one of those things is reviewing your financials, isn’t it? You don’t review your financials. How is that? Can you imagine that? Can you imagine being a basketball player or a basketball coach who doesn’t look at the scoreboard?
How effective of a basketball player or coach can you be if you don’t look at the scoreboard? That’s what you’re doing, my friend. You are not looking at the scoreboard or often when you’re looking at the scoreboard, you’re looking at it from months ago or years ago, God forbid, and you’re not actually seeing things develop.
Every single month by the 10th of the month, you need to see full, 100% accurate financials for your company for the prior month, and on a weekly basis, you need to be checking your financials or your company will crash and burn, and it’ll be a disaster.
You cannot manage your company by looking at how much money is in the bank account. That doesn’t give you the answers.
You’ve got to be looking at your financial statements. You’ve got to be looking at your P&Ls, your balance sheet, your Statement of Cash flows. You’ve got to be looking at that stuff regularly. If you have no idea what that stuff is, go read my book or listen to all the free stuff I have out there about this. But as a business owner, that’s what it is and I want you to understand you signed up for this.
Today’s Daily Challenge for Career Fulfillment
So today is all about the Career Zone and my friends, I’m telling you it’s almost over. Here is my challenge to you. You did a couple of little exercises during this thing, but there’s a challenge that we’re going to add to our list of challenges and that is this: starting today, while you are at work, while you are in the Career Zone, there’s only eight days left. Some of those are weekend days, so you don’t have that many weekdays left. But here’s my challenge to you: while you’re in the Career Zone, I want you to put aside all of the personal stuff.
What I mean by that is this. For the next eight days, no personal text messages during work. For the next eight days, no personal social media at work. The only way you’re going to use social media is if you use it for work and you’re doing it for work reasons. No personal phone calls at work. Nothing personal during the times that you’re at work. Now you’re going to say, “But Arman, I need to answer text messages when they come in. I’ve got to talk to people – my husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend. If someone calls me, what do I do?”
Here’s what you do: take a break. Get up from your desk, leave the office or wherever your work setting is. Leave your work setting so in your brain, you literally have to say, “I am leaving the Career Zone and I’m going to go take care of personal stuff, goof off, or whatever it is.” But I want you to have that separation of time, so as of today, we’re adding that piece to it and these things are building up because every day you are getting stronger, you are getting better, you are getting more powerful, and as a result of this, every single area of your life is going to improve in ways you cannot even imagine.
So let’s review real quick. What are all of the things we’re doing on a day-to-day basis before I let you guys go? Every day, you’re waking up at a specific time. Every day, you’re working out for 25 minutes.
Every day, you’re entering the Career Zone at a specific time, and as of today, once you enter the Career Zone, you are not doing any personal things in the vicinity of where you do your work. You can leave and do it and come back, but not while you’re in there.
And then you’ve turned your car into a mobile university, so no radio, no music, no calls. While you’re in there, you have also given up one thing during this challenge that used to cost you money every day and you’re giving that thing up. The other thing that you’re doing is you’re spending 30 minutes focused on your intimate relationship.
Finally, we added yesterday that you were going to do a morning smile and some sort of a gratitude routine at night, and anything else you want to add to that to make your spirit alive.
Now, this is starting to be a long list of stuff. But listen, if you add it every day just one little bit and then keep a list of this stuff and go back and review it and make sure you’re hitting these things, before you know it this challenge will be over and I know not all of these things will carry with you.
But many of them will and they will become lifelong habits. I want to tell you today go out there, focus on your career, take it to a whole other level. We have now knocked out five of the ten areas of the Wheel of Life. We’ve got five more to go and with only a few days left in this challenge, we have less than half of it left to go now. So let’s get out there today, like every day, and lead with our hearts.
