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Through history, we have always earned money in the same way - by creating or adding value. Or rather, perceived value. In that sense, there’s no fundamental difference between the hunter-gatherer of the Stone Age and the tech entrepreneur of the 21st century. Between the two we’ve had merchants, explorers, craftsmen, tradesmen, industrialists, labourers, financiers, developers. Whatever we do, our usefulness in mind and body creates a sense of value and has worth.
I stress ‘perceived’ value because, over the last 100 years, the waters have muddied. In complex organisations it is hard to calculate the true value of a role to a business. Like people, companies will pay for things irrationally based on perception, out of sync with their underlying belief system. They can collect teams because they feel they should. Firms over-pay for some roles, without fully understanding what they bring to the party, and under-pay others. Certain skills go in and out of fashion. This is useful to remember, since you can use it to optimise your own earnings.
Another feature of modern money-making is that we no longer work for financial reward alone. Because we now spend so much time living, thinking and breathing the job, we may endeavour to find a working life that suits our personality. Ideally, our job and the company culture match our ethics and character. We now think about businesses as being relaxed, supportive, thoughtful and collaborative; or fast-paced, dynamic and exciting.
As we go in search of money to fulfil our life ambitions, staying true to our beliefs has become more important than ever. We want to make sure, as far as modern-day capitalism allows, that our behaviours reflect our morals. Or at least that our job doesn’t cause us an emotional conflict or psychological headache.
The pathways
The pathways
There are many different routes in to money. Within the traditional employer-employee contract we get our wages and, possibly, seasonal bonuses. We first want to stabilise and protect these base-level earnings by doing a good job. But there is then the potential to out-perform and negotiate a pay rise or earn a promotion in search of new money. Over time, we may look to change jobs or even our whole career to get more money. We can re-train, up-skill or cross-skill. We might take on a second job or start a side hustle. That side hustle may take off and even lead to a fully-fledged business that moves us from employee to employer.
To top up our income we might sell stuff or rent stuff out. We can create things or fix things. We can invest, so the money we have is making more money - in the stock market, property, enterprise or collectibles. We can, theoretically, perform for money, win money, befriend it or even marry into it.
“Our work is the presentation of our capabilities” - Edward Gibbon
Everything we do involves effort. Anything that involves effort can be classed as work. Some of the work we do, or effort that we expend, is paid for and some isn’t.
Walking the dog, cleaning the car, washing the dishes, ironing your clothes, making a cup of tea, eating, reading, thinking… All these things can in the broadest sense constitute forms of work. We normally choose to do these tasks for ourselves, for our own benefit. We do these things to keep clean, or our dog healthy, or our minds active, or whatever. But we could equally do any of these things for someone else and get paid for it. We could be a carer, a dog walker, a proof-reader, a valet, a taste-tester, a cleaner and so on.
Since we entered the 21st century there has been a marked increase in opportunities to get paid for all manner of small tasks like this on an ad hoc basis. The gig economy aside, there are now plenty of apps that enable you to earn money for micro activities that you can slot in to your routine. The worlds of paid and non-paid work are merging. We are edging towards a scenario where, at any one time, we might reasonably alternate between a ‘switched on’ and available for work state, and a ‘switched off’ state. It’ll be like logging on to our email, or clocking in at a factory, only we’ll be making ourselves visibly open for work to potentially hundreds of micro-employers.
While almost anything we’re capable of doing can earn us money, anything we have can potentially earn us money too. We might rent out a spare room, or a driveway, a car, the garden shed, or even our dog. We can sell a TV, our clothes, or our music collection. We can open the valves to these alternative revenue streams when we need them and shut them off when we can afford to do so.
Mainstream work is also becoming a lot more layered and intricate. Industries are moving faster than ever. Professions are evolving quickly. With that speed of movement comes fragility. The jobs within those industries are now more precarious. Some job functions are dying out and new ones are being born. The notion of having a defined career through to retirement is becoming increasingly rare. The days of having ‘one job-one salary’ as our sole income are on the wane.
We may now straddle a multitude of nuanced roles. Some sectors are filled with promiscuous jobbers (in a good way) who might be collaborating with a friend on a business idea on a Tuesday night after work and doing a freelance gig at the weekend for a former colleague to earn a bit extra. We as individuals are having to think more like mini-businesses, with irons in fires and many ways to potentially pull in money as we need to. We each have a web of usefulness and abilities that can spider out in all sorts of directions.
Everything can be utilised as a source of income. Everything we can do and everything we possess. To paraphrase Henry David Thoreau: The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
Semler: The challenger
Semler: The challenger
In the 1980s, Ricardo Semler was handed the role of CEO at the little-known Brazilian manufacturing company, Semco. You may be familiar with his story.
Disturbed by the apparent apathy and gloom he witnessed among the workforce, Semler made some big changes. Back then he was new to the fold and green in the ways of management, having recently superseded his authoritarian father as head of the company. But he was brave and a true maverick.
Semler wanted to encourage mass democratic participation. He decided that all the workforce should have a say in the running of the business. He fired 60% of managers on day one and let the employees set their own salaries.
The move was shocking, almost terrifying, to his remaining senior managers. They feared complete chaos would ensue, with every worker demanding astronomical rewards for their efforts. But it didn’t pan out that way. It actually worked a treat.
Semco’s average annual growth rate exceeded 40% for many years to come and the employee churn rate stayed below 2%.
Perhaps a number of staff equated a higher income to more responsibility, effort or stress. A moderately-paid job can carry lower expectations and demands. Not everyone is a highly-ambitious careerist willing to take on the additional burden and workload that their colleagues might then naturally expect of them.
The Semco model remains rare. Some firms have managed to implement it to a degree and there has been a spate of attempts since the turn of the century. It usually has a far better chance of working in smaller, younger companies.
What I took from the Semler revolution was that he posed a question never really asked quite so directly before. He encouraged his employees to consider the value they add. Their price. He effectively said: ‘What should you be paid for your skills and time?
The money-making levers
The money-making levers
The price of any job you perform is a function of supply and demand. How great is the perceived need for what you do? And how many other people are offering to do it? The supply and demand, and therefore the price you attribute a particular job, are effected by a series of levers: skillset, experience, location, age and so on. Your money-making levers alter the price you can get for doing the same - or a similar - job or task.
Job title
The highest-paying job titles by average annual salary in 2019 were, according to the Office for National Statistics:
Chief executives & senior officials - £156,209
Air traffic controllers - £93,955
Marketing & sales directors - £93,372
Legal professionals - £90,791
Finance managers & directors - £87,855
Pilots & flight engineers - £86,204
Dentists - £82,839
Doctors - £79,767
IT directors - £79,260
Advertising & PR directors - £72,139
Most of us have one job title at any given time.
“What do you do?”
“Oh, I’m a taxi driver.”
This can feel quite limiting. We are more than a job, after all. We are all many things. The taxi driver is never ‘just’ a taxi driver, like the accountant is never just an accountant and the brain surgeon is never just a brain surgeon. We should all have several job titles, or just our personal profile that lists the many things we are great at and passionate about. And that change is happening. But we are, for now, still usually consigned to the one primary job title we have at any given time. So, given the playing field we are on, how can you use your job title as a money-making lever?
A job title should do two things: One, reflect what you’re doing. Two, maximise your future income. That is all. It doesn’t need to impress or serve any other purpose.
Engineering a change to your job title can give you an immediate salary lift or pave the way for a better income in the future. This might be at the next pay review, a department restructure, or when you get a new job and it’s nailed to your CV as a trusted benchmark.
Draw a mind map of your job titles
Get a pen and paper and take a few moments to plot a map of titles and salaries related to your present or most recent primary job. Start by writing down your current or latest job in the middle. For example, starting with a title of ‘Product Manager £55k’ might lead you to ‘Senior Product Manager £67k’, ‘’Group Product Lead £75k’ and ‘Digital Product Director £90k’ - as well as ‘Junior Product Manager £35k’ and ‘Associate Product Lead £49k’. Online salary checkers and job search tools can help you do this quite easily. Most big recruitment sites have them. They can spit out different results as they use different data but the more relevant jobs a site has, the more reliable the data - in the main.
Some titles will be related to your present role but will be very senior or very junior to it. Keep them on the page but push them to the edges of your chart. These are the ones furthest from your current position on the ladder. Meanwhile, others will be similar in rank and easier to switch to. Draw them closer to the centre bubble on your map.
Of the more relevant titles, you may want to target those that are best paid, or the ones that will offer you a wider range of onward career paths. Look for potential routes you could follow to reach the more senior roles on the outer edges.
Doing this regularly can help you stay abreast of changing trends. Certain job titles, in their infancy and scarcely used today, could be tomorrow’s buzzwords and the soon-to-be recipient of higher earnings.
The first words matter. In almost every field adding a suitable prefix - ‘senior’, ‘vice president of’, ‘director of’ - will get you a lump more money.
Job titles are forever evolving. There’s a growing trend among start-ups for titles that incorporate exotic nouns like ‘Guru’, ‘Wizard’, ‘Rockstar’ and ‘Magician’. Unthinkable at the turn of century, we now have ads for ‘Happiness Manager’, ‘Director of Storytelling’, ‘Innovation Alchemist’ and even ‘Workstation Evangelist’. It complicates the job search process but can also create opportunities when you’re negotiating a title and salary.
Once cemented into your CV and digital footprint, job titles can be a great money-making lever for years to come. Or they can be an eternal drag. An increasing number of young workers, thinking strategically, are willing to take a pay cut in exchange for a potentially more valuable, long-term money-making job title.
Industry
Job titles and functions transcend industries. All industries need salespeople, marketeers, administrative teams, human resource managers, finance directors, designers and so on. But some industries and businesses are willing to pay a lot more than others. You may be able to increase your earnings simply by transferring your skills to a more lucrative industry.
Online recruitment data indicates the best-paid sectors, at time of writing, are Strategy & consultancy, accountancy, banking & financial services, IT & telecoms, science, property & construction, legal and insurance.
An admin assistant or office manager at an investment bank might earn more than an admin assistant or office manager at an estate agency. A waiter at an upmarket hotel or conference suite might earn more than a waiter working at a low-end restaurant chain.
If you’re self-employed you could span multiple industries to broaden your employability base and hedge your future opportunities. Operating in two sectors means you have more potential clients and, if one sector suddenly takes off, or one declines, you’ve already got a strong foothold in the higher-paying camp.
Tracking industry trends regularly you may be able to predict the rise and fall of different sectors. Whenever a sector is in demise you can be sure another is profiting. It’s been well documented that high street retail has suffered enormously in recent decades, while digital revenues have exploded. For every store closure announced by Debenhams, Beales and Blockbuster, there’s a profits boost at Amazon, Boohoo and Netflix.
Research in the US predicts the best industry sectors in which to start a business in the 2020s are technology, health, energy and media. The sectors likely to suffer most job losses were named as publishing, postal services, printing and clothes manufacturing.
Size of company can also have an influence on pay. A large established firm may offer a lucrative salary and lots of job security. A smaller company or start-up might have a lower basic package but a wider role that gives you skills, experience and a greater potential for long-term progression.
Age
More experience generally warrants higher reward. The median weekly wage for all UK employees is around £585. The median for those aged 30-plus goes well above this mark, for those younger than 30, it’s well below.
The gap in pay between workers in their twenties and older age groups increased by around 50% from 1998 to 2018. Minimum wage thresholds have eradicated some big issues, but you can’t help but feel some employers anchor pay to that minimum level. They use it as a maximum as well as a minimum.
There are also a lot of protected senior jobs in some - not all, but some - big organisations. Salaries and roles are often set from the top down. The director will pay whatever it takes to get the best senior manager in beneath them - ‘best’ being most easily evidenced by experience. The senior manager in turn will pay the most they can to get the best middle manager beneath them. And so on. Until you get to the eager beavers at the bottom of the chain and there’s little left in the pot.
Older age groups face different challenges. Employers might be anxious about hiring someone at the peak of their life responsibilities with children to raise and support, elderly parents to care for and still a big mortgage to pay. Workers over 50 (who count for more than a third of the UK workforce and rising) may be unjustly categorised for being out of touch with technology and new processes, or jaded from their previous roles, more cynical and less committed than their youthful, exuberant counterparts.
As with industry sectors, where there’s a hurdle for one, there’s an opportunity for another. And whatever age you’re at, you can use it to your advantage. Age is a powerful lever.
In your teens and twenties, you have more opportunity than at any other time. You have the most wonderful life ahead of you. The potential paths you are about to tread are limitless. A rich expedition of life awaits. You have so much to give. You are full of ideas, energy, excitement, enthusiasm and verve. Employers love you for your passion, creativity, reality, technical nous, entrepreneurial spirit and work ethic. Quash any concerns about your lack of experience by being mature in speech and thought, by being diplomatic, strategic, and courteous but assertive. Show an eagerness to learn. Be a sponge. Soak up everything around you and mould it into your future earning potential. You have the world at your feet. You’re going to be a star.
Your thirties and forties represent the sweet spot. Life is truly blossoming. You have substantial experiences within you and still a wealth of adventure before you. Your instinct is razor-sharp. You are the epicentre of business life, connecting seamlessly with younger and older age groups alike. The chameleon, the fluid in the engine. Employers love you for your assured temperament, your modern brain, your forward thinking and optimism. Your leadership. You have your finger on the pulse. You make smart decisions. It’s time to rapidly escalate the curve of your earning potential. Load up your arsenal of talents, perform like a ninja and secure some juicy pay hikes.
The fabulous fifties - and beyond. Ah, behold, the master and mentor! You have arrived at the rostrum of supreme authority. The array of diverse experiences you have digested to this point makes you an irresistible force. Employers love you for your expertise, brilliance, intuition, unrivalled knowledge and calmness under pressure. Dismiss any potential employer worries by embracing new technology and showing dedication beyond the cause. You can call the shots now. Work flexibly, freelance, consult, teach - pass the torch to the next generation. And raise your prices! Now’s your chance to really cash in on all those years of hard work.
Location
Salaries in the south of the UK and in the major cities tend to be higher. Unsurprisingly. It’s where the large businesses operate from; the ones that have bigger budgets and can therefore pay the highest wages to the ‘best’ workers from, most crucially, the largest pool.
The best-paying locations tend to be London, Reading, Milton Keynes, Cambridge, Oxford, Edinburgh and Aberdeen. At the other end of the scale, the lowest paid locations usually include the likes of Southend, Huddersfield, Birkenhead, Wigan, Doncaster and Norwich.
Earning potential is one aspect of location. Cost of living is another. The best paid places are usually the most expensive to live and the lowest paid places are often the cheapest to live. Subtracting average living costs from average salary gives us an idea of where we might be able to enjoy the highest disposable income, all other things being equal. Topping the bill (at time of writing) are the likes of Derby, Reading, Southampton, Edinburgh, Belfast, Swindon, Liverpool and Leeds.
Globally, the differences in income are more stark. The highest earners are clustered in Scandinavia, western Europe, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Asian financial hotspots of Singapore and Japan. The lowest incomes are fixed to Africa, big parts of Asia and some regions of South America.
Factoring in cost of living against average earnings, you tend to find the highest disposable incomes in the likes of Norway, Australia, the United States, Switzerland, Sweden, Bermuda, Macao, Qatar, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Singapore and the Netherlands. In one of the largest surveys of its kind, by Expat Insider, Bahrain was voted the best country to live and work, with Denmark named the best for work-life balance.
Financial lures aside, migrating to another country is of course a far bigger undertaking than simply moving to another town or city in the UK. There are social benefits to evaluate, pension provisions for non-domestic workers, working regulations, language and cultural connections, relationships and your pure personal appetite for adjusting to a whole new way of living.
Closer to home, you may be able to increase your disposable income by living outside the major cities but within travelling distance of them. Go 20 miles out of London or Manchester, for example, and you can find property to buy or rent in small towns for half the price. Your main consideration then is cost of travel, both in terms of time and money.
Your regular journey to and from work can add several hours on to your working week. You’re making the trip only because you’re going to do the job, so it’s still work. If your job involves long-distance travel, that time spent in airport lounges, taxis and hotels is effectively work too. Add up all those precious minutes and your rate of pay can look less attractive. The same goes for the money we spend - and don’t expense - on things like work clothes, a new laptop bag, a morning coffee for the train. These work-related costs eat into our net pay.
Less time spent on extraneous travelling in honour of the job can give us more time at home, for pleasure and recuperation. And curiously, recuperation in itself could increase your earnings. Research suggests that better sleepers get paid more!
The world is undeniably becoming smaller with the advent of faster, cheaper travel and faster, cheaper digital communications, but high rents in the major cities are preventing young workers from moving in. Meanwhile, the headquarters of the biggest businesses still need a wide range of professions to keep them operating effectively and legally - receptionists, cleaners and security guards are a necessity, just as programmers, designers and marketeers are. There is a mobility struggle at play.
Despite it being comparatively easy these days to relocate, most people tend to settle quickly into their working lives, lay roots and stay where they know best, in most cases only moving if a job forces them to do so. According to a US study, 10% of Americans relocated for jobs in 2018, compared to 20% in 2000 and 40% in the 1980s. Perhaps it’s because we have better communication technology and can do more jobs remotely, reducing the need for workers to be in situ. Perhaps it’s because companies are no longer motivated to offer plush relocation packages.
Moving the location lever can demand comprehensive research. To understand the costs and opportunities you may have to track forum discussions, sign up to localised job and property alerts, network and generally immerse yourself in guide content. It’s a big effort. But can be profitable.
For some, location or travel is more than a lever to a salary rise, it is the primary factor in a job’s appeal. Seeing the world, or a particularly amazing region of it, can be a huge draw, with any financial reward taking a back seat. The most popular roles for those of a travelling disposition include photographer, translator, au pair, builder, cruise ship worker, tour guide, ski instructor, travel writer, truck driver, roadie, charity volunteer and aid worker.
Skillset
This is the most powerful of all the levers. Your palette of abilities - past, present and future - can procure enormous riches. The sum of your potential is far greater than your current job, or even all of the jobs you’ve had to date. If our jobs define us, we can lose perspective of all that we’re wholly capable of, which is a hell of a lot!
Brain-dump your skills
Grab two sheets of paper and a pen. Write down, as quickly as you can, all the things you can do. The first sheet of paper is for your hard skills - clear tangibles like producing spreadsheets, cloud computing, or bricklaying. And the second is for your soft skills - those more subjective, less physically evident skills such as time management, diplomacy, or leadership.
Anything you can do, write it down. Just write, write, write, as fast as the thoughts come to you. You might end up listing things as random as cooking scrambled eggs, running a 10k, reading fast, flipping beer mats, being a good friend, listening, speaking, encouraging, coercing, dressing a room, using a broom, driving a car, or spotting a star. That’s brilliant. Keep going and going. And only stop when you’ve written down at least 50 things in total.
This exercise is a great way to unlock your vast treasure-trove of wonderments. Release the inner you, unearth those hidden gems and conjure up the capabilities you scarcely knew were there.
I’d be confident pretty much everything on your list, every skill you’ve written down, could theoretically be used in a job or as a way to make money. Being mindful of all that you can achieve is a skill in itself. Don’t take any of your skills for granted. A lot of people would love to be able to do what you can do.
Observing your lush catalogue of skills, some will clearly be able to earn you more money than others. Cherish them. Embellish them. But don’t dismiss the rest. Instead, go through the list, ponder each of the skills you have just written down and ask yourself: How can I develop this? What would be the next step? How could I build on it as a foundation to earn more money?
If you’re a good team leader, may be you could become a great senior manager? Could you arrange for on-the-job training to ramp up your experience and enhance your CV? If you’re good at design, could you sell your services to local businesses, to improve their websites and marketing materials? If you’re good with numbers, could you take a certified course and become a consultant data analyst?
If you can write, could you start your own blog, or ghost-write for others? If you’re good with languages, could you do freelance translation work? If you can drive, could you do deliveries at the weekend for a bit of extra cash? Or do a few taxi jobs, or community transport trips? Or take your HGV licence? Or become a driving instructor? If you can bake, could you start your own business making party cakes? Or set up a stall at a local market?
A Deloitte study in 2017 showed that the average shelf-life of a skill had dropped to five years. It seems the need to keep your skillset fresh is not limited to software engineers. Traditional jobs are changing fast. A plumber or electrician with their own business now needs to understand website marketing, social media and online networking. They might have a card payment machine, take photos of their work and upload them to a server as legal back-up, use digital invoicing and accountancy software. Such things would have turned a Yorkshire plumber’s porridge stone cold in the early 2000s. Other roles that have undergone a considerable transformation since the 1990s include secretary, receptionist, physician, psychologist, farmer, priest, journalist and police officer. But nowadays, practically every job function is in a state of flux with new systems, software and processes emerging all the time.
As such, there are now more ways to self-educate and up-skill, from online courses and informal video tutorials to shadowing, coaching and mentoring. The psychology of learning efficiently is entering the mainstream too: mind mapping, focus mode and diffuse mode, the Pomodoro Technique, memory recall. It’s getting easier to identify our mental strengths and weaknesses, or whether we are inherently a slow thinker or a fast thinker (neither of which is superior).
A LinkedIn survey in 2020 found that the hard skills in highest demand were blockchain, cloud computing, analytical reasoning, artificial intelligence and UX design. The soft skills in highest demand were creativity, collaboration, persuasion, adaptability and emotional intelligence.
Your experiences
Your being, in this very instant, has been shaped by a gazillion experiences: The triumphs you’ve celebrated, the tragedies you’ve endured, the food you’ve tasted, the colours you’ve seen, the joy and the pain, the love and the hate, the momentous and the trivial. You are all seasons.
When it comes to making money, experience is not just about time served in the workplace. You can draw on a sky-high abundance of life adventures. What may seem like negative experiences can be used to create a positive future. Experiences you may deem immaterial might just be the key to you making a slab more money.
There are numerous psychological tactics for evaluating your experiences. It can be useful to reflect on vivid phases of your life and the transitions between those vivid phases. The distinct phases in your life may centre around a place you lived, a relationship, a job or just a certain way you felt for a period of time. On recall, they may seem like good times, or bad, or quite likely a complicated mixture of the two. The transitions in and out of these stages are where we can learn a lot about ourselves. Cast your mind back to a clear and defined stage in your life and contemplate what happened.
Why did you move in to this stage?
How did it feel?
Why did you move away from it?
What would you have done differently?
What did you learn?
What positives can you take forward with you from those experiences?
No matter how you may recall a life stage - whether it’s with affection or sadness, joy or anger - there are always positives you can take away from it using this type of reflection. We learn more from reflecting than we do from the experience itself.
The work zones
The work zones
Having considered the money-making levers, how do you feel? Is your income in line with your expectations, based on your skills and experiences, your age and location, the industry you’re in and the primary job you do? Could you argue for an upwards nudge on your current salary? What do related jobs look like - are they more appealing or better paid? Is it time to jump ship?
Do you feel like you’re using your full galaxy of abilities to their maximum earning potential? Could you charge up any of your latent talents and make money from them? Do you feel a desire to overhaul your strategy for generating income altogether and take a different path in life?
Which work zone are you in right now?
Zone 1: Energise
If you’re content with your job and broadly happy with your income, but would like to get a bit more reward for your efforts, you’re in zone one. You might just need to re-energise the spirit and go gunning for a pay rise.
Getting a pay rise is arguably more of a science than an art. There are two big reasons a lot of people struggle to successfully negotiate a pay rise. Lack of preparation for the actual conversation. And making the process emotional rather than rational.
The best time to negotiate your salary is actually when you’re first offered the job. This is one of the occasions when you’re at your most wanted. And whatever salary you start on, that’s likely to influence your pay projection with that company. There’s no harm in asking. And there is harm in not asking. But only around 30-40% of people do so.
Doing your homework on industry benchmarks is the most important aspect to these negotiations. Beyond that, remain calm, confident and composed. Be polite and professional. Give space to the dialogue to allow thoughts to ferment.
A CV Library study concluded that 65% of workers believe they’re underpaid. Yet most suffer in silence. It also revealed that 64% of men said they were comfortable asking for a rise, compared to 43% of women, who are more likely to negotiate on working hours than wages. Once you’re in a job, you obviously can’t go asking for a pay rise every two weeks, so picking the perfect moment to pounce is vital. It’s often best to do so when:
Your value is high. You’ve just done a brilliant piece of work, or completed a recognised project. Or your department is in high demand.
Your manager’s value is high too. They may need to get their boss to sign off your pay rise.
Your manager has space. You need them to be alert and attentive to your case, not stressed to the nines.
Your manager has eaten. Decision makers are more likely to be empathetic after a good feed but become progressively more irritable as they get hungrier. Parole hearing judges make around 65% of their favourable decisions at the start of a session.
Budgets are not tight, or tied down.
When presenting your case, use hard business numbers. Prove your worth above and beyond your current remit. Analyse related roles and know your true value. Practice your delivery at home, to friends; record it. This is in itself a chance to show your boss how great you are - at research, analysis, creative design, communicating and presenting. Reflect your manager’s language and meeting format. Use open questions and use silence strategically.
Whatever your manager’s reaction, stay cool, keep your emotions in check and secure a follow up. Plan for a range of outcomes. If it’s a ‘no’ then agree a next step: ‘What do I need to do to improve, to progress with the business and merit higher reward over the next 12 months?’ If they delay - ‘Let’s talk about it in six months when project Sigma is out of the way’ - then peg down a commitment to do so: 'Ok. So would it be fair to say that if I achieve these three things over the next six months I can reasonably expect a 10% pay increase?’
Zone 2: Transform
If you feel you’ve steered off course from where you want your career and earnings to be, then you’re in zone two. It’s nothing a profile makeover can’t fix. A little transformation of the heart. A bit of reflection and an overhaul of your ambitions and you can strike out and get a job and career more deserving of your true self.
It’s time to branch out. Using your list of skills, you might want to create a word-map of opportunities. Write down your most valuable skills in a centre pod and draw potential routes out that you would like to explore. Think freely and put down everything that comes to mind. Think big. Detail your dream jobs, no matter how far off and unfeasible they might seem right now. The ones you feel are further away or harder to achieve in the short term, push them to the edge of the page. The ones closest to your current working regime and easier to reach, bring them close to your centre pod.
If you’re struggling for inspiration, have a play with some of the many online personality tests that attempt to match your strengths and character traits to ideal vocations. Just be careful which ones you use, as some are more gimmick than scientific.
Explore the different opportunities on your map. For each route you could take, note down the pros and cons, the salary potential, job satisfaction, and alignment to your Values and Life Story. Consider which direction feels best for you and identify your target options for further investigation.
What do you need to do to get where you want to be? It might mean a subtle change of job or something more dramatic. It might involve relocating. It may lead to a tweak of the CV or a wholesale rebrand of your professional self. You may want to retrain or up-skill before punching out job applications.
Getting a new job can also be seen as a project that relies on science over art.
Many people struggle in a job search because their lives are just too damn busy for it. Firing off a CV casually late at night, a tired shot in the dark, gives you a limited chance of success. A job search demands a tonne of energy and attention. It’s a job in itself. It’s hard work. Pause as much as you can in your life while you commit to the hunt. Then cast your net far and wide.
The job ad is your golden ticket, telling you exactly what an employer wants. Every component of a job application - the CV, online form or any other associated links and material - should answer the job ad head on. It’s very natural for us to want to sell our entire selves. We want to talk-up the full package and showcase the wide range of achievements we’re so proud of. The risk in doing so is that we communicate irrelevant talents, which dilutes our relevant ones and we then come across as unsuitable for a particular role. Keep it simple. If the recruiter wants ‘retail experience, team management skills and budgeting expertise’ then give them exactly that, in every way you can muster. And use the same language as the ad - reflect back what they’re asking for to make it explicitly clear you’re the ideal candidate.
At the job interview, you can take the same approach, just with a bag more evidence, well-released delivery and the desired persona to match the company profile. Go back to the job ad, draft impressively rich, data-packed anecdotes to prove your relevant skills - retail, team management and budgeting, for example - and practice your story-telling. Dress and communicate in a way that befits their brand and culture. Smile. Be confident. Be passionate. An American study in 2018 found that the one thing interviewers valued hearing more than anything else were these four words: “I love my work”.
To nail the deal, try to do something different. Do what others won’t. It’s a competition and there’s usually only one winner. You could, for example, research the company to incredulous lengths, network its staff, ask highly-informed searching questions (just to show off your knowledge), prepare a proposal or presentation deck, ask for your interviewer’s contact details and send follow-up material, sketch out a ‘First 100 days in the job’ activity timeline, join the right professional network groups and forums. The more application processes you go through, the more you can re-use these things and develop them out.
Zone 3: Reinvent
Zone three belongs to those who crave radical change; a rebirth of their entire environment. The clock is ticking - it’s time to stand tall, be brave and reinvent.
At any point in our life, we all have a tremendous freedom - more than we perhaps realise at times - to go and write our own script. We are not yet defined by what we have done, because we are not yet at the end. We cannot change the past but we can use it to change the future.
If you’re not satisfied with your income or what you’re doing to generate it, now might be the time to unfurl your revolutionary spirit and make some thrilling, prodigious decisions.
What does your ideal working life look like? It might mean starting your own business, going back to university, travelling or even moving to another country to fire your talents towards new opportunities. What’s the first step along your perfect new path? And the second? The third, the fourth, the fifth…? Devise a plan and break it down into small do-able chunks. A big change needs little steps to help get it moving and keep it progressing.
Without freedom, we are nothing. Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wrote that total freedom was uncontrollably scary to the human psyche, likening it to an extreme vertigo, teetering on the edge of a cliff. But he also urged us to embrace that intensity and responsibility. Whatever context our lives may be connected to, we always have the freedom to make our own authentic, liberating choices and carve out a brighter tomorrow. We can always steer a new course.
George Soros escaped the Nazis and became a billionaire investor. Roman Abramovich, orphaned at four, dropped out of two colleges before embarking on his journey towards billionaire-status by first selling rubber ducks from his Moscow apartment. Actress Halle Berry used to sleep in a homeless shelter. Author JK Rowling was a broke single mum battling depression when she turned her hand to writing the Harry Potter books. Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar was a 28-year-old computer programmer when he started auctioning off his personal belongings to trial run a new online venture. The first item to sell was a broken laser pointer. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak both dropped out of college before they found each other and then founded Apple Computer in 1976. Mitchell Dell also dropped out of uni and then aged 19 started his first PC business with just $1000. The modern-day tech industry is awash with such stories. Who’s to say your story isn’t the next?
Profound life changes are not all about starting your own business and accumulating astronomical wealth. Your utopia might mean packing in the city job, selling up and moving thousands of miles away to live off-grid in the wilderness. For some, such a lifestyle would represent nirvana. And it would certainly require considerably less income.
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” - Albert Einstein
Multiple jobs
Multiple jobs
Increased flexibility in the labour market - the maturing gig economy and growth in freelancing and agency contracts - has opened up new avenues for topping up your regular salary.
Popular second jobs, or ‘side hustles’ as they’ve also come to be known, include grocery delivery driver, taxi driver, direct sales executive, telesales marketer, restaurant waiter, cleaner, security guard, bartender, tutor, coach, book-keeper, fruit and veg picker, survey interviewer, translator, virtual assistant, customer services assistant, carer, babysitter, proofreader, researcher receptionist, cinema or theatre usher, data entry operator, event planner, dog walker, gardener.
Studies indicate 5% to 10% of the UK and US working populations have an additional job. But a hell of a lot more than that are working on side projects, new business ideas and the occasional cash-in-hand freelance opportunity. The easiest way to earn the most money in a side hustle is usually by extending the skills you utilise already in your primary job and simply transferring them to a freelance model.
Focus on things you know and are good at. And the things you like doing. Depending on your skillset, you could become a blogger, podcaster, editor, designer, event photographer or DJ. You could become a film extra, model or voiceover artist. You could perform mystery shopping tasks and fill in online surveys. You might spot an opportunity to buy and sell stuff on eBay and other marketplaces, both online and offline. Or you may have a talent for creating things you can sell - baking, cooking, sewing, painting.
Many opportunities don’t even yet exist but you could see a need and create a job around it. Thinking seasonally about jobs can be useful. Short-term recruitment spikes around sporting events, music festivals, Christmas markets and the like can lead to some excellent perks as well as decent pay.
The most important facet of second-jobbing is that you make it viable and economical. There’s no point slogging your guts out an extra 10 hours a week, even in the short term, if it only rakes in a few extra quid.
Above all, have fun and only do it if you want to. If it’s dragging you down, aggravating your home life or impinging on your primary job, it’s not worth it.
Finding equilibrium
Finding equilibrium
In the pursuit of money, it’s important to also remember your continued pursuit of happiness. Keeping both channels in check isn’t always easy. They don’t go hand in hand.
Most of us would say we don’t relish the prospect of working 24/7 until the day we die. Yet, when the time comes, a lot of people find it hard to break free of that in-built routine they’ve lived by for so many years and cut clean the regular source of steady income. A 2017 study found that one in four retirees in the UK go back to work, usually within five years. More interestingly, there was no difference in the return rate between those who financially needed to do so and those who didn’t. So going back to work for this age group is much more complex than simply ‘doing it for the money’.
The more hours you work in a week or a month, the more you can get used to it, despite any stress and health issues it might be breeding beneath the surface. The longer you work a particular function the more it can become you and control you.
“You can always get more money but you can’t get more time” - Jim Rohn
Almost everything you do has a time or money component attached to it. Or both. Time and money give each other meaning. They go together to form a value relationship.
The phrase ‘time is money’ conjures, for me, images of Wall Street bankers screaming down their phones, skipping lunch, busting a gut to make an extra million before night falls. I tend to give more credence to the idea that money is time. The money you pull in, your income, has usually been earned in exchange for a portion of your time. The money you then spend also represents the amount of time you gave up to earn it in the first place.
The hours you give up to perform a job - including travel, thinking time, time spent not sleeping properly, time on the computer late at night - determine your hourly net rate of pay. Focusing on your hourly rate instead of your annual income can be helpful in a number of ways and provides a deeper truth. It’s easy to feel like a big jump in headline salary, let's say from £40,000 a year to £50,000, will fundamentally change your life. And it might. But it’s not as sizeable a leap in net terms as first appears. A gross income rise of £10,000 is, after tax and national insurance, only £6,800 net. If you feel you deserve a 10% increase in pay, go for a 10% increase in your net pay.
The 2020 Modern Families Index found that 44% of parents do some form of work at home in the evening. Of those, three quarters said they didn’t have a choice. They couldn’t say “no”.
Companies are quietly doing away with the ‘work-life balance’ campaign, a soft incentive that was promoted vociferously as we exited the 1980s yuppy-fest. Big businesses now operate globally across multiple timezones and in complex matrix-style structures. Smaller firms that supply, service and support them have to dance to their tune. As such, presentee-ism has reached new levels. We are always on, always contactable, always expected to be no more than a few minutes away from an email, call or alert.
In one sense, we have more flexibility in our working arrangements than ever. We can often work from home, remotely, set our time, even our objectives and projects to some extent. But communications and tracking are now such that we are also never really far away from the control room. There’s always a continent waking up for duty or a potential live-wire into your brain. There is a paradox to the modern freedom.
The idea of a work-life balance has been usurped by the idea of a ‘company culture’. This deviously shifts the onus away from the employer and on to the employee, who is now encouraged to buy in to an organisation’s inherent values; to give even more, basically. It creates a much stronger bond between employer and employee. We are expected to live and breathe the job.
On the road to implementing a culture, businesses dream up all manner of perks to appeal to our emotions. The world’s biggest tech brands expertly lead the way here, creating dazzling new employee benefits: free breakfasts, swanky break-out areas, subsidised gym memberships, yoga classes, massages, parties, excursions abroad, free travel cards, in-house sweet shops and bars. Such fanciful delights exist only, of course, to get employees working longer and harder, and staying loyal to the brand. If it didn’t work, if it didn’t make more long-term profit, they wouldn’t do it. Modern work cultures can be very persuasive.
It is difficult to fully grasp a company’s culture until you’re in it. This makes the research process all the more important. And it makes informal networking all the more effective. The grass isn’t always greener and you can jump out of the frying pan into the fire.
Run a search for ‘least stressful jobs’ and you’ll likely come across things like hair stylist, actuary, jeweller and professor, among others. I’m not sure the people in those professions would agree they are stress-light, let alone stress-free. Though I also imagine the jobs often seen as the most stressful really are damn bloody stressful: surgeon, chef, social worker, paramedic.
We give so much to our jobs these days that I sense a sea-change coming. Instead of weekend breaks and a two-week summer holiday every year to re-energise, with a sprint to the retirement finish line, I think we’ll see more and more people move to a new work pattern that creates mini-retirements at intervals. Workers may do a job at breakneck speed for, say, five years, accumulating enough wealth along the way so they can have a period of six months off, to recharge the batteries before they seek out a new career challenge.
While the vast universe of work and business is rapidly evolving, so are you. Your garden of skills and experiences is forever growing. Everything you have done and will do in the future creates new opportunities for you to make more money. Your earning potential will almost certainly have gone up in the last 12 months by virtue of the fact you have acquired new information and new abilities. It will probably have gone up enormously over the past five years.
Meditating on your new capabilities can fruitfully lead to new career opportunities. Keep moving, keep yourself alive to new paths. Don’t let a job or function define you. And always know your worth.
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