So often we hear people complain they are overworked and underpaid, and how they have no idea how to fix their situation. I think we can all relate that we have been there at one point or another.
Through the years, I have found a few key things that can help someone to have a successful career.
1) Make sure you are actively learning at your job on a daily basis:
The key to learning is being an active part of the process. Just like school, often people show up daily and expect their presence to develop them. True success means not only showing up but also being an active participant in aggressively seeking advice from others, reading books and following through immediately.
2) Seek to add value to the company you work for:
If you want to be successful, employers and clients need to see value in your work. If you want more money and more opportunity, it only makes sense that you need to be doing a job that adds more revenue or eliminates additional costs. Find ways where you can add revenue to a company or decrease expenses so that you are an asset to the company you work with rather than a liability.
3) Seek to add value to the people you work with:
Creating a great team around you is crucial in having a successful career. Almost all wildly successful people have developed a great team of people who work alongside them because of the value they see in each other. When you research the wealthiest person in the world it is no surprise that right up there in the top 50 alongside Bill Gates, are his members of his team like Michael Dell, Paul Allen, and Steven Ballmer.
4) Surround yourself with people more successful than you no matter how humbling the experience:
It is extremely humbling to imagine having to play alongside Colby Bryant or Michael Jordan on a basketball court, especially having been cut from the 7th grade basketball team despite being 5'8″ at the age of 10. However, if my goal were to improve my basketball game, I could only get better by playing daily with someone so successful. It's not only the physical strength that's developed; it's also the lessons to be learned by simply watching the habits of someone with such dedication and drive. The same holds true in business. The best way to do this is to study successful people and how they talk, walk, think and act.
5) Make as many mistakes as possible and smile! along the way:
All through school it was ingrained in me that mistakes were bad and I carried this mentality with me when I began working. A very intelligent mentor helped me change my view on mistakes when he made me look at the view scientists take with their studies. Each unsuccessful attempt to come to the right conclusion for a scientist is not labeled a failure, it's called an experiment. The more scientists experiment, the more miraculous things are created. I realized if I was afraid to experiment, I wouldn't ever come to any conclusions. So experiment I did… and still do.
So much of what I have learned has come from reading books from the expert like John Maxwell, Steven Covey, Dale Carnegie, David Schwartz and many more. I thank them for all the lessons they taught me and I thank the many mentors that have been patient with me through all my experiments while learning these lessons.