August 11, 2025 • 22 mins
“Just work hard and you’ll get promoted.”
If you’ve heard this before and it still hasn’t worked out… Kendall’s here to tell you why.
In this 100th episode of Secrets of the Career Game, Kendall calls BS on the most common career clichés that keep high-performers stuck and overlooked. From toxic loyalty traps to the myth of passion-driven success, this episode breaks down the 8 most mediocre pieces of advice—and replaces them with strategies that actually get you promoted, noticed, and respected.
This is not a motivational pep talk. It’s your playbook for making smarter, more strategic moves inside corporate systems that were never built to reward quiet hard work. Plus: Kendall launches a Name Our Listeners contest and issues a two-week networking challenge that could literally change your career trajectory.
Let’s celebrate 100 episodes by rewriting the rules.
In this episode, we discuss:
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What’s the worst career advice you’ve ever received?
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Why doesn’t hard work alone get you promoted?
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How do you build influence without playing dirty office politics?
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Who should you really be networking with?
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When does “loyalty” become career sabotage?
Don’t wait to get noticed—use this guide to make your next promotion a planned event, not a lucky break. https://thatcareercoach.myflodesk.com/promotion-guide/checkout
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kendall Berg (00:00):
Just work really hard and you'll get promoted.
Just do it.
Work super hard, like 80 hour work weeks and you'll get noticed, you'll get promoted.
Lies.
Okay.
There are very few situations that I can recall ever over the course of my career where the person who worked the hardest got promoted the fastest.
(00:21):
And by very few, I mean like less than three in 15 years and thousands of clients.
The person who works the hardest, who delivers the most work, becomes the workhorse.
And this isn't to say that you shouldn't be good at your job technically or tactically.
It doesn't mean that you shouldn't be taking on projects that are gonna get you visibility.
It doesn't mean that you shouldn't work hard.
(00:42):
But just working hard is not going to get you noticed or promoted.
Welcome back to this episode of Secrets of the Career Game.
So many people are trying to navigate a corporate world that is laden with secret, cleverly hidden and unspoken rules to a game that most employees don't even know that they're playing.
(01:03):
On this podcast, we try to give you a peek behind the curtains and some tips and tricks to ultimately make you successful in your career and help you progress a little bit faster.
Welcome back, my lovelies, to another fabulous episode.
I have decided to run a contest right now, just the second.
I need a name for all of you who listen to the pod.
(01:26):
Okay?
I need a name so that when I join, I can say hello to you and it be special and you feel connected to me, okay?
Because lovelies is my jam.
But we need a name and like, TCC does not work.
So if you're more creative than I am, pop into those comments and leave me a name that you think you all should be called when you check into these episodes.
(01:50):
Welcome back.
Today we have a very highly requested topic.
We're going to be going over eight pieces of.
I'm going to be nice and call them mediocre.
Eight pieces of mediocre career advice that I received early on in my career that I just disagree with.
You guys have been here for a while.
You know my style.
(02:11):
I'm not going to lie to you.
What I'm going to tell you is these are dumb.
All right, welcome back.
And I wrote them down.
And you guys know, if you watch the pod, if you tune in, I very rarely have notes.
I'm not a big note taker.
But I have notes today because I had to look through my brain wrinkles and find some of these bad pieces of advice and remember the context in which they were given to me for you guys.
(02:36):
You're welcome.
So thoughtful.
Feeling slightly chaotic today, guys.
All right, so eight pieces of bad career advice.
And we're going to start with number eight, and we're going to like, finish with the worst one in my opinion.
Thank you for tuning in.
All right, number eight is stick to the path and just climb the ladder.
(02:58):
So I worked with an Chro more recently in the last five years who told me once that she thought climbing your career was more like a lattice than a ladder.
Because sometimes you move diagonally, sometimes you move sideways, sometimes you take a step back in order to try a different division or a different industry.
And it's very rarely like an actual ladder that you just think.
(03:19):
But I do think that this is a big misconception and especially with older generations who stayed in roles for a longer period of time.
I recently read a study that, like, the average boomer stayed in roll 8 to 10 years per company.
Just wild.
But you weren't going to move around.
You were going to start as an accountant, and then you were going to become a senior accountant, and then you were going to be an accountant manager, and then you were going to be a senior manager of accounting, and then you were going to be a director of accounting.
(03:46):
And there are individuals who choose this directly vertical path.
And there's nothing necessarily wrong with it.
You niche down.
You really love it.
You're like, oh, my God, accounting is the best.
Fabulous.
Super jazzed for you, right?
There's nothing wrong with this approach.
However, for most people, that's not how it's gonna work, all right?
You're going to end up trying different things.
You're going to fit better into certain cultures.
(04:08):
You're going to enjoy certain types of work more than you anticipated.
I've talked about this a little bit on the POD before, but my background is in mathematics and economics.
That's what I studied in school.
I was going to go into research and education.
I started off building data science models.
That's what some of my first jobs were.
And found out that, like, I actually am not, like, super detail oriented.
(04:31):
Kind of a bummer.
Like, I love math because there's one right answer, and if you can get to that answer, then it's like the right answer.
And I really dug that in school.
But as I got into more like business applications, a lot of the time the data is messy.
You're getting a lot of different data sources.
You have to check data against different places.
And I found that, like, for me, that was not really enjoyable to be like in the numbers every single day, validating that every single one made sense and that it reconciled.
(04:54):
And what I was much better at was coming up with solutions to problems similar to how I would solve math problems, but doing it in different scales.
So I've worked in operations, marketing, pricing, supply chain, construction, finance.
Like I've run the gambit.
And what I really like is solving problems.
And so if you are so married to a specific ladder when you start your career, I do think it holds you back from figuring out what you're really great at and it holds you back from finding your true niche, which is where your passion statements are going to align with your work.
(05:26):
And so I think being open to opportunity and understanding yourself and what you're really good at is actually much more important than like sticking to one path and like climbing a ladder vertically, in my opinion.
Okay, number seven, follow your passion and the money will come.
(05:50):
I'm sorry for listening to this in your car and that was loud.
I, I don't think this is true, like really in any way.
I don't think this is true.
I think that follow your good relationship building skills and the money will come.
Sure, I can get behind that as a saying, but I don't think being technically proficient or enjoying your work necessarily aligns to making money.
(06:14):
That being said, I think you can have a passion job and make a lot of money, but the way you make the money is not going to be through just being good at that passion job.
It's going to because you are excellent at networking, you are excellent at sales, you are good at building a personal brand, you have social media acumen.
Like there are other components that go into being successful that are not just your passion.
(06:40):
Okay.
I have known many a talented singer, artist, painter, pick a creative avenue who, oh, the passion and the skill, who will never make a ton of money from their craft.
And it's not because they're not great and they don't deserve it.
It's just because money does not come to the passion.
Money comes from building relationships, networking, putting yourself out there, building a personal brand, doing social media, all the things I mentioned before, right?
(07:09):
Being passionate is just simply not enough.
Now it's okay to say follow your passions despite the money.
I'm not against it.
I'm not about it, but I'm not against it.
But I think saying, oh, I really love this and people are going to sense my love for it and that's going to bring me money is not necessarily true.
Right?
(07:29):
Coaching is a Great example for me.
I love coaching.
I want to help you guys.
I put a ton of free advice out on the Internet, this episode included, because I want so many people to find more success in their career.
I really do.
The money did not come to me because I'm really passionate about coaching.
The money that comes into my business is because I built a really clear brand.
(07:51):
I networked really well.
I built really great relationships with my clients.
I know how to communicate things tactically.
I have high levels of business acumen, like, and I don't even make that much money, right?
So, like, follow your passion and the money's gonna come to you.
No, I'm not against following your passion.
But to do it and assume you're gonna be a billionaire for it.
(08:15):
A little bit optimistic.
It's just a smidgem optimistic.
Okay, number six, keep your head down and avoid office politics.
Yes and no.
When you are more junior.
Yes.
Don't go picking a fight with some SVP because they looked at you silly in a meeting.
Okay?
It's not stay out of the politics at that point.
But when you are more senior and you are put in positions where you are constantly chafing or feeling friction with a coworker, the worst thing that you can do isolate yourself from them.
(08:47):
Now, I'm not talking about the toxic co worker who threw a shoe at you in a meeting.
Okay, maybe we avoid them.
They seem cray, right?
But the average employee who, like, we get along, we understand each other's perspectives, but, like, there's just constantly friction.
We're always against each other, we're constantly trying to do different things.
It just feels like a fight all the time.
If you isolate yourself from that person, you give them leave to create their own reputation of you in their head versus if you keep in touch with them and you're constantly communicating with them and you're giving them benefit of the doubt and you're really nice and you're trying to build a relationship, you're being authentic with them.
(09:21):
You can have a foundationally solid relationship and still not agree on work things.
But that is the best way to kind of navigate it.
So avoiding the issue, pretending like it's going to go away.
This is the same as not telling your boss you made a mistake because you're hoping he doesn't notice.
They're going to notice.
It is much better to be able to write your own story, good, bad, or otherwise, than it is to remove yourself from an equation and let other people fill in the blanks.
(09:48):
Just my two cents.
You will have to learn to navigate office politics if you want to be senior level to executive.
Now, you may not want that.
Cool.
You want to be the quiet IC accountant who sits at their desk.
Poor accountants today.
I'm just really on y'.
All.
I love accountants, by the way.
You want to sit at your desk and do your accounting and never talk to anybody and not be part office politics.
(10:08):
Never get promoted.
Cool.
Go for it, bro.
But if you are looking to progress your career, avoiding the issue office politics is not going to make them go away and it's not going to make you any more successful.
Learning how to navigate it successfully, that's what's going to build growth and that's what's going to allow you to progress.
Number five.
And I think you guys are going to be surprised that I put this so low.
Just going to be honest.
Your work should speak for itself.
(10:30):
Okay, Susie, that's great.
Your work does not speak for itself.
I have never had a spreadsheet that I made, no matter how beautiful or color coded or fabulously organized with really complicated equations, walk over to my boss and tell my boss how great I am.
Excel does not do that.
Neither does your email campaign.
(10:51):
Neither does your PowerPoint deck.
Neither does fill in the blank tasks that you complete.
Your work will not speak for itself.
It cannot talk.
You are the spokesperson for your work, and if you do not become the spokesperson for your work, somebody else is going to steal credit and do it themselves.
Your boss is going to start becoming the spokesperson for your work.
Your co worker is going to become the spokesperson for your work, and they're not going to give credit to you.
(11:16):
They might.
Every once in a while we have a really great boss who, like, really cares about us and gives credit, but for the most part, they're not going to give you credit.
And so what's going to happen?
You're going to do all the work and John, who goes to the happy hours, who advocates for himself, who is a spokesperson for his work, is going to get promoted and you're not going to understand why.
Your work does not speak for itself.
(11:37):
You have to speak for your work.
You are the spokesperson.
Get out your own way.
Tell your boss what you're doing, why it's important, what's the impact?
There are 50 million episodes.
Not really.
That would be awesome, though.
But there are a lot of episodes in this podcast where I talk about how to articulate your impact, how to communicate what makes you effective at work.
Tons and tons.
On that.
(11:57):
But this, if you have followed me for any measure of time, should just be implied.
Your work does not speak for itself.
No.
4.
You should stay at one company and show loyalty.
I am all for that.
If the company shows loyalty to you in return.
If you work for a company and they are promoting you every 18 to 36 months into new roles, they're giving you new opportunities.
(12:21):
They listen to your feedback.
They align you with new teams.
They pay for your certifications, your education.
They care about you, and you are staying in line with market rates for your role.
Heck, yeah.
Stay at that company.
Also, write about them on Glassdoor and fishbowl and LinkedIn.
Give them some props.
(12:42):
Holy heck, yes.
Stay with them.
If they are loyal to you, be loyal to them.
But if they are not loyal to you, the only person who is responsible for your career is you.
It's a secret in my book.
It's not very secretive.
Okay, it's not very secretive, but you are the only person responsible for your career.
Do something about it.
(13:02):
If your company is loyal to you.
Yes.
Day.
I always tell clients they'll come to me, and they're like, I have to quit my job.
Like, why?
They're like, I haven't gotten promoted.
I'm like, great.
What did your boss say when you told them we wanted to get promoted?
They're like, I didn't exactly tell them, but they know.
No, they don't.
Give your company a chance to be loyal to you before you jump ship.
(13:23):
Give them a chance to do the right thing for you.
And then if they don't, dude, run like you stole something.
Go get something else.
Okay.
I know the market's not great right now.
I know that jobs are slower.
I had a client today, though, who called me and was like, hey, I have three interviews, and I don't know what to do.
Right.
There are still jobs.
Position yourself.
Well, you don't have to stay at one company to show loyalty.
(13:44):
They're not going to be loyal to you if they do headcount reductions or if they do riffs or if they do layoffs.
Do what's best for you.
But if they're loyal to you, nothing wrong with staying.
Not against.
It just has to be the right partnership.
Number three.
Don't rock the boat, baby.
Rock the boat.
Don't tip the boat over.
Aren't you guys so glad that I can't sing?
(14:07):
Because this podcast would just be, like, a constant repertoire of me turning career advice into song.
But for all of your eardrums, I shall not Be doing that.
All right.
Don't rock the boat is number three, dude.
Rock that boat now.
Know the politics, know the culture, know your boss, know what's important to people.
(14:28):
Don't rock the boat.
Just be stupid.
Don't walk into a meeting and be like, I hate gif.
Jiff should be fired.
That is not what I mean when I say rock the boat.
But when you are coming up with new and innovative ideas, when you're coming up with better ways to do things, when you are driving efficiency, when you are collaborating effectively across groups, when you are building good systems that are going to help your company scale and grow, you can rock the boat in that context.
(14:55):
Now you need to learn how to communicate that.
You need to learn how to disagree effectively.
You need to learn how to make a business case.
There's lots of skills that go into rocking the boat effectively.
But playing it super safe, where you only ever do the tasks your boss asks you to do, is not going to help you get promoted.
I give this example in my book, I've given it on other episodes.
(15:16):
You get in it.
Now, if I hire somebody to run a report every Friday at 7am and they run that report every Friday at 7am And I never hear from them other than that, will I promote them?
No.
I'll pay them.
They did the job I hired them to do, I'm going to give them that paycheck.
Am I going to promote them?
No.
Are they going to get a glowing year end review?
(15:37):
No.
But if I give somebody a job to run a report every Friday and they meet with every stakeholder of that report and they understand how that report's being used and they come back and they build a second version of that report that's more accurate, that's driving those KPIs better, and then they automate it in a dashboard, they go back out to all the stakeholders, they roll it out and then they report on utilization to make sure it's being adopted and they can tie that adoption to specific outcomes in quality or efficiency or cost reduction and they bring that back to me.
(16:06):
Are they going to get promoted?
Probably because they rocked the boat a little bit.
They took a report I asked them to run and they said, this report's fine, but I can make it better, I can do it better, I can do it differently, but I need to understand what problems I'm solving.
And you do the research and you build a solution, you roll out that solution, you track its success.
(16:26):
Yes, you may have rocked the boat a little bit, but you did A heck of a lot of great work.
Don't play it too safe.
At some point the boat must be rocked, right?
Otherwise you end up with one of those 100 year old companies that doesn't know how much cash is in their bank account.
Shout out to a company I used to work for.
All right, number two, say yes to every opportunity.
That is how you grow.
(16:47):
Nope.
No, no, no.
Very rarely in your career will the answer to more work be yes or no.
Usually the answer is somewhere in the middle.
Hey, I'd be happy to take that on, but it will mean I can't do this.
I talk about this.
This is like a common theme.
In the last few weeks, I've been on a lot of podcast episodes as a guest.
We've been talking about a lot of these things.
And there's a quote that I heard she was on my podcast.
(17:10):
So we'll find the episode Emily and we'll put it in the show notes.
But she says in her podcast interview with me, and I've always loved it and I quote it all the time.
It's like your urgency does not have to match someone else's.
If they come to you with a fire drill or something that they want you to do, you do not have to match it with the same level of urgency.
You can decide it's not as important, you can deprioritize it, you can decide it's more important.
(17:33):
But saying yes to everything, being the yes man who takes on every single task, who does every single job, who never pushes back, who never sets good expectations, and then who doesn't advocate for themselves, that's how you become this jack of all trades that doesn't get promoted.
You can be a jack of all trades and get promoted.
Different skill, right?
But saying yes to everything, to every job, to every opportunity, is not actually going to help you grow.
(17:58):
Knowing what you're good at, aligning what you're good at with what you're doing, and understanding the priorities of your firm so you can best deliver them, that is going to help you grow.
That's going to help you get promoted.
All right, number one, there should be zero surprise if you're still listening to this episode, that this is number one.
Just work really hard and you'll get promoted.
(18:20):
Just do it.
Work super hard, like 80 hour work weeks and you'll get noticed.
You'll get promoted.
Lies.
Okay.
There are very few situations that I can recall ever over the course of my career where the person who worked the hardest got promoted the fastest and by very few, I mean like less than three in 15 years, thousands of clients.
(18:43):
The person who works the hardest, who delivers the most work, becomes the workhorse.
And this isn't to say that you shouldn't be good at your job, technically or tactically.
It doesn't mean that you shouldn't be taking on projects that are going to get you visibility.
It doesn't mean that you shouldn't work hard.
But just working hard is not going to get you noticed or promoted.
(19:04):
Working hard and networking, working hard and building a personal brand, working hard and taking on leadership opportunities, working hard and maintaining your boundaries, those will help you get noticed, those will help you get promoted.
But just working hard, Nah.
(19:25):
There is a caveat to this.
If you are in a highly specialized, highly technical role and you are below the senior manager level, you could just work hard and get noticed, right?
If you're an IC data scientist, maybe you do just work really hard, build some really great models, and your boss is like, you're fabulous and you get promoted.
Okay?
If you are a chemical engineer and you are just working really hard, getting a lot of things delivered, being really productive, maybe you do get noticed.
(19:51):
But at some point, even in highly technical roles, so I'm talking to all my engineers of any avenue, okay?
At some point you stop getting noticed for the hard work because you haven't done the other work.
Relationship building, networking, brand establishment, health advocacy.
If you haven't done those pieces, at some point, your good luck is going to run out and you are going to go from being somebody who worked really hard and got a lot of recognition for it to somebody who cannot figure out how to get promoted for their life.
(20:22):
I see it all the time.
It was me.
I have been ye.
I don't know that I've ever said ye in an episode.
You're welcome.
All right.
I have been the person who was technically proficient and stopped moving up.
I have been there.
I have lived it, I have experienced it.
And what I saw was people who were not nearly as technically proficient as me climbing the ranks much faster.
(20:46):
Because they did all of these things that I talk about on my channel because they did all of these things that I'm telling you to do right now.
They built relationships, they advocated for themselves, they networked.
So if you do nothing else, if you listen to this episode of all this bad advice that I got and gave and you're like, this is cool, Kendall, I agree with your point, but I don't know what to do to make it better.
(21:07):
Your one thing I Want you to write down five names of influential people in your company.
Don't write the CEO.
Okay, let's not be like over eager here, but write some of your boss's peers.
Some of your boss's peers.
Maybe one of your peers who when they talk in a meeting, everybody's like, we need to listen.
Right?
Five names.
And go schedule meetings with every single one of them in the next two weeks.
(21:30):
Go meet with them, talk to them.
Don't talk to them about that project.
Hey, how are you?
Tell me about yourself.
We've worked together for years.
I feel like I don't know you very well.
I was looking up at your LinkedIn.
You've grown really quickly in the company.
Can you tell me about that?
How has your journey been?
What's your background in?
Get to know them as a person.
Be authentic.
Be interested.
(21:51):
Okay?
Don't ask questions you're not interested in.
They gonna know.
Don't be like, who's your favorite football team, but you hate football.
Dumb.
All right?
Be authentic.
Communicate.
Build relationships.
And I promise you that alone will change how you're perceived.
That alone will help you start to make the progress that you want.
And it'll be fast.
(22:11):
And if you are one of those people who are like, I struggle with networking, I struggle with building relationships, I don't know how to do it.
I go to my website, thatcareercoach.net look up under resources in the store and you'll be able to see outreach scripts.
I have networking outreach scripts for internal to your company, external LinkedIn.
I have agendas on what to talk about in those meetings, how to solicit information, how to keep those relationships going.
(22:35):
Go in and pick up your guide.
If you're interested in that will help.
But I swear, if you just go meet with five people next week, it will change your life.
So hopefully you guys loved today's episode.
If you did, go ahead and leave us five stars.
If you have more bad advice that you've received in your career, leave it in the comments below.
I love that.
Love to chat with you about it.
Otherwise, tune back in next week for another great episode.
Just work really hard and you'll get promoted.
Just do it.
Work super hard, like 80 hour work weeks and you'll get noticed, you'll get promoted.
Lies.
Okay.
There are very few situations that I can recall ever over the course of my career where the person who worked the hardest got promoted the fastest.
(00:21):
And by very few, I mean like less than three in 15 years and thousands of clients.
The person who works the hardest, who delivers the most work, becomes the workhorse.
And this isn't to say that you shouldn't be good at your job technically or tactically.
It doesn't mean that you shouldn't be taking on projects that are gonna get you visibility.
It doesn't mean that you shouldn't work hard.
(00:42):
But just working hard is not going to get you noticed or promoted.
Welcome back to this episode of Secrets of the Career Game.
So many people are trying to navigate a corporate world that is laden with secret, cleverly hidden and unspoken rules to a game that most employees don't even know that they're playing.
(01:03):
On this podcast, we try to give you a peek behind the curtains and some tips and tricks to ultimately make you successful in your career and help you progress a little bit faster.
Welcome back, my lovelies, to another fabulous episode.
I have decided to run a contest right now, just the second.
I need a name for all of you who listen to the pod.
(01:26):
Okay?
I need a name so that when I join, I can say hello to you and it be special and you feel connected to me, okay?
Because lovelies is my jam.
But we need a name and like, TCC does not work.
So if you're more creative than I am, pop into those comments and leave me a name that you think you all should be called when you check into these episodes.
(01:50):
Welcome back.
Today we have a very highly requested topic.
We're going to be going over eight pieces of.
I'm going to be nice and call them mediocre.
Eight pieces of mediocre career advice that I received early on in my career that I just disagree with.
You guys have been here for a while.
You know my style.
(02:11):
I'm not going to lie to you.
What I'm going to tell you is these are dumb.
All right, welcome back.
And I wrote them down.
And you guys know, if you watch the pod, if you tune in, I very rarely have notes.
I'm not a big note taker.
But I have notes today because I had to look through my brain wrinkles and find some of these bad pieces of advice and remember the context in which they were given to me for you guys.
(02:36):
You're welcome.
So thoughtful.
Feeling slightly chaotic today, guys.
All right, so eight pieces of bad career advice.
And we're going to start with number eight, and we're going to like, finish with the worst one in my opinion.
Thank you for tuning in.
All right, number eight is stick to the path and just climb the ladder.
(02:58):
So I worked with an Chro more recently in the last five years who told me once that she thought climbing your career was more like a lattice than a ladder.
Because sometimes you move diagonally, sometimes you move sideways, sometimes you take a step back in order to try a different division or a different industry.
And it's very rarely like an actual ladder that you just think.
(03:19):
But I do think that this is a big misconception and especially with older generations who stayed in roles for a longer period of time.
I recently read a study that, like, the average boomer stayed in roll 8 to 10 years per company.
Just wild.
But you weren't going to move around.
You were going to start as an accountant, and then you were going to become a senior accountant, and then you were going to be an accountant manager, and then you were going to be a senior manager of accounting, and then you were going to be a director of accounting.
(03:46):
And there are individuals who choose this directly vertical path.
And there's nothing necessarily wrong with it.
You niche down.
You really love it.
You're like, oh, my God, accounting is the best.
Fabulous.
Super jazzed for you, right?
There's nothing wrong with this approach.
However, for most people, that's not how it's gonna work, all right?
You're going to end up trying different things.
You're going to fit better into certain cultures.
(04:08):
You're going to enjoy certain types of work more than you anticipated.
I've talked about this a little bit on the POD before, but my background is in mathematics and economics.
That's what I studied in school.
I was going to go into research and education.
I started off building data science models.
That's what some of my first jobs were.
And found out that, like, I actually am not, like, super detail oriented.
(04:31):
Kind of a bummer.
Like, I love math because there's one right answer, and if you can get to that answer, then it's like the right answer.
And I really dug that in school.
But as I got into more like business applications, a lot of the time the data is messy.
You're getting a lot of different data sources.
You have to check data against different places.
And I found that, like, for me, that was not really enjoyable to be like in the numbers every single day, validating that every single one made sense and that it reconciled.
(04:54):
And what I was much better at was coming up with solutions to problems similar to how I would solve math problems, but doing it in different scales.
So I've worked in operations, marketing, pricing, supply chain, construction, finance.
Like I've run the gambit.
And what I really like is solving problems.
And so if you are so married to a specific ladder when you start your career, I do think it holds you back from figuring out what you're really great at and it holds you back from finding your true niche, which is where your passion statements are going to align with your work.
(05:26):
And so I think being open to opportunity and understanding yourself and what you're really good at is actually much more important than like sticking to one path and like climbing a ladder vertically, in my opinion.
Okay, number seven, follow your passion and the money will come.
(05:50):
I'm sorry for listening to this in your car and that was loud.
I, I don't think this is true, like really in any way.
I don't think this is true.
I think that follow your good relationship building skills and the money will come.
Sure, I can get behind that as a saying, but I don't think being technically proficient or enjoying your work necessarily aligns to making money.
(06:14):
That being said, I think you can have a passion job and make a lot of money, but the way you make the money is not going to be through just being good at that passion job.
It's going to because you are excellent at networking, you are excellent at sales, you are good at building a personal brand, you have social media acumen.
Like there are other components that go into being successful that are not just your passion.
(06:40):
Okay.
I have known many a talented singer, artist, painter, pick a creative avenue who, oh, the passion and the skill, who will never make a ton of money from their craft.
And it's not because they're not great and they don't deserve it.
It's just because money does not come to the passion.
Money comes from building relationships, networking, putting yourself out there, building a personal brand, doing social media, all the things I mentioned before, right?
(07:09):
Being passionate is just simply not enough.
Now it's okay to say follow your passions despite the money.
I'm not against it.
I'm not about it, but I'm not against it.
But I think saying, oh, I really love this and people are going to sense my love for it and that's going to bring me money is not necessarily true.
Right?
(07:29):
Coaching is a Great example for me.
I love coaching.
I want to help you guys.
I put a ton of free advice out on the Internet, this episode included, because I want so many people to find more success in their career.
I really do.
The money did not come to me because I'm really passionate about coaching.
The money that comes into my business is because I built a really clear brand.
(07:51):
I networked really well.
I built really great relationships with my clients.
I know how to communicate things tactically.
I have high levels of business acumen, like, and I don't even make that much money, right?
So, like, follow your passion and the money's gonna come to you.
No, I'm not against following your passion.
But to do it and assume you're gonna be a billionaire for it.
(08:15):
A little bit optimistic.
It's just a smidgem optimistic.
Okay, number six, keep your head down and avoid office politics.
Yes and no.
When you are more junior.
Yes.
Don't go picking a fight with some SVP because they looked at you silly in a meeting.
Okay?
It's not stay out of the politics at that point.
But when you are more senior and you are put in positions where you are constantly chafing or feeling friction with a coworker, the worst thing that you can do isolate yourself from them.
(08:47):
Now, I'm not talking about the toxic co worker who threw a shoe at you in a meeting.
Okay, maybe we avoid them.
They seem cray, right?
But the average employee who, like, we get along, we understand each other's perspectives, but, like, there's just constantly friction.
We're always against each other, we're constantly trying to do different things.
It just feels like a fight all the time.
If you isolate yourself from that person, you give them leave to create their own reputation of you in their head versus if you keep in touch with them and you're constantly communicating with them and you're giving them benefit of the doubt and you're really nice and you're trying to build a relationship, you're being authentic with them.
(09:21):
You can have a foundationally solid relationship and still not agree on work things.
But that is the best way to kind of navigate it.
So avoiding the issue, pretending like it's going to go away.
This is the same as not telling your boss you made a mistake because you're hoping he doesn't notice.
They're going to notice.
It is much better to be able to write your own story, good, bad, or otherwise, than it is to remove yourself from an equation and let other people fill in the blanks.
(09:48):
Just my two cents.
You will have to learn to navigate office politics if you want to be senior level to executive.
Now, you may not want that.
Cool.
You want to be the quiet IC accountant who sits at their desk.
Poor accountants today.
I'm just really on y'.
All.
I love accountants, by the way.
You want to sit at your desk and do your accounting and never talk to anybody and not be part office politics.
(10:08):
Never get promoted.
Cool.
Go for it, bro.
But if you are looking to progress your career, avoiding the issue office politics is not going to make them go away and it's not going to make you any more successful.
Learning how to navigate it successfully, that's what's going to build growth and that's what's going to allow you to progress.
Number five.
And I think you guys are going to be surprised that I put this so low.
Just going to be honest.
Your work should speak for itself.
(10:30):
Okay, Susie, that's great.
Your work does not speak for itself.
I have never had a spreadsheet that I made, no matter how beautiful or color coded or fabulously organized with really complicated equations, walk over to my boss and tell my boss how great I am.
Excel does not do that.
Neither does your email campaign.
(10:51):
Neither does your PowerPoint deck.
Neither does fill in the blank tasks that you complete.
Your work will not speak for itself.
It cannot talk.
You are the spokesperson for your work, and if you do not become the spokesperson for your work, somebody else is going to steal credit and do it themselves.
Your boss is going to start becoming the spokesperson for your work.
Your co worker is going to become the spokesperson for your work, and they're not going to give credit to you.
(11:16):
They might.
Every once in a while we have a really great boss who, like, really cares about us and gives credit, but for the most part, they're not going to give you credit.
And so what's going to happen?
You're going to do all the work and John, who goes to the happy hours, who advocates for himself, who is a spokesperson for his work, is going to get promoted and you're not going to understand why.
Your work does not speak for itself.
(11:37):
You have to speak for your work.
You are the spokesperson.
Get out your own way.
Tell your boss what you're doing, why it's important, what's the impact?
There are 50 million episodes.
Not really.
That would be awesome, though.
But there are a lot of episodes in this podcast where I talk about how to articulate your impact, how to communicate what makes you effective at work.
Tons and tons.
On that.
(11:57):
But this, if you have followed me for any measure of time, should just be implied.
Your work does not speak for itself.
No.
4.
You should stay at one company and show loyalty.
I am all for that.
If the company shows loyalty to you in return.
If you work for a company and they are promoting you every 18 to 36 months into new roles, they're giving you new opportunities.
(12:21):
They listen to your feedback.
They align you with new teams.
They pay for your certifications, your education.
They care about you, and you are staying in line with market rates for your role.
Heck, yeah.
Stay at that company.
Also, write about them on Glassdoor and fishbowl and LinkedIn.
Give them some props.
(12:42):
Holy heck, yes.
Stay with them.
If they are loyal to you, be loyal to them.
But if they are not loyal to you, the only person who is responsible for your career is you.
It's a secret in my book.
It's not very secretive.
Okay, it's not very secretive, but you are the only person responsible for your career.
Do something about it.
(13:02):
If your company is loyal to you.
Yes.
Day.
I always tell clients they'll come to me, and they're like, I have to quit my job.
Like, why?
They're like, I haven't gotten promoted.
I'm like, great.
What did your boss say when you told them we wanted to get promoted?
They're like, I didn't exactly tell them, but they know.
No, they don't.
Give your company a chance to be loyal to you before you jump ship.
(13:23):
Give them a chance to do the right thing for you.
And then if they don't, dude, run like you stole something.
Go get something else.
Okay.
I know the market's not great right now.
I know that jobs are slower.
I had a client today, though, who called me and was like, hey, I have three interviews, and I don't know what to do.
Right.
There are still jobs.
Position yourself.
Well, you don't have to stay at one company to show loyalty.
(13:44):
They're not going to be loyal to you if they do headcount reductions or if they do riffs or if they do layoffs.
Do what's best for you.
But if they're loyal to you, nothing wrong with staying.
Not against.
It just has to be the right partnership.
Number three.
Don't rock the boat, baby.
Rock the boat.
Don't tip the boat over.
Aren't you guys so glad that I can't sing?
(14:07):
Because this podcast would just be, like, a constant repertoire of me turning career advice into song.
But for all of your eardrums, I shall not Be doing that.
All right.
Don't rock the boat is number three, dude.
Rock that boat now.
Know the politics, know the culture, know your boss, know what's important to people.
(14:28):
Don't rock the boat.
Just be stupid.
Don't walk into a meeting and be like, I hate gif.
Jiff should be fired.
That is not what I mean when I say rock the boat.
But when you are coming up with new and innovative ideas, when you're coming up with better ways to do things, when you are driving efficiency, when you are collaborating effectively across groups, when you are building good systems that are going to help your company scale and grow, you can rock the boat in that context.
(14:55):
Now you need to learn how to communicate that.
You need to learn how to disagree effectively.
You need to learn how to make a business case.
There's lots of skills that go into rocking the boat effectively.
But playing it super safe, where you only ever do the tasks your boss asks you to do, is not going to help you get promoted.
I give this example in my book, I've given it on other episodes.
(15:16):
You get in it.
Now, if I hire somebody to run a report every Friday at 7am and they run that report every Friday at 7am And I never hear from them other than that, will I promote them?
No.
I'll pay them.
They did the job I hired them to do, I'm going to give them that paycheck.
Am I going to promote them?
No.
Are they going to get a glowing year end review?
(15:37):
No.
But if I give somebody a job to run a report every Friday and they meet with every stakeholder of that report and they understand how that report's being used and they come back and they build a second version of that report that's more accurate, that's driving those KPIs better, and then they automate it in a dashboard, they go back out to all the stakeholders, they roll it out and then they report on utilization to make sure it's being adopted and they can tie that adoption to specific outcomes in quality or efficiency or cost reduction and they bring that back to me.
(16:06):
Are they going to get promoted?
Probably because they rocked the boat a little bit.
They took a report I asked them to run and they said, this report's fine, but I can make it better, I can do it better, I can do it differently, but I need to understand what problems I'm solving.
And you do the research and you build a solution, you roll out that solution, you track its success.
(16:26):
Yes, you may have rocked the boat a little bit, but you did A heck of a lot of great work.
Don't play it too safe.
At some point the boat must be rocked, right?
Otherwise you end up with one of those 100 year old companies that doesn't know how much cash is in their bank account.
Shout out to a company I used to work for.
All right, number two, say yes to every opportunity.
That is how you grow.
(16:47):
Nope.
No, no, no.
Very rarely in your career will the answer to more work be yes or no.
Usually the answer is somewhere in the middle.
Hey, I'd be happy to take that on, but it will mean I can't do this.
I talk about this.
This is like a common theme.
In the last few weeks, I've been on a lot of podcast episodes as a guest.
We've been talking about a lot of these things.
And there's a quote that I heard she was on my podcast.
(17:10):
So we'll find the episode Emily and we'll put it in the show notes.
But she says in her podcast interview with me, and I've always loved it and I quote it all the time.
It's like your urgency does not have to match someone else's.
If they come to you with a fire drill or something that they want you to do, you do not have to match it with the same level of urgency.
You can decide it's not as important, you can deprioritize it, you can decide it's more important.
(17:33):
But saying yes to everything, being the yes man who takes on every single task, who does every single job, who never pushes back, who never sets good expectations, and then who doesn't advocate for themselves, that's how you become this jack of all trades that doesn't get promoted.
You can be a jack of all trades and get promoted.
Different skill, right?
But saying yes to everything, to every job, to every opportunity, is not actually going to help you grow.
(17:58):
Knowing what you're good at, aligning what you're good at with what you're doing, and understanding the priorities of your firm so you can best deliver them, that is going to help you grow.
That's going to help you get promoted.
All right, number one, there should be zero surprise if you're still listening to this episode, that this is number one.
Just work really hard and you'll get promoted.
(18:20):
Just do it.
Work super hard, like 80 hour work weeks and you'll get noticed.
You'll get promoted.
Lies.
Okay.
There are very few situations that I can recall ever over the course of my career where the person who worked the hardest got promoted the fastest and by very few, I mean like less than three in 15 years, thousands of clients.
(18:43):
The person who works the hardest, who delivers the most work, becomes the workhorse.
And this isn't to say that you shouldn't be good at your job, technically or tactically.
It doesn't mean that you shouldn't be taking on projects that are going to get you visibility.
It doesn't mean that you shouldn't work hard.
But just working hard is not going to get you noticed or promoted.
(19:04):
Working hard and networking, working hard and building a personal brand, working hard and taking on leadership opportunities, working hard and maintaining your boundaries, those will help you get noticed, those will help you get promoted.
But just working hard, Nah.
(19:25):
There is a caveat to this.
If you are in a highly specialized, highly technical role and you are below the senior manager level, you could just work hard and get noticed, right?
If you're an IC data scientist, maybe you do just work really hard, build some really great models, and your boss is like, you're fabulous and you get promoted.
Okay?
If you are a chemical engineer and you are just working really hard, getting a lot of things delivered, being really productive, maybe you do get noticed.
(19:51):
But at some point, even in highly technical roles, so I'm talking to all my engineers of any avenue, okay?
At some point you stop getting noticed for the hard work because you haven't done the other work.
Relationship building, networking, brand establishment, health advocacy.
If you haven't done those pieces, at some point, your good luck is going to run out and you are going to go from being somebody who worked really hard and got a lot of recognition for it to somebody who cannot figure out how to get promoted for their life.
(20:22):
I see it all the time.
It was me.
I have been ye.
I don't know that I've ever said ye in an episode.
You're welcome.
All right.
I have been the person who was technically proficient and stopped moving up.
I have been there.
I have lived it, I have experienced it.
And what I saw was people who were not nearly as technically proficient as me climbing the ranks much faster.
(20:46):
Because they did all of these things that I talk about on my channel because they did all of these things that I'm telling you to do right now.
They built relationships, they advocated for themselves, they networked.
So if you do nothing else, if you listen to this episode of all this bad advice that I got and gave and you're like, this is cool, Kendall, I agree with your point, but I don't know what to do to make it better.
(21:07):
Your one thing I Want you to write down five names of influential people in your company.
Don't write the CEO.
Okay, let's not be like over eager here, but write some of your boss's peers.
Some of your boss's peers.
Maybe one of your peers who when they talk in a meeting, everybody's like, we need to listen.
Right?
Five names.
And go schedule meetings with every single one of them in the next two weeks.
(21:30):
Go meet with them, talk to them.
Don't talk to them about that project.
Hey, how are you?
Tell me about yourself.
We've worked together for years.
I feel like I don't know you very well.
I was looking up at your LinkedIn.
You've grown really quickly in the company.
Can you tell me about that?
How has your journey been?
What's your background in?
Get to know them as a person.
Be authentic.
Be interested.
(21:51):
Okay?
Don't ask questions you're not interested in.
They gonna know.
Don't be like, who's your favorite football team, but you hate football.
Dumb.
All right?
Be authentic.
Communicate.
Build relationships.
And I promise you that alone will change how you're perceived.
That alone will help you start to make the progress that you want.
And it'll be fast.
(22:11):
And if you are one of those people who are like, I struggle with networking, I struggle with building relationships, I don't know how to do it.
I go to my website, thatcareercoach.net look up under resources in the store and you'll be able to see outreach scripts.
I have networking outreach scripts for internal to your company, external LinkedIn.
I have agendas on what to talk about in those meetings, how to solicit information, how to keep those relationships going.
(22:35):
Go in and pick up your guide.
If you're interested in that will help.
But I swear, if you just go meet with five people next week, it will change your life.
So hopefully you guys loved today's episode.
If you did, go ahead and leave us five stars.
If you have more bad advice that you've received in your career, leave it in the comments below.
I love that.
Love to chat with you about it.
Otherwise, tune back in next week for another great episode.
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