Career Coach. Management Consultant. Writer. Marketer. Accountant.
A few days ago, I told you how I fell in love after a business dinner.
What I didn’t tell you is that I received an award earlier that night. In fairness, I almost forgot about until I pulled it out of my mobile office backpack today.
It’s the illustrious baby’s bottom award, for being “smoothest in times of crisis”.
I bring this up because it highlights a key lesson that people overlook far too frequently. And that lesson is…
[Read more…]Here me out on this… it’s NOT about negotiation as some have guessed when I told them what I was planning on writing about.
So let’s get into it… [Read more…]
This idea randomly popped in my head today about the similarities between Dr Pepper, Baskin Robbins, and the world of management consulting.
The answer: flavors. I’ll explain.
Many will recognize Baskin Robbins as having 31 flavors of ice cream but fewer probably are aware that Dr Pepper supposedly has 23 flavors making up that sweet nectar.
Similarly, most people think of consulting as one thing. Those people would be woefully incorrect in that assessment. [Read more…]
Every year at consulting firms there’s a time where you have a mad exodus of people. The messages are delivered in all types of fashions but it ultimately comes down to two words: I quit.
In truthfulness, some need to go and some come with a little pain and the question on what could’ve been differently to keep them.
The reason this phenomenon is different than working in industry is because all of the promotion decisions happen at the same time in consulting. When you work at a company, you definitely have performance reviews but rarely are you confronted with your shortcomings in the same way as you are in consulting.
For example, in industry there’s often a chance to see you did a great job but we don’t have any open spots at the next level right now. Going into it, you kinda know someone has to quit, get fired, or die for a promotion opportunity to become available.
There are three reasons people typically are leaving the business. 1. They don’t want to travel anymore. 2. They don’t like the people they’re working with (and see no end in sight) 3. They didn’t get the promotion they wanted.
Let’s talk about #3 and if you want to cover #1 and #2, let me know and I’ll get into that a different day.
Notice on #3 I said “wanted” and not “deserved”. A lot of people want to start out making their case for promo by talking about how long they’ve been around (aka managed to not get fired). There’s nothing inspiring about this. Results should be your focus. Then and only then should you consider talking about your years of experience.
Years of experience is more of a hedge against you not screwing up when you get dropped into a new situation. The more experience you have, the less “new” situations and therefore risk you’re likely to come across.
Speaking of risk, here’s another thing. Knowing you can do something and demonstrating / convincing other people of your capability are totally different, unrelated things.
If you want to get promoted, get your receipts in order and make a case nobody can deny.
That ended up a little more ranty than I was expecting but I felt like I needed to get that out.
Those are the types of things I work with people on in the Success Factory (if you didn’t apply, it’s too late for April), but you can get some inspiration from my book.
Some people inevitably will come back and say it doesn’t look like it’s for them. My advice to them… don’t buy it then.
For the smart ones who buy it, read it, and apply some of the ideas, I’m confident they will get more value than the cost of the e-book, regardless of where they are in their career. Fundamentals never go out of style.
Get the book here:
https://ericpbutts.com/clu-book/
– EB
You ever wake up and you have that one thing on your calendar that has you feeling all kinds of nerves?
Too much angst to eat.
Heart pounding when you let your mind sit idly thinking about it for too long.
Or maybe you just get the sweaty palms as eloquently immortalized by Eminem in the movie 8 mile (such a good song).
Well that was me leading up to my first martial arts test tonight. I’m happy to report I survived despite being terrified I was going to freeze up in front of everyone including my wife.
If you know that feeling in your stomach that I’m talking about, then I have two words for you that are going to help you make moves in your career: don’t panic.
As it turns out, it’s really hard to focus when you’re panicking.
And as I’ve said before, if you can’t focus, you’ll make unnecessary mistakes. Those mistakes will cost you career progression, which equals money and the related recognition you know should be well within your grasp.
There’s another piece to this though.
The fact is getting outside of your comfort zone is a good thing. It’s one of those things you know is working when you feel it. It’s basically muscle confusion for your brain and all those sensations you feel are just your brain letting you know you’re transforming.
When there’s an opportunity to learn something new, embrace the chance. Acknowledge the fear and discomfort but don’t let yourself be paralyzed by it. Charge through it and see what happens when you’re on the other side.
As it turns out, I’ve gotten pretty good at helping people push themselves in this way. If you want to experience for yourself, you can apply for the success factory coaching program for another week. Who knows, if I get promoted from a white belt that might go to my head and I raise the price of coaching too. Head on over and apply now:
https://ericpbutts.com/success-factory/
Have a good weekend.
– EB
A friend of mine (Jason Jones) has begun frequently posting about finding his ikigai. At first, I thought “he seems pretty excited about it, so good for him.”
But the posts kept coming so then I needed to what ikigai was so I could know if I needed to be looking for it too. I will answer that in a second.
It is a Japanese concept that translates to “reason for being”. It is commonly depicted as a Venn diagram of four circles where the intersection is your reason for being.
A lot of people message me interested in consulting who have the first 3 covered but lack confidence in their skillset. In other words, they aren’t sure they are actually good at their job. If you find yourself in this situation, it may leave you feeling excited or happy but with some anxiety or a concern about your uncertain future. It usually presents as a question such as “what class can I take to be better prepared as a consultant?”
Believe it or not, the answer to that question frequently comes back to knowing your way around the almighty Excel spreadsheet. Decisions and strategies need to be supported by data and data needs a place to live. Most likely you will find that to be in a spreadsheet, so knowing what to do when data is staring you in the face can be a differentiator in your career.
So if you’re feeling uneasy in your pursuit of a consulting career (or any other where you end up handling numbers on a regular basis) because of a lack of confidence in your skillset, I suggest you head on over to Excel Bootcamp so you can try to find your ikigai.
As many of you know, I recently attended the National Black MBA Association (NBMBAA) Conference in Detroit. During the two-day job fair, I came across a lot of hungry young professionals trying to figure out this whole career thing. While there, I realized I’ve discussed the importance of showing up to conferences and job fairs and my own experience in turning a job fair into a management consulting job offer, but never really talked about what to do once you’re *at* the job fair. I’m going to change that now and share the 5 keys to job fair success. These have held true since I was in the recruiting process several years ago, and they are just as true today. [Read more…]
It’s scary isn’t it?
But at the same time it feels pretty good.
You know what I’m talking about – putting up that out of office and going off the grid.
It’s interesting, it seems the more you move up the ranks, the more scary this is, until you’re the big boss. Read: partner in consulting speak. I think the campus hires often may not have enough responsibility to be concerned. Or the prioritization of career over vacation may be heavily skewed toward the latter.
If I had to visualize it, I think it would look something like this:
You might be thinking this is about to be another post about millennial entitlement or something like that but it’s not. It’s something entirely different. Instead, I want to talk about why it’s important to take that time off and why the new generation gets it right.
I’m sitting on a plane right now thinking about how I want to get this (vacation) right this time and more importantly why I NEED to, and so do you.
A couple of weeks ago, someone sent me a question asking what I thought is the least amount of time someone should stay at a job before having two consecutive job changes. In other words, how long should you wait before you can consider job hopping? [Read more…]
What if I told you I had the answer to one the oldest career advice questions?
And that the answer shouldn’t be that surprising but it’s one you need to hear anyway?
Or that my answer applies to practically any industry, at least any job that requires you to interact with your customers or co-workers in person.
Even in 2018, that still covers… just about everyone.
So the question I’m talking about: what’s the best way to accelerate your career? [Read more…]