Transcript – Be So Good They Have To Hire You

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00:00 Welcome back to The Deviant Thinking podcast. I’m your host, Jennifer Thompson and today and always will explore career advice that breaks the rules. Now today before we start, I do want to tell you a little bit about a promotion that I have going on for the month of April. And it is with my LinkedIn program. It is creating a remarkable LinkedIn profile that helps you stand out and normally this program is $49. And it works through step by step on how to update that LinkedIn profile to really get great results. But for the month of April, I’m offering it for just $9.99. You will find that link in the show notes. And if you’re interested in that hop on over and now on to our regularly scheduled podcast.

00:53 In today’s episode is all about being so good that they have to hire you and before any of you hit the pause button because you’re not actively looking for work. We are all always looking for work. And in today’s podcast, it is about being awesome at your job, being someone who is desirable to have on the team, and doing remarkable work so that you can be ready for that next job for that promotion, or just the accolades for the job that you’re currently doing. I feel like everyone really does want to show up and be their best. But often they’re not quite sure how to do that. We get caught in doing what we’re supposed to do instead of doing what we’re capable of doing, and really breaking through that ceiling to do amazing work. So today is all about taking the actions that you need to do great work, quit talking about it, how many of us stood at the watercooler and talked about the work that we’re doing and if only this happened and if my boss gave me this or if such and such happen, I could be a better employee. Well, what I’ve seen over the years that there is a huge difference between the people who dream of being better at the job, and people who get out there and do it. When I was in corporate, I had a team that was pretty highly desirable to be on. And I would often get requests for. We call them informational interviews where someone come to me and asked me about being on my team and and I would get people who would say to me, I would love to be on your team. What do I need to do to do that? Well, the answer then in the answer now is do great work. Don’t talk about it. Get out there and do some. In all of that time of having people from other divisions come and ask about being on my team and areas outside of the expertise that my team had. I only ever hired one person to be on my team. That sounds like a pretty dismal number, I’d say. But I’m not wanting to talk about that. What I want to do tell you is about what she did different. What made her stand out and made me want to hire her. Well, most people came telling me how they could be good at the job, and that they were really interested in it and it seemed like a cool job. Sally did much more than that. Sally went out and started doing the job. She took classes she started, it was a job in design. So she started drawing and painting in building projects. And she’d come to me on the side and say, is there anything I can work on? I’ve got a little bit of time on my breaks, I’ll come up with something or I’ll work on it at home. I really want to show you that I can be so good that you have to hire me. And she totally did that. It took a couple months actually probably took more like a year but she kept on st it. She was passionate about it. She asked people, what did it take to be on that team? What skill sets did she have to have? And how was she going to practice them? She wasn’t perfect when she started. She wasn’t totally skilled. I will say that, but she kept at it. And that’s one of the pieces of advice that we got from Pim de Moiree last week from the corporate rebels, of start doing something, even if you’re not great at it, you will become great. It does take practice. We’ve heard from other people, you know, it takes 10,000 hours to be an expert in your field. So the only way to be the best is to get out there and start doing things. Kind of in that same vein, you know, the best people that were on my team. While they worked at their job during the day they were also excited to keep learning and keep growing and keep pushing their skills. They weren’t looking to stay there and be comfortable, they wanted to push into the zone of uncomfortable. That’s where we actually grow our skills and be awesome. If we’re only doing what we know how to do. It’s kind of like the advice that Albert Einstein says is, you know, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting to get different results. If you want to be exceptional. You can’t do the same thing over and over and expect suddenly to grow and become better at it and higher skilled, you have to push beyond your boundaries of what you’re comfortable with, and try new things. And my best employees were always doing that they were the folks who went home and had a passion for the work that they did when they weren’t working. They were researching they were doing other things. And this isn’t to say that to be a good employee, you have to dedicate your life to to work. It means enjoy the work that you do, do the things that you’re doing good at, and you’ll want to do them outside of your job, you’ll want to be the best person you can be. And it pays off. You know, those folks are the ones who’ve been promoted. They’re the ones who move up, they earn more money, they get the bonuses, they get the rewards. And it’s all about being so good. I had to have them on my team. And they were highly sought after within the organization. Other people wanted to hire them as well, because they knew that they were amazing employees.

06:33 So what’s the opposite of an employee that you want to hire? Well, it’s one that makes excuses. I’ve had those people on my team too. There’s always an excuse of why something couldn’t be done, of why they needed more resources and why they needed more time. Time is always the number one excuse and it is the killer of greatness, in my opinion. We all have time we all get the same 24 hours in a day. It’s what you do with those 24 hours. And time has kind of become the social crutch, that it’s acceptable to tell people well, I don’t have the time for that. I’m telling you right now that you have the time if you want to make it a priority. When I was in corporate, I also got to see two aspiring writers. They had taken jobs with our organization to kind of pay the bills while they were honing their craft and wanting to write great books and screenplays and things like that. And it was really interesting because these two people took very similar jobs. They took administration jobs, both in the same department, so very similar responsibilities. But there was a huge difference in the way the two of them approach their work. One and I’ll call her Mary always felt like there wasn’t enough time for her to work on her writing. She dreamed of a time where one day this magic time would appear and she would be able to write. And as you can guess, Mary never completed any transcripts whatsoever. She never found the time to get things out of her head and onto paper. So she was using time as an excuse. On the other hand, there was Ryan. And Ryan was pretty darn amazing because Ryan did an amazing job at work as an administrator. He was always there for anyone and and really stepped outside the bounds of his work. So he was exceptional at his work. But what was made Ryan even more amazing was he would get all of his work done as quick as possible. So then he could spend his downtime writing, and while he was at the same job, Ryan wrote several successful plays. And that was amazing to me of how he found this time. But he made sure it happened at lunchtime. He didn’t go and hang out with everyone else he wrote, If he got a few spare minutes in the morning, he wrote, If he had downtime or waiting on his boss to bring a new memo to type, he wrote, he used every spare minute of his day, so that he could hone his craft and become better at it. So it really shows me that time is not the answer. It is an excuse. We all have time.

09:36 For myself. I wake up early most days, because I want the time to hone my skills and get better. I often use that time to read to learn new things, to take an online course whatever it is, I’ll be up at 4:30 or five o’clock in the morning, starting that because I’m passionate about what I do, and I really want to be the best that I can be. So take some time and look at the way that you’re spending your time. Do you know what your priorities are? And are you using that time wisely to really set yourself apart?

10:14 So time is one piece of the equation. But the second piece, and I’d say maybe even more important, is the decision to be awesome. Awesome happens in a second. It is a decision. It is a firm brain shift that allows you to say, I’m going to do great things from now on. I am going to be that person that I think I can be that I want to be and I’m going to use every cell in my body to achieve it. But that decision absolutely happens in an instant. Now, the decision happens in an instant, but often we all lament about this decision for months, we try to decide what it is. Can we do it? Can we No. But when we decide That’s a powerful moment. So do think about that. Even today, you can decide to become an exceptional employee. One that’s so remarkable. They have to hire you. So what are those practical steps to becoming amazing? Well, the first thing is you have to define what amazing is. We all know what it is. We have a mentor. We have a role model out there, that does amazing work. And if we don’t have someone close to us, there are public figures out there that are absolutely amazing at what they do. And we can look to them and say, Well, what would they do? You know, Richard Branson is one of my favorite role models. No, I’ve never met Richard Branson in my life, but I love the work that he does. I love the care that he gives to his employees and I promise you that Richard Branson is not spending hours on Facebook every day, you know, looking at cat videos. So I when I start to do something ridiculous like that, I can say, Oh my goodness, Richard Branson would never do this. If I want to be excellent at my craft, I can’t do this either. So I can look iand define what would be the things that would make me awesome. And you need to do the same? What would be the things that would make you awesome? As a boss, as a engineer, as a teacher, whatever your career is, what are those traits that make an awesome version of that and define it? Once you define it, then you’ve got to do it. Right. It’s not just about defining it and saying, oh, that would be nice.

12:49 Now it’s that time of Okay, I’m going to show up and I’m going to do it. I’m going to do it every day. No more excuses. I’m going to get up early and go for that run because someone who is at the top of their game is in good shape, mentally and physically. So I’m going to do that. I’m going to show up and record my podcasts because someone who does great work, gets their work out there. Whatever those things are that you’ve defined as awesome. That’s what you need to do. Some of them are going to be big things, but many of them are the small nuances in life. It might be something as simple as really great managers, you know, in your mind might answer their emails promptly. For someone else, being a really great manager might mean they only answer their emails once a day, but they do it at the same time every day and everyone knows what to expect. So you get to define what it means to be great in your role. Now, once you start doing it, the next thing that usually rears its ugly head, we’re back to those excuses what excuses happen that can keep us from doing the things that we know really would make us awesome? Well, those excuses are really easy to show up. But you can also get around them. And part of it is knowing what your excuses are, what are the things that you do that keep you from being successful. And to help with all of this, the ability to define what awesome is to figure out what it is that you need to do to be awesome, and then how to get around all of those excuses. I’ve created a great worksheet that is in today’s show notes. So there’s a link there, that will definitely help you to walk through these three areas and figure out how you can really truly be awesome.

14:52 Now there is one more stumbling block that kind of comes up at this point. Once you’ve defined Your awesomeness, you’re doing it, and you have no excuses. What does happen is you have to still break out of that inertia, because others don’t know that you’ve made that decision to change. They don’t know that you’re a new person today. So it’s going to take some time and some consistency in behaving in your new ways for other people to catch on. Really the best compliment during this time is, something’s really different about you. Or, Wow, you’ve really stepped it up a notch. Those are the kinds of things that you’re looking for, but they do take time. And you have to be patient with this because there are really no overnight successes. If you look at almost every overnight success that we see in the media. There are years and years and years of hard work to be that awesome. So you have to be very patient with yourself, show up consistently and know that it’s going to take some time, but the payoff is absolutely there. If you want to dig in a little bit deeper about creating a success plan for yourself for this new awesomeness, definitely go back and check out podcast number two, guarantee your success by building your own success plan, which will give you great bones and great structure to help you achieve success and all that you want to do. If you want to be hired by great companies and you want to do great work, you have to be awesome.

16:46 The idea from this podcast really came from two places. The first place was the statement that Steve Martin the comedian always gives when asked for advice on how to be a good comedian. And that’s “be so good they can’t ignore you.” And that’s really what I want for you is to be so good that they have to hire you that you are the person that is top of the list. If you want to work for a great company be awesome. And another great place to look for some inspiration and maybe dig a little bit deeper into this topic is Cal Newport’s book of the same title “Be so good, they can’t ignore you” gives some great practical advice on how to hone your career capital and get you set up to have that amazing job.

17:36 So in wrapping up today, as I said, it’s not just for the folks who are out there actively looking for a role. It’s for anyone who wants to be amazing in their role. It’s all about defining what awesome is what remarkable looks like. Then it’s about doing it. What do you have to start doing? What do you have to continue doing and what you have to stop doing so that you can be amazing in the role that you have. And then you have to do it with no excuses. Now, that doesn’t mean that you have to be perfect at what you do. It means you have to get out there and keep trying. If you were going to learn to snowboard, you don’t expect on the first day to hop on the mountain and do tricks like Shaun White, you know you’re going to fall down and have to get back up and do it over and over again to become great at it. So you need to have that attitude of no excuses. Because you’re going to fall you’re going to have things that don’t go perfect, but the really great people get up and keep doing it and honing that skills to truly become amazing.

18:46 Well, I hope you have a great day today. I want you to go out there and be amazing. do great things and be so good they have to hire you.

18:58 If you enjoy this podcast I would love it if you would head on over to iTunes and give us a quick review. It means the world to me. Until next time, Be so good they have to hire you. And be a bit deviant. See you next time.