The $100K Shift: Why working ‘on’ your career (vs ‘in’ it) changes everything

[00:00:00] I was troubleshooting some formulas and I was working in my business right in the nitty gritty Now. Of course those things are important, but as the CEO, is that the best use of my time? And oftentimes the answer is no, because my time is a lot more valuable when I work on the business.

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If your career was the business, would you invest in it or would you fire yourself as the CEO? Now, I ask this question because if you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, you know that I have a philosophy that the greatest product you will ever work on is. You, AKA, the product of you. And if we’re gonna think of ourselves as products, we also need to think of our careers like businesses.

And as a business owner myself, since 2012, I have learned a lot of lessons and I wanna share one of them with you today that is going to help you make smarter decisions in the business of your career. So let’s dive in.

Intro

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So I started my first official business, I guess in 2012 when I quit my job in New York City with no plan and just jumped into the world of doing user experience design and research [00:02:00] consulting. I didn’t have a gigantic savings lined up. I didn’t have clients lined up. I just quit my job on a Friday. At the startup I’d been at for three years, that’s a story for another day.

Along the way, I have learned a lot of important lessons, and one of the things that’s really stuck with me is this idea of in order to advance your business. You need to stop working in the business and start working on it. And I can’t remember where I initially heard that, but it is so true. As a business owner, it is so easy for me to get stuck in my business because when I’m working in my business, I feel busy, right?

At the end of the day or the week, I’m exhausted. I’ve done a million things. I don’t ever remember what I did six hours ago sometimes. And I think I’m working on my business, but I’m really [00:03:00] stuck in the weeds doing stuff that I could probably delegate. The big lesson here is that when you spend a lot of time working in your business, what are you doing?

You’re not working on your business, and if you wanna grow your business, you need to stop working in it and start working on it. So I wanna give you a couple of examples. In my own scenario of being the CEO of Career Strategy lab, my UX job search accelerator, I always end up getting pulled into working in the business, and I’m gonna give you some examples of what that means.

Even just this morning, what was I doing? I was doing a lot of important things. I was posting on LinkedIn, I was tweaking, some marketing we’re doing. I was replying to some dms. I was promoting this upcoming workshop we’re doing in various LinkedIn groups and Facebook groups, et cetera. And I was making Zaps too.

I was troubleshooting some [00:04:00] formulas and I was working in my business right in the nitty gritty Now. Of course those things are important, but as the CEO, is that the best use of my time? And oftentimes the answer is no, because my time is a lot more valuable when I work on the business. So let me give you an example around, I don’t know, six months ago.

I kind of set aside three days where I got out of the nitty gritty of my business, zoomed out and looked at the data, looked at some high level stuff, and really started to think about like what’s working, what’s not working, what are our goals, et cetera. And I spotted. Some really important data that kind of shone a giant spotlight on an opportunity.

And so I spent, I don’t know, two days kind of tweaking some marketing stuff and [00:05:00] what did that do? It created a hundred thousand dollars of extra revenue in approximately the last six months, which blows my mind. I never would’ve kind of turned on that marketing strategy if I had not taken the time to first find the data, then write the data down, then look at the data.

I would’ve never have seen the trends and seen what’s working and not working, and been able to put all of my energy into this kind of new idea we had. Which when we tested it worked, but I had not looked at the data closely enough to realize, wait a second, if we just keep doing this. That’s amazing. And like I said, that idea has generated a hundred thousand dollars of revenue just in the last five or six months, which is amazing to me.

So I personally am trying to spend more time working on my business and not so [00:06:00] much in my business, and it’s super hard because I love problem solving and fixing zaps and stuff. But when I think about, wait a second, what if I found another problem or opportunity? There was another a hundred thousand dollars of revenue.

What would that do to us? Right? So I wanna give you two more examples of working in a business versus on a business. So what about a cupcake bakery owner? So what do cupcake bakery owners kind of look like when they’re working in stock, working in their business, they’re probably waking up super early to bake the cupcakes right?

And make the batter and put it in the oven and decorate them and everything. Then they’re maybe managing takeout orders for catering or, oh, one employee’s sick, and now they have to find a replacement, and they’re doing all of these tasks that make them feel like they are working on the business, but they’re really just stuck in the weeds of the business.

If this [00:07:00] cupcake bakery owner were to zoom out and work on their business. They might realize that like 60% of their profit comes from large kind of catering orders for like weddings or offices or whatever. And as a result of that, they might realize, wait a second, if we put more time and energy into marketing towards.

Those people, we could have a lot more profit than we get from kind of just the average walk-in customers. Right. But they, they don’t know that because their, their energy and their eyes are in the business. And so for that person, maybe that’s what would happen if they zoomed out and started working on the business of their bakery.

Right. Okay. Next up, a physical therapist. Physical therapists, what does it mean for them to be working in their businesses? Obviously they’re seeing [00:08:00] patients, they’re maybe doing insurance paperwork, they’re managing cancellations. They’re posting on social media. They’re doing laundry, right? ’cause physical therapists have a lot of laundry and they, I don’t know, are juggling appointments because the other physical therapist in their office is sick.

Now they have to figure out how to take on their clients through the day and. They’re busy. At the end of the day, they feel like they’ve had a productive day ’cause they were working in the business. But after four weeks or four months of working in the business, has the business really grown or has it just survived?

Right. So if a physical therapist were to flip it and start working on their business, they might look at their data and they might realize, wait a second. 70% of our patients come to us through word of mouth and or [00:09:00] running injury related, uh, problems. And they might realize, wait a second, if we really honed in on the running crowd.

This could be amazing for us. We would maybe have to do less marketing because runners often belong to run clubs, right? And when there’s a club, there’s word of mouth, et cetera. And so that physical therapist might be able to grow their practice by focusing on this niche of runners, which provides kind of a baked in referral system just due to the nature of how social running can be.

Now, you don’t have to be a business owner, right? To benefit from this shift of working in something versus on it. You’re the CEO of your career, right? You are already thinking of how you’re working in your career versus on it. But I want to give you some [00:10:00] examples. To help you see maybe other things that you’re doing that have you caught working in your career instead of working on your career.

So let’s dive in. So let’s look at some examples of working in your career or in your job search, right? The same can apply. You’d be working in your job search versus on your job search. So maybe you are applying to 50 jobs a week and you’re just going for that quota every single week, or you’re redoing your resume, your portfolio every weekend.

You’re learning to code or you’re trying to learn lovable, or you are trying to get certified in some new AI certification because you think that’s what you’re supposed to do, because that’s what your LinkedIn feed says, and that’s what the UX influencers are all telling you you should be doing. Right.

Sure you’re working in your job search, you are working in your career, but what’s the trade off, [00:11:00] right? What are you not doing? And so let’s look at that. Let’s zoom out and think about what it would look like to be working on your career instead of just on this hamster wheel of applying to more and more jobs, redoing your portfolio, learning to code, learning a AI, learning, whatever.

So working on your career. Might look like number one. Let’s go to the job search example. Before you ever apply to a single job, someone who works on their career first would come up with some criteria of what jobs they want now, but also what they wanna be doing in two to five years from now. And this is a mistake I see a lot of job seekers make.

They’re so focused on the near term. That when it comes time for them to want to get that UX research manager job, they’ve been really desiring, they’re not qualified. Why? Because the job they just took [00:12:00] didn’t set them up to acquire the skills and experience they needed to, or five years from now to get hired as that UX research manager.

So. Someone that works kind of in their job search and gets caught up in all the like nitty gritty tasks. They’re just apply, apply, apply, redesign, resume redesign, portfolio, et cetera. Let me sense. A network requests, copy, date requests, cover letters, everything, right? The person that works on their career is more intentional thinking about the short and the long term.

Aligning their decisions with those things. So that’s one example. Let’s look at a few others.

All right, let’s think about relationships and networking, right? Something that a lot of people talk about makes many people feel gross and just totally turned off, and people that are stuck in this kind of cycle of working in their career. Would approach networking and [00:13:00] relationships as very transactional, right?

They’re just spending time on LinkedIn. They’re liking a bunch of stuff. They’re leaving one word, comments like, thanks. Cool. Neat. Awesome. You know, they’re sending connection requests with like vague or generic or boilerplate texts, like, let’s find synergies with each other. Like, what the hell does that even mean?

Someone that works on their relationships in their career is gonna be a lot more intentional, number one. They’re not going to be focused on amassing a giant network. They’re not focused on the size of their network. They’re focused on the quality of the relationships in it, right? Because who cares if you have 500, 1000, 10,000 connections or email addresses or whatever?

What matters is. How well you know those people and how well they know you. Because if someday you need help, you are laid off and you post [00:14:00] on LinkedIn that you’re laid off and you’re looking for a new job, it’s like use a researcher or something and zero people like, or leave a thoughtful comment or send you a message to help you out.

That tells you the quality of the people that you supposedly had in your network. We’re not that great because it was kind of just transactions, right? So someone who works on their career, specifically on the relationships in their career, they are more intentional. They’re not trying to have relationships with 500 people, but maybe once a quarter they aim to.

Have coffee or pick up the phone and call five people or send a thoughtful, personalized email update to five people or something. I’m just making up the five number. Don’t go post that on LinkedIn and say it’s a new UX rule. But that’s the difference between working in your UX career and on your UX career when it comes to relationships.

Another [00:15:00] thing, skills. We kind of briefly talked about this, but someone who works. In their career is trying to learn everything, right? Every skill, every trend, whatever. Someone that works on their career is more thoughtful about the skills they prioritize, right? They don’t try and learn everything. They focus on learning the skills that align with their goals and that are more timeless in nature.

And by that I mean things like writing, speaking. Critical thinking, et cetera. Because if you try and learn a hundred percent of the things in a certain software, you might wake up two years from now and find that software is gone. Right. And then how, how good of a use of your time was that? So working in your career versus on your career?

Let’s keep going As a business owner. I kind of shared some of the, uh, trade-offs of working on my business versus [00:16:00] in my business, right? And in my case, when I stopped working in the business six months ago, I figured out how to make an extra a hundred thousand dollars, which was amazing. So, for you, I would challenge yourself to think about what am I costing myself by being stuck working in my business instead of on my business?

Obviously time. Is it money? Is it energy? I don’t know. These are questions you have to ask yourself. Is it confidence? Right? So we need to be very mindful of when we are stuck in the business, in your career and force ourself to come out and work on our career or on our business. And a couple of ways you can do this.

Just put it on your calendar. Maybe it’s once a month, wait, maybe it’s every Friday, maybe it’s every June or something. You have to decide the cadence that is right for you and the time you have available, et [00:17:00] cetera. But in order for this to happen, as with many things, if it’s not on your calendar, it’s probably not going to happen.

So put it on your calendar, like literally hit pause right now and send yourself a meeting invite for this Friday, the 30th of the month. Six months from now, whatever it is, and just put in the calendar invite like, am I working on my career or in my career? Or you could do this with email, right? You could schedule yourself an email to go out in a couple of days, weeks, months, whatever.

I honestly do that. I have these emails and I just keep reminding myself every time it comes to my inbox and I’m like, okay, send this to me again in three months or whatever. Very easy. Alright, so I wanna leave you with some. Actionable tips In addition to scheduling this so it actually becomes a priority and happens, one really great resource is to revisit your career roadmap.

If you don’t have a career [00:18:00] roadmap, I really strongly suggest you make one similar to a product roadmap. It’s a roadmap for your career. You can get your own copy, we’ll link it in the show notes, but if you just go to career strategy lab.com. Slash career roadmap, you’ll find the link. Really, it’s about thinking about where am I now?

Where do I wanna be in the future? What is stopping me? And it’s as simple as that. And answering those three questions helps you prioritize what skills you need to learn, right? What relationships maybe you need to prioritize. The other thing I would challenge you to do is a career audit. Like I said, don’t just wait for your performance review to roll around.

Be proactive about this. And I’m actually doing a mid-year UX career audit on June 24th. It’s only 30 minutes. Is gonna be really quick. If you wanna join me, just go to [00:19:00] maven.com/. Sarah Doty and you’ll get that link also, we’ll link it in the show notes, and if you listen to this, after June 24th, there should be a recording, so you’ll still find it.

Alright, I wanna leave you with three quick questions to think about on your own or with a friend or colleague, or who knows. So number one. Where are you spending too much time working in your career or in your job search versus on it?

Number two, what would working on your career or job search look like for the next 30 days? And if 30 feels too big, make it a week, whatever, but think about what could I shift in terms of how I spend my time, how I spend my energy, et cetera. If I were to focus on working on my career, in my case with my business, it would mean every Friday I review this spreadsheet I have of metrics that I kind of consider, like the [00:20:00] ICU triage board of my business.

And when I pay attention to those numbers, guess what? We make more money, the team is happier and our clients are happier, which is awesome. Question number three. What is one high leverage career move that you are not doing because you’re stuck in the busy work?

Of working in your career or in your job search? Is it I need to stop redesigning my resume or my portfolio and think about the larger strategy of it? And it’s probably a content strategy issue because it’s not so much about the design of your portfolio, it’s about the message and the story of it, and that is likely a content challenge that you are ignoring.

Because it’s more fun to play with the fonts and the layouts of your resume in your portfolio than it is to write down and think about the [00:21:00] story you are telling in your resume, bullet points in your portfolio, et cetera. That’s just one example. Alright, so I hope. Even if you’re not a business owner, although it is the business of your career, I hope this idea of working in your business versus on your business has given you some really practical things to think about and hopefully inspires some changes in your behavior so that you can reach your UX or product career goals more quickly.

Alright, don’t forget to check the show notes. I will link to the UX career roadmap. The midyear check-in for UX and product people happening on June 14. If you’re listening to this after the replay should be at that URL also, so check the show notes. All right. That’s all for today. I’ll see you in another episode.

Outro: Thanks so much for listening to the Career Strategy Podcast. Now make sure to follow so you don’t miss an episode, and you can check out all of our [00:22:00] episodes@careerstrategylab.com slash podcasts now to learn more about how to apply UX and product strategy to advancing your career. Whether that means leveling up in your current role, getting a new role, getting freelance work, or just being ready for the unexpected, then I invite you to watch my free UX job search workshop@careerstrategylab.com slash hired.

And please feel free to send me a DM on LinkedIn. I would love to hear from you.

Post Roll Ad: Hey there. Before I go, I wanna speak to you specifically if you’ve applied to 50, 100, 200 or more jobs and you haven’t secured an offer or interviews yet. First of all, I want you to know it’s not your fault. It is challenging out there and learning how to navigate the job, search, interviews, negotiation, et cetera.

It is not something that we are taught. Your boss is too busy to [00:23:00] help you. Your friends just give you vague advice. Your family doesn’t really know how hiring in UX works. This is why I created my career strategy lab, UX job search accelerator. If you are tired of your DIY approach. Not leading to the results you want, then I challenge you to consider.

Maybe it is time for a pivot, just like products pivot. Maybe your job search needs a pivot too. So head over to career strategy lab.com/apply to learn more or have a call with someone on my team or myself so we can answer all of your questions. Hope to talk to you soon.