Episode 108
How Career Strategy Lab can pay for itself
17 min listen
Episode 90
17 min listen
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Episode Summary
Is your job search costing you more than you think? This episode dives into the true financial impact of doing it yourself versus investing in your career. It explores the hidden costs of a prolonged job hunt and how joining a structured program, like a job search accelerator, can pay for itself. From understanding the timeline of your job search to considering salary increases, you’ll get to see the math behind smart career investments.
Listeners will learn about real-life examples where job-seeking individuals saw significant salary bumps and faster hiring times after investing in career programs. The episode breaks down the pros and cons of various career help options, such as resume reviews, career coaching, and job search accelerators like Career Strategy Lab. Additionally, it discusses how flexible payment plans and financing options make these investments more attainable and less daunting.
If you’re weighing the pros and cons of getting professional help with your job search, this episode breaks down the tangible and strategic benefits that could save you time and money. Real numbers and case studies provide a clear look at why investing in yourself may be the smartest financial decision you make this year, especially when you consider the impact of compound interest. Tune in to see if you can afford to keep waiting to invest in your career.
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Discussion Questions About The Episode
- Reflect on your own job search efforts. How might your long-term strategies and financial decisions change if you invested in a program like Career Strategy Lab?
- Consider the exercise Sarah proposed about calculating the length of your job search and the potential income lost. How does this perspective on time and money shift your priorities in your job search or career advancement plans?
- Have you ever experienced a situation where investing in your career led to significant returns? What lessons did you learn from that experience?
- How do you see the principles of compound interest applying to other areas of your professional or personal life?
- If budget constraints have held you back from professional development, what creative solutions can you explore to overcome these financial barriers?
Episode Notes & Links
Episode Transcript
Sarah Doody [00:00:00]: Hey there. I’m Sarah Doody, host of the Career Strategy Podcast. Many professionals are seeking more impact, flexibility, growth, and let’s face it, getting paid what they’re worth. But how do you unlock this in your career? It starts with strategy. I’m taking you behind the scenes of what’s working for my career coaching clients. You’ll hear strategies and actionable, yet sometimes against the grain, advice for how you can be the CEO of your career and stop dreading Mondays. Ready to level up your career? Let’s get after it. Hey, friend.
Sarah Doody [00:00:38]: Welcome back to another episode of the Career Strategy Podcast. And today, I wanna talk about money and talk about the real cost of continuing to DIY your job search and how Career Strategy Lab’s 3 month job search accelerator is designed to pay for itself. So whether you’re considering hiring someone to do a review of your resume or your LinkedIn or you’re considering working with a career coach and investing in, like, 6 or 8 kind of weekly sessions with that person, or maybe you are considering joining Career Strategy Lab’s 3 month job search accelerator. Regardless of which one might be on your radar, all of those still can be a little scary. Right? Investing in yourself and your career can often feel like a gamble. So like I said, I wanna talk about the elephant in the room which is money. So you have probably thought about how powerful and impactful it could be to do those things I just said, right? Have someone do a resume review, work with someone on a weekly basis for 6 or 8 weeks, or join career strategy lab. Regardless of which of those you might be considering, the price tag can often feel like a roadblock.
Sarah Doody [00:02:13]: I hear this all of the time, and it’s like a chicken and egg scenario. Right? You know that if you want to advance your career and get unstuck from where you are right now, and because you’re probably trying to do this all by yourself so far, you know that you’re going to need to invest to get through that setback or that thing you’re stuck with. But you’re also trying to be smart with your money. Right? And you’re trying to weigh the pros and cons of investing in any of these scenarios. So first things first, I totally get it. I never want you to make a decision that would not be financially wise, that you can’t afford. Right? But let’s reframe this mindset around career investments because sometimes not investing in yourself and in your career keeps you stuck longer than you realize. And it’s not until you sit down and do the math and look at the implications of maybe trying to continue to DIY this or realizing that investing in your career could help you reach your goals faster.
Sarah Doody [00:03:38]: And there is a tangible ROI to that that we will get to in a moment. Alright. So I wanna talk about 3 ways to think about investing in your career, and 3 things I want you to consider. So number 1 is I want you to think about the time your job search is taking and the income that you’re not earning as a result of that. So a lot of people come to my program, career strategy lab, after spending months, sometimes years, job hunting on their own, there have been multiple times where people have said that they had applied to 400 jobs and not received interviews or offers yet. That is a long time. But then something happens. When they decide they don’t wanna keep doing it alone anymore and they realize that whatever they’ve been doing isn’t working and they make that decision to join career strategy lab, we have seen many people be hired in 3 months, in 4 months, in 6 months.
Sarah Doody [00:04:49]: Some as even as fast as 5 weeks. Incredible. Right? And they did that with the strategies that we teach. So I want you to think about your scenario. If you are in a job search right now, think about how many months has the job search been happening. Based on the salary that you hope to earn or maybe just do it with your last salary, think about, okay, how much money per month have I not been earning because I have not been employed? Right? And once you have that number of what your kind of monthly income would be, I want you to think about 2 scenarios. Scenario number 1 is that your job search takes 6 months because you decide to DIY it. And I want you to do the math.
Sarah Doody [00:05:48]: The 1 month salary times 6 months of time. Then I want you to think about, okay, what happens if you get hired in 3 months? And I want you to do that math. So let’s think of an example here. Imagine that your next job pays you a salary of $120,000 a year. Simple math, that means your monthly salary is $10,000 a month. So if you get hired in 3 months instead of 6 months, that means that you’re earning an extra $30,000 right? Because you got hired 3 months faster than you did if your job search took 6 months. And that’s what I mean when I say there really is a tangible financial element to allowing your job search to take longer than it needs to. So do the math.
Sarah Doody [00:06:49]: Hit pause right now and walk through that math that I just shared with you to figure out, okay, how much money has my job search cost me so far? And then think about what if my job search takes 6 months? And then think about what if my job search takes 3 months? Because if it takes 3 months, and in that example we did, that means if your annual salary is 120, getting hired 3 months faster means that’s an extra $30,000 in your pocket, which is incredible. Right? Okay. Second thing I want you to think about when it comes to investing in your career is I want you to think about how, in my case, my career strategy lab program will likely pay for itself. So let’s talk real numbers. Career strategy lab currently costs 36 $100 for 3 months or 3,000 if you pay in full. So, on average, clients in the year 2024, just so we can stay current, on average those people have seen salary increase average of $27,000 after joining Career Strategy Lab. So if Career Strategy Lab costs $3,000 then it has paid for itself. Right? If you get a salary increase of $27,000 you can more than cover the cost of career strategy lab, which is awesome.
Sarah Doody [00:08:30]: So not only can career strategy lab help you land a role faster or other approaches as well, but when you invest in yourself and your career it could also result in a salary bump that will cover the cost of whatever kind of approach you use to get some assistance in your job search. Right? And we see this happen all of the time. People come to us and say, I got hired with a salary increase of 15,000, 25,000, 65,000. The numbers are wild. And they say, I definitely 10x my investment in career strategy lab or, of course, whatever number makes sense in that equation based on their salary. Right? The other thing that’s really important to consider is the impact of compound interest in your career. And one person that was in career strategy lab, their name is Sam. When I asked Sam what she would say if someone was on the fence about joining a program like career strategy lab, Sam said without missing a beat, she just blurted out compound interest.
Sarah Doody [00:09:49]: And she went on to say how you have to think of this whole situation like you might think of investing. Right? If you get hired faster, like in 3 months instead of 6 or 9 or 12, that means you are now earning a salary, which then you can use to do a variety of things. Right? Obviously, you know, pay for your living expenses and such. But you might be able to be paying down debt or investing in your retirement portfolio and things like that. And the sooner you can start doing those things, the more time that you have to leverage that, principle of compound interest. And Sam went on to say that if she’d known how awesome career strategy lab was, she would have borrowed money to join the program, which I thought was pretty powerful. So think about the compound interest element of this also because, of course, career strategy lab can help you get hired faster. It will likely pay for itself, and it gives you the funds to be able to invest in other things in your life.
Sarah Doody [00:11:05]: Alright. And the third thing I wanna touch on when it comes to investing in yourself and your career, I want you to think about would investing in yourself and your career be more attainable if, for example, the program you’re considering had more flexible payment plans or if maybe there was even financing options that you could leverage to help have the funds to get into the program, to start doing the work so you can start applying for jobs and get hired in 3 months not 6 months. Right? Of course, we’re not guaranteeing that. I’m just saying that as an example. And so that’s why in our program, career strategy lab, we have a variety of flexible payment options including multi month payment plans. And I did a ton of research into this, but we started working with a financing partner about 18 months ago called Elective. And you can Google them and find Elective’s website for yourself to make sure they’re real. I’ll also link to them in the show notes below for you too.
Sarah Doody [00:12:17]: And they are able to offer flexible payment plans along with loans to help you be able to get into the program. And what’s unique about some of their options that they are interest free, which is part part of the reason why I decided to work with them. So, if finances are something that are holding you back in investing in yourself and your career, I would look to see if whatever program you might be considering, do they have longer payment plans? Do they have financing options? And if you’re listening to this and you’re considering joining career strategy lab and you didn’t know about these financing options, feel free to send me a message on LinkedIn or reply to one of my emails and we will get you the details you need so you can learn more about what options are available to you. Alright. So there you have it. We talked about what it means to invest in yourself and your career, the real cost of continuing to DIY your job search and have it take longer than probably you imagine it will, and how career strategy lab was designed to essentially pay for itself. The real question here is whether you can afford to keep waiting to invest in yourself and your career. Because as we went through that little math exercise that we did and did the math to figure out, okay, if it takes you 6 months to get hired versus if you get hired in 3 months and that job is paying you $10,000 a month, that is 30,000 extra dollars in your pocket.
Sarah Doody [00:14:05]: And I think a lot of people don’t think like this. Right? They are so focused on just finding more and more and more jobs to apply to that they’re not, like, coming up and thinking about this more strategically, which is why we call this the Career Strategy Podcast. Alright. So if you are ready to take the next step in your career and are curious about your options for working with me inside my job search accelerator, Career Strategy Lab, then just head over to career strategy lab.com/apply. That’s career strategy lab.com/apply, and you will find all the information you need. And if you’re still on the fence, feel free to reach out to me with any questions you have. You can find me on LinkedIn. You can use the contact page on our website.
Sarah Doody [00:15:00]: I would love to be able to answer any of your questions. So until next time, I’m Sarah Doody, and you’ve been listening to the Career Strategy Podcast. If you don’t wanna miss future episodes, you know what would be awesome? You’re gonna hit pause right now and go subscribe to this podcast and bonus points if you take 10 seconds and give us a star rating because those ratings help signal to the good old algorithms out there that people like what we have to say, and then we climb higher in the charts for career podcasts. So help us climb those charts. Give us a rating, and I will see you next week. Thanks for listening to the Career Strategy Podcast. Make sure to follow me, Sarah Doody, on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, or LinkedIn. If anything in today’s episode resonated with you, I’d love to hear about it.
Sarah Doody [00:15:59]: Tag me on social media or send me a DM. And lastly, if you found this episode helpful, I’d really appreciate it if you could share it with a friend or give us a quick rating on Spotify or review on Apple Podcasts. Catch you later.