Transcription
Imagine it's 10 years from now. You're still in the same job, still underpaid, still waking up every Monday morning thinking, "How did I get stuck here?"
So if you are 40 and you feel stuck, I'm gonna show you exactly how to reinvent your career without having to go back to school or gamble on some uncertain side hustle. Today I'll show you the exact career roadmap I'd follow to start over at 40 and make it your most powerful decade yet.
You know, you have all the information you would ever need to land a higher paying job. You have that information right now. Have you ever wondered why you are not doing it? It's not because you're overwhelmed. It's because deep down we have these hidden fears that affect the way we make decisions. They almost color the way we look at the world. In order to improve our careers, we have to confront these fears head on. Let me show you some of the most common ones right now. See if you recognize any of these.
"I don't love my job, but I'm too old to start over."
"I want to do something different, but I hate the idea of starting from the bottom."
"I hate my job, but at least I have one."
Let's reframe all of these fears. They're very normal to feel, but you are not starting from scratch. You have experience. Everything you've done in your career up until this point can help you, even if you are looking to pivot to a totally different career. You're not throwing everything out the window.
So let's face your fears. Write down those three biggest fears stopping you. Sometimes there is power in getting them out of your head and on paper. And then next to each one, write the worst case scenario. And then what you would do if it happened. You'll realize that most of your fears are not fatal. They're actually fixable.
For example, "If I switch careers, I'm going to have to start at the bottom." "If I start at the bottom, I'm not going to make enough money." "I'm going to lose my house." "I'm going to end up in a van by the river." Okay, what is the solution? I'm only going to look for jobs that compensate me at least enough that I can afford my lifestyle.
When you look at your career, you can think of it in three main seasons.
Growth. This is where you maximize income, build your skills, and climb fast. You're young, maybe 20s or 30s. You're getting started. You're gaining momentum. Let's call this spring.
Lifestyle is where you prioritize flexibility, family, balance. In this case, you might be a little further down the line. Maybe you're 30s or 40s. You've built up some expertise. You're starting to reap some of the rewards. We can think of this like summer.
And reinvention. You're ready for a change, a new industry, role, or lifestyle. If you're getting to your 40s and you're feeling that nagging sense of, "Is this it?" No, that doesn't mean you're in winter. I think it means you're ready for a second spring.
Be really honest. If your honest answer is that you are in the reinvention season, perfect. That actually will help you be selective about the type of jobs that you're going to pursue.
Don't worry if you haven't found your passion yet. Sometimes you actually find passion by getting really good at something, getting respected, and getting paid well for it. Remember, passion follows competence, not the other way around.
So instead of chasing some fantasy dream job, start to ask yourself questions like this. What problems do I love solving? What kind of people do I want to work with? What kind of lifestyle do I want now and three years from now?
The question is not automatically, "Should I go to grad school?" That is a tiny detail. Maybe you should, maybe you shouldn't. What I'm asking you to do is to actually open up the aperture of the questions you are asking. Notice that the questions are positive, not negative. I didn't say, "What type of people do I hate working around?" I don't really care what you don't like. People who are stuck love to talk about what they don't like. I want to know what you do like. What kind of job, what kind of role, what kind of problems, what kind of people, what kind of compensation. We want to talk about those questions.
And I'm going to show you through this video how to make better decisions to get clarity and to find that next chapter of your life. This is the same tool that top performers at companies like Facebook and Google use when they are deciding what they want to do in their careers. And I'm going to show you that in the next step.
When people think they need another degree to get ahead, what they are really doing is delegating their career to a college. It's like, "If I spend two years and $100,000, I'm going to get a stamp that somebody will put on my resume and that will somehow magically help me." Honestly, that's intellectually lazy. You're being lazy if that is the level of rigor that you apply to one of the biggest financial decisions of your life.
Let me ask you, do the companies you want to work for actually care? Do the hiring managers value having a graduate degree? Have you actually talked to them? No, you don't know. You're sitting at your computer freaking day old bagel. You got cream cheese on the side of your mouth. You're going to graduate school. No, you don't. Maybe, maybe not. But maybe you got to do some research before you drop 100K on a degree you never even asked about. I'm speaking as somebody who actually got a graduate degree, but I did my homework.
All right. Listen, for most people, just going to university for graduate school and then magically hoping that jobs will fall out of the sky. That's not how it works. Okay. You need to learn a few new skills.
Skill number one is you need to learn how to subscribe to my YouTube channel so you can keep getting videos like this. The next skill you need to learn is better positioning. You need to learn how to talk about yourself better.
Let me ask you a question right now. I'm going to ask you this question like I'm an interviewer. I want you to pause this video and answer it. "Tell me about yourself." Hit that pause button. Give me an answer in 15 seconds.
Okay, you're back. You didn't pause. You can't even follow directions. That's why you're not landing jobs. But in addition to that, if you had answered that question, it would have been horrible. "Oh, I was born under a palm tree. I really like pineapple pizza." Your pizza tastes sucks. And also why do I care about where you were born? Tell me an answer that will help me give you a job offer.
You need to learn how to talk about yourself better. Here's how you do it. What are the problems that you solve better than anybody else? That might be your edge and you should make sure that your edge is clear to hiring managers, anyone looking at your resume and interviewers. Now, I don't want generic answers like "I'm a team player." Yeah, I breathe oxygen too. Instead, try something like this. "In my last role, I collaborated cross-functionally with marketing, design and engineering teams to launch Product X two weeks ahead of schedule." Instead of "20 years of experience in operations," which is boring, say something like this. "I've led multiple teams through chaotic growth, taking them from disorganized to operationally world-class in six months with key people put in place."
You see the difference? We're getting specific and moving beyond buzzwords. If these phrases seem really academic and full of jargon to you, that's okay. You're going to learn the language of how to represent yourself in a way that lands you top tier jobs. This is the difference between being overlooked and getting the interview.
Oh, and one last thing. A lot of people watching this right now, "Oh, Ramit, this is so weird. I don't talk like you. I don't talk like that." Sometimes we have what author Marshall Goldsmith calls the excessive need to be me. If you constantly tell yourself, "I can't do that because it feels weird." You know what I think is weird? Being in your 40s, not having a job you love, not being willing to learn any new skills to land jobs that could pay you more, get you respected and make you love what you do every day.
Let's define your edge. Write down a sentence defining your edge. The thing that you are better at solving than anybody else. Don't worry about being humble. I actually want you to brag. If you have three sentences, write those down too.
"Damn, what am I good at?" "Ramit Sethi is good at talking into an empty camera for months and even years yelling at people, ranting at them, eviscerating racists on Twitter." None of this sounds like it's actually going to land me a job. Well, I guess that's why I became my own boss. Anyway, write these freaking sentences down and hang on to it because we're going to use them in just a minute.
Best jobs on some random website? That's like me thinking I'm going to find the best cuisine at Chili's. Never going to happen. The best jobs are not posted online. In fact, the higher up you go, the less likely you will find the perfect job on Indeed or LinkedIn. There is something I call the shadow market and these are where some of the world's best jobs are posted. A lot of these jobs come from referrals, conversations, reputations. And this is where that network that everybody talks about can actually be a huge asset to you.
Let me tell you a couple of mistakes people make about a network. Number one, people think "I don't have a network. I didn't go to a fancy college." That's wrong. Second, they go "In America, it's not about what you know, it's who you know." Yeah, so you better start to know some people. And three, they wait until they need a job to start sending emails to people they haven't talked to in 13 years. That's not how it works. You shouldn't be networking the moment you want to switch jobs. You should be building connections now so that you can help them and hopefully they can help you.
Here's what I want you to do. I want you to make a list of 10 people in your network that you respect. Don't ask them for a job. Just reach out and say, "Hey, I'm looking to make a shift in my career. Can I get your perspective on how I am positioning myself?" Now I got to tell you, people love to help when you are clear, concise, and respectful of their time.
This is a hard pill for a lot of people in America to swallow. So used to individualism. "Who's going to help me? I'm on my own. I don't need a village. I do it on my own." If you want to learn the skills of building a career, you're already doing it. You're watching this video. That's awesome. But you also need to enlist the people around you. If you do this in a respectful way, you tell them what you are looking for, why you respond to their emails when you apply to a job, you keep them in the loop. You will be shocked at how far you will go.
Remember how you already nailed what your edge is? Now that's going to come into play. When you reach out to people in your network, you want to send them a tight summary of what you're looking for. I'm going to give you an example. "I'm looking for a senior sales role where I can build strong client relationships, hit and exceed my revenue targets, and grow a high performing team." Your edge positioning is something like this. "I have consistently exceeded my quota. I recently hit 135% of target, and I have a background in B2B and DTC sales with a focus on client retention." Then you want to add two to three types of roles or companies that you are targeting. You might say something like, "I'm focused on roles like account executive, sales manager, or strategic partnerships lead at growth stage startups, SaaS companies, or consumer brands that are obsessed with customers." And a short clear ask, "Would you feel comfortable introducing me to someone in your network?" And if you really want to go a step further, you can email them and say, "Hey, I noticed that you are connected to John Jones and Jackie Jones. Would you be comfortable making an introduction because they happen to work at this exact company that I want to work at?"
Do you notice the difference in that level of specificity and homework versus somebody saying, "Hey, I'm looking for a job. Can I forge you my resume?" Yeah, you can forward it. I'll hit delete on it right away. That's how busy people treat things. Do the work for them by laying out exactly where you fit, what problems you can solve, and what jobs you are looking for.
Guys, I'm a hiring manager. I hire a lot of people. And I can tell you, you might have the best resume. You might actually be the best candidate. But if you cannot interview properly, you're not getting the job. That's why I want you to learn the skill of interviewing. People don't always hire the best candidate. A lot of times, they hire someone who tells the best story, who has the best narrative. And I want to show you how to do that.
In your 40s, your job is to walk in, own the room, and say, "Here's what I've done. Here's what I can do for you. And here's how I'll do it." This is building on all the skills we have already talked about today. It's about knowing your edge. It's about being able to position yourself. And it's about communicating that with confidence.
You need to have the perfect answers to these common questions. "Tell me about your last role." "Why do you want to work here?" "Tell me about yourself." And I'm going to show you some examples of how to answer these right now.
For example, "Tell me about yourself." Your answer should be specific, and it should communicate your edge. Something like this. "While I'm a customer success manager with five years of experience helping enterprise clients get real results from software, at my last role, I managed 40-plus accounts and I led a rollout that increased product adoption by 60% in under three months. I have a pretty good skill of translating technical features into practical wins, like helping one client cut processing time by 20 hours a week. And I'm now looking to join a team where customer outcomes are directly tied to strategy, not just support."
Okay, what did you notice? I will say a few things that I noticed. I was not doing the "umms" and the "uhs" for two reasons. One, I practiced. I practiced that over and over again so it came out smooth. Two, on a deeper level, I have conquered the mental need to self-sabotage and trip myself up so I don't look too smooth. A lot of people watching this, you do this, you don't even realize it. You subconsciously introduce verbal missteps like "um", "uh", looking away, so that they don't think you are too smooth. Guess what? I'm f***ing smooth. I practiced. I came ready to play and to land this job. Now give me the offer and then I'm going to negotiate my salary up by $15,000 or $20,000. That is how you walk in and communicate confidence.
In this answer, you'll notice that you're clear, you have metrics, outcomes, and you are signaling intent. There's no fluff, there's no "umms" and "uhs". You are doing a very good job of being clear, specific, and marketing you.
Remember, by the way, interviewing is a two-way street. You're not just anticipating what the interviewer is going to ask you, you are going to ask them a series of highly prepared, intellectually curious questions. "What does success look like in the first six months of this role?" "What metrics are the most important to you when you measure the success of a candidate in this role?" I got to tell you, when people come in and they ask random, generic questions, that really tells me they don't care. Do not make that mistake.
Practice the three most important interview stories. A time you solved a big problem, a time you led through uncertainty, and a time you failed and what you learned. It doesn't matter if you're a senior sales manager or you are a barista, you can answer these questions. And don't wing it. I want you to take a camera and film yourself. A lot of you think you look like James Bond, you look like freaking Quasimodo when you answer these interview questions. Script it, rehearse it, own it. That is how you land the job.
What do you all want me to give you a big old hug right now? Oh, you're worth it. Oh, come here, have a cookie. That's not going to happen on this YouTube video, on my channel or in my entire business. I will show you how to land massive raises, massive jobs, live a rich life. You want that? You want the honest truth? Okay, keep watching.
At this point in your life, you cannot afford to play small. Negotiating a 5, 10, $15,000 raise is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars over your career. I want to show you how to do this using something I call the briefcase technique.
Number one, research what people in your role make. You can go on job boards like Indeed and LinkedIn. You can look at salary ranges. You can go on salary.com. Now you are armed with data that you can use to back up your negotiation.
Number two, show how you will deliver specific results in the first 90 days. Here's my own 90-day onboarding plan. I already created it. You have to remember that managers don't want to have to babysit somebody new to the company. If you show them what you will do in the first 30 days, you're going to have lunches with key people. In 60 days, you're going to have mapped out the lay of the land. You're going to understand your key metrics. You're going to be already delivering. And by 90 days, you will have XYZ. They're going to love that. Even if 15% of your document is wrong, they're going to love that you took the initiative.
Number three, ask with confidence. If you're uncomfortable talking about money, it's time to get comfortable. This is a skill. It is essential to learn this. That is how you make more money by building the skill of getting comfortable talking about money.
Fast forward 10 depressing years. Your joints don't even work anymore. You're still sitting mindlessly clicking on YouTube. And you have a faint recollection of this guy, Ramit Sethi, who once told you the specific strategies to use to dramatically improve your career. But what did you say back then 10 years ago? "Oh, that's impractical. Ramit is only talking about all these words. I could never do that. I'm just a simple person." You didn't make the change. You didn't take the risk. And now it's even harder. It is harder to change the older you get. You have less room to experiment, less energy, same pay. And guess what? You still hate Mondays.
This is the real cost of inaction. It is being stuck and being full of regret. But I think the truth is that you're actually not behind because most people change careers multiple times. In a way, you're exactly on time. You're not too old. You're not too late. You're certainly not irrelevant. You are simply in a new season. And now you have the system to match.
If you are serious about turning your career around fast, watch this video next.