Part I: Harness What You Have

The first principle of the HUNT, the H, is about harnessing your drive and talents. When you do what you're innately good at, it's easier to feel connected to work, take ownership of your careers, and reverse the worry cycle. If you started your own business, you would find your drive in the love you have for your product or service—but this book isn't about loving the software you invented and built a business around or loving handmade Italian shoes so much that you open your own shoe boutique. This book is about finding a job—or tweaking your current job—so you feel energized and connected to your work. Even though this emotional connection is crucial to your success at work, it's very rare. Most people are tuned out at work. Only about 26 percent of the workforce is engaged in their jobs, according to a Gallup study.^[1] The way to beat the statistics and stay engaged is to find an emotional connection to your job—you may not necessarily love every day-to-day detail, but you need to at least love what the benefit is to the people who use your company's product or service—or the benefit it provides to your career.

^[1] Fast Company, Issue 49, July 2001, page 88, "Marcus Buckingham Thinks Your Boss Has an Attitude Problem."

If you don't love what your company is doing for your career or what it does for its customers, this book can help. These pages are filled with stories of people who had to make changes in order to find the sweet spot, where they found enthusiasm and love for their jobs. Some of the stories in this part of the book are about regular people who weren't in the right careers and had to switch, even at a mature age. Others found a good career fit early on. Either way, these stories highlight the value of harnessing what you have and using it at a company you can believe in. If you think your company's product is a rip-off or you have no chance to ever excel, you might as well go home because you'll get eaten up from the inside out. You owe it to yourself to make the needed changes, and these stories can show you how.

Compartmentalize

As you make changes and take on projects that harness your talents, you might find that worry kicks in and paralyzes you. For instance, when I started my radio show—the first call-in radio show I'd ever done—I was nervous throughout the entire week until I would have a chance to fully prepare. Usually my preparation time didn't happen until Saturday (the day before the show), so my entire week was compromised with this underlying feeling of anxiety. Now that I realize it takes me 5 solid hours to prepare, I can stop worrying about the preparation time. I "compartmentalize the project" by scheduling two different 2½ hour planning blocks during the week; my anxiety evaporates as long as I make sure to use those planning times. So compartmentalize your efforts at making changes. Make sure you have some time each week—or each day—to put time and energy into making changes. You're doing it already; you're taking the time now to read this book.

Natural Edge

First you need to find your natural edge. One of the best ways to do that is to read about people who found their edge. Everyone in this book found their edge, but the stories in Part I are especially striking. Linda Rabb has an edge for selling, but she didn't realize it until someone else told her so. Ralph Olson is great at strategy and honed that skill with the help of a mentor early in his career. Bill Reihl has a knack for setting and attaining goals, which he discovered at one of his first teen jobs managing a boat dock. Buddy Newell loves to help people live in the moment by finding immediate gratification, and it took a marriage counselor to help him figure that out. Jennifer Allyn is great at rallying people around a cause. All of us have an edge.

What's your edge? As you read this book, ask yourself that question. If you sincerely don't know the answer, ask other people what they think you're great at. You'll find clues to your edge in your hobbies or your vivid memories of being excited about something you did at your first job. You can figure out your edge—or maybe you already have.

Once you know your natural edge, you need to find the right industry and company to use that edge. If you're miserable at work right now or are not advancing, it could be that you're in the wrong industry or just the wrong company. No one enjoys the work of finding another job, but the stories in this book can help energize you if that's what you need to do.

Value Log

Whether you think you're in the right job or not, it's always important to keep track of your successes. That's how you'll know whether you've found your natural edge: You're succeeding at tasks. If you don't feel like you have a very long list, talk it out with a trusted friend. Many people hold themselves back from success because they don't recognize their contributions at work. So make that list—and keep adding to it. Every day you do something that adds value to your company, so make sure you're keeping track.

There are two reasons to keep track of the value you add to your employer. For one thing, your success will fuel your enthusiasm. For another thing, you have to think of yourself as a free agent nowadays; we have to be on our toes because, for better or worse, today's workplace is ever-changing. If you have a value log, you'll sleep better at night knowing you have this portfolio of value that could be transferred to another job or even to another industry. Keeping a value log ensures you'll have a contingency plan if your job disappears in a corporate merger. Remember: It's not just what you do but what people know you do.

Learning

Another important part of harnessing what you have is to continue to learn—and reading this book is one way to learn. What I want you to learn from this book is that you can be yourself even when you work for someone else. One of the first assumptions most of us have is that in order to be a "company man" (or woman), we need to change ourselves and fit in like a cog in a machine. We try to fit into an organization too well. The problem with fitting in too well is that we forget all about what we have to offer, what makes us special, and we feel squelched. Of course, we have to pay attention to dress codes and company standards of behavior, but we can still be ourselves. The people who keep their personal integrity and personal edge are the ones who succeed in corporate America. The ones who fit in are a dime a dozen.

Work can also be a great place to learn new things and sharpen the skills you already have. So take a risk and volunteer for projects where you can learn something new. Most people don't like to do this; they become part of the dead wood in the undergrowth. Every time you volunteer to learn something new, you set yourself apart at work as someone who's growing and vibrant, not dead wood. And you become even more valuable to your employer.

Compensation

You need to feel like you're paid what you're worth. If you feel underpaid, there are ways to get the compensation you deserve—either at your current job or at another one. First of all, performance should lead your compensation; your compensation should not lead your performance. We'd all like someone to give us a raise and say, "Okay, maybe that money will help you do something great." Instead, in the real world, we have to do something valuable first. And when we do, that's the time to go to our boss and point out that we have added value to the company and expect to see it reflected in a raise within a reasonable timeframe. If they don't, a competitor will.

Here's an important note on compensation: Look for compensation that builds so that every year you're not starting from zero. In my career, for instance, it's known as "fee-based planning," essentially charging a low annual fee instead of an up-front, one-time commission. In the beginning when I was starting out, it was very difficult to make a living charging a low annual fee; it's much less money than up-front standard commissions. For example, if a financial planner sells a $100,000 variable annuity investment to a client, that planner could potentially receive up to $5,000 in commissions; but that variable annuity may never pay the advisor again. After he sells it, the planner is on longer compensated for advice. However, a fee-based planner may take the $100,000, invest it for client, charge a 1-percent fee paid out over the course of a year, for a total fee of only $1,000. Essentially that's only $250 four times a year. Although that didn't seem like much to me, I realized the power of sacrificing the one-time payment in return for a repeating fee. Eventually, as your client list grows—and their money grows—that 1 percent can become much more substantial. As you grow your client's assets, you also grow your income.

At the same time it works out much better for the client. Instead of being "forgotten" after an initial sale, the relationship reinforces the fact that the client is essentially paying as they go, and the advisor has to consistently prove to be a worthwhile value. This puts the client and the advisor on the same side of the table and can lead to very healthy long-term relationships where both parties benefit. I always thought that it would be frightening to have to start every new year from zero—searching for commissions. The decision to operate my business in this "fee-based" manner has contributed more to the "worry less" part of my life than anything else! Instead of starting from scratch at the beginning of every year, my income builds upon itself!

Ask yourself: "At my current job, is there a way to harness my inherent abilities to create an income stream that compounds upon itself each year?" You'll find out more about this when reading about Linda Rabb in Chapter 1, "The Compound Income Effect."

Even for jobs that don't make commissions, there are performance-based bonuses. Even if your employer doesn't regularly offer them, there's a good chance you could negotiate some kind of performance-based bonus. For instance, tell your boss you'll take on an extra project, and if it's up and running by a certain date you get a bonus. A special note about bonuses: They're a way to build real wealth. I know of many people who have retired early because they never spent any of their bonus checks and instead invested them for retirement. Saving up a few hundred dollars every month is certainly important, but if you can throw a few thousand dollars into your savings once a year in bonus money, you'll start to sleep very well at night!