How to Make More Money as an Employee

all right so if you clicked on this video then you're probably very understandably interested in making more money now I have made dozens of videos all about starting your own business as one path towards making a lot of money but the reality is that entrepreneurship isn't right for most people and actually only about 7% of the population are going to be entrepreneurs the vast majority of people maybe including you are employees working in regular jobs so if you're in that 93% how do you actually make more money like how do you work towards Financial Security

without quitting your job and just starting a business now this is a question that doesn't get nearly enough attention we are constantly bombarded with messages about side hustles and passive income and Entrepreneurship but what if you actually like your job and what if you want to advance in your career rather than just to throw it away and leave it behind now as someone who left a traditional career in medicine to make these silly videos on the internet I am obviously nowhere near an expert on the topic and so for this video I wanted to have

a conversation with Jenny wood now Jenny is a former Google executive and Harvard Business School researcher who founded the own your career program which is Google's largest career development program she's helped thousands of people transform their careers and earn way more money through her talks and through her wonderful book Wild courage which you should definitely read if you want to make more money in your job most people think that to make more money you have to go start your own business that that's what gives you Financial Freedom well you can find Financial Freedom right within

your own company get promoted you keep getting raises that interest compounds you could be making seven figures right within your own company quick caveat here now Jenny worked at Google in the US where it's not uncommon to have a 7figure million doll plus salary if you're not in Tech or Finance or another highay paying field please don't fixate on the specific number the point is that there is a lot within your control that can help you earn significantly more regardless of your industry and so in this video we're going to dive into nine practical strategies

that Jenny shared with me during our conversation and if you apply any of these strategies you are going to have a way better time at work and be way more likely to get a raise and thus make more money and thus be on your path towards Financial Freedom I'm also going to be adding in my own hot takes on the advice that Jenny shares because I'm an entrepreneur with a team of like 20 people and so I'm actually on the other side of these conversations I'm the guy having the conversation with my team members who

want more money and the tips we're going to talk about in this video are things that I completely agree with because if my own team members did these things they'd be way more likely to get raises and promotions oh by the way quick announcement on Saturday the 29th of March 2025 I'm going to be hosting my usual completely free quarterly reflection Workshop the spring reset the idea is that this is a totally free Workshop there's a link down below to register if you'd like and I will be hosting it and me and hopefully you and

several thousand people from all around the world we're going to get together on a zoom workshop and together we are going to be reflecting on how 2025 has gone so far and we're going to be setting some goals for the next 90 days it's the spring reset it's going to be fun it's going to be viby there's more details linked down below if you would like to join and I will hopefully see you on Saturday the 29th of March 20125 so let's start with strategy number one which is to become your boss's favorite employee now

this one is going to make some people uncomfortable because it can sound a lot like sucking up but here is Jenny's take on exactly why you should become your boss's favorite employee you should try to become your boss's favorite employee because your boss can determine the future of your success your career and your Financial Freedom now obviously this makes perfect sense if you think about it your boss is most likely the one who approves your raises or recommends you for promotions or assigns you to interesting and valuable projects but what's interesting is that the relationship

with your boss doesn't affect just your career it actually affects your entire well-being how our boss feels about us has a tremendous impact on our happiness our productivity our livelihood our engagement our motivation I would almost argue that it's a more important relationship than your partner or your spouse wait what the relationship with your boss is more important than the relationship with your spouse how does that work with your partner or your spouse you know that there's that fundamental level of trust there like it's Baseline you can count on it if you have a little

argument you know at at 2 p.m. you can resolve it by 8:00 p.m. but when you're unsure about how your manager feels about you that is almost more damaging when your boss doesn't like you it feels frustrating and stressful and you feel anxious and sometimes sleep deprived you start thinking that you're not going to be able to to grow or get promoted or get for me personally I had situations back when I had a real job working medicine where when I'd be working with a manager or a boss or or a senior Doctor Who I

knew didn't like me oh man that would make going to work such a stressful experience when we're stressed about how our boss feels about us all we can think about is that thing that you're not good at and that negativity has such a dramatically negative impact on your health on your psychology on your emotions on your mental well-being on your physical well-being okay so these are all the reasons why having a poor relationship with your boss is is pretty terrible for you and if you've been in that position you probably know how it feels but

let's now talk about the flip side why is it important to aim towards becoming your boss's favorite employee when your boss values you and likes you you feel like you're walking on air you feel like your career is on a rocket ship you feel like you're probably going to land that next promotion you're probably going to get that raise and not just that because those are aspirational goals but you feel happy in your dayto day you feel more confident when you write an email to your peers to a client to a partner to a stakeholder

and that feeling of confidence fuels more overall growth all right so hopefully that convinced you that step one towards making more money as an employee within the context of your job is to get your manager or your boss to really really really like and value you now how do you do that well that's what the rest of this video is going to be about and so we now have Point number two which is actually prepare for your one-on ones so if you're watching this and you have a job you probably have a manager and you

probably have some form of regular one-on-one conversations with your manager the question is how much time do you spend and preparing for those conversations and here I'm going to share some examples that Jenny shared with me so this is what most people do yeah absolutely nothing it's just like an empty Google doc with like nothing written in it this is what the majority of people do to prepare for their one-on ones the next level up from that is something like this I have some ideas for hiking backpack sales we're testing new marketing I'd love to

do a career check in soon you know it's better than nothing but it's still pretty crap but what Jenny recommends instead as a professional career coach and someone who helps people get promotions and raises and someone who actually gives people promotions and raises when she was working at Google and has done the research on this this is how she recommends preparing for your one-on ones have four categories for your one-on-one document or three plus one let's call it business operations people and then every four to 6 weeks add career and put bullets in there with

numbers and links every single week and so on screen this is an example that Jenny shared with me of what you could be writing in terms of preparation for your one-on ones there is a link to the Google Doc version of this down in the video description if you want to check it out directly but if you're serious about this making more money in your career stuff I would recommend pausing the video having a look this document and comparing it with the amount of preparation you currently do or don't do for your own one-on ones

this is the best use of your time because it's not just what you do that matters for your career it's what your manager thinks you do this is worth repeating it's not just what you do that matters for your career it is what your manager thinks you do and that brings us on to point number three which is the Shameless Monday morning email this is something that she talks about in the book as well you can find way more details about this and all of the other strategies in the book if you want to read

it the biggest career fallacy you will hear is keep your head down do good work your work will speak for itself spoiler alert no it won't visibility matters now a lot of people especially people Junior in their careers will think oh this is unfair like my boss my manager should it's their job to recognize my work and to reward me for it but it's just really not how it works your manager isn't a mind reader if they've got seven direct reports they've got seven times as many things on their plate as you have on your

plate and so it's not a case of your manager is malicious or like toxic or whatever I mean they might be but like that's that's a side a side point and there's details in the book if you want to if you want to have that issue it's usually not that they don't care about you they want to care about you they want you to do a good job they want to be a good manager it's just that they have too much stuff on their plate and so you being more proactive about showing what you are

working on is super super helpful and one very easy way to do this is sending an email to your boss or your manager every Monday morning it's basically a Manifesto of what you did the last week and what you're going to do this week things you accomplished last week that you're proud of things you're going to work on to move the business forward next week but I call it a minesto because it should only take you 15 minutes to write and it's going to feel scary and hard to do the first time but you will

get into such a rhythm that it becomes totally normal and if you're spending more than 15 minutes on this you are spending too long on it and again very kindly Jenny has provided us an example so this is an example of what your Monday email could look like here's a quick update on my work from last week and what's on my radar for this week last week highlights one and two this week's priorities 1 and two excited to chat more about this in our 1:1 you can send this as an email you can send it

as a slack DM you can send it as a WhatsApp message and if you are a manager who happens to be watching this video man imagine how great it would feel if your own direct reports were to send you an email like this every Monday morning completely unprompted they just gave you a bit more visibility about what the hell they are actually doing that would be so cool right and yet like so few people do stuff like this this is such an easy thing to do it just takes 15 minutes to do and it gives

your boss or your manager way more visibility over exactly what you're doing all right so normally at this point I would tell you about the video SP sponsor um and this video sponsor happens to be me because I would like to sponsor this video with my own product it's called voice pal it is The Ghost Writer in your pocket voice pal is an app available for IOS and Android my team and I have been building it over the last 12 months and I've been using it for the last 12 months for any kind of writing

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you can check out voice palel there is a link down below so thank you voice pal for sponsoring this video and let's get back to it all right let's move on to tip number four which is you versus I I call this woo with you when you're communicating with your boss try to start as many sentences as possible verbally or written with the word you rather than the word I now this is a hack that you can apply to the way you communicate verbally and in a written fashion in any kind of professional context maybe

even in any kind of personal context and here is an example that illustrates it she was doing a talk for some company and she wrote the first variation of this email hi Adam I loved the gift box you sent I enjoyed doing the keynote because I'm so passionate about helping people thrive I love helping people achieve the their goal so thank you for inviting me Jenny so there's way more instances of the word I than the word you in that particular email so as Jenny talks about in her book she rewrote this email to focus

on you rather than focus on I and this is the rewriting of that email hi Adam thank you for the gift box you sent your team was such a great group and you made it seem list a partner appreciate you creating an opportunity to contribute to your team's goals I can't wait to do it again Jenny and this is a very simple example of how Shifting the focus from I and moving more towards you is actually a really powerful communication technique that you can use in almost any context most people anchor on what's in it

for them let's say you're in a job interview I want to grow in this way I want to learn this thing I want to build my network but that's wrong that is that is thinking that is going to hold you back because when you're getting interviewed for a job or you're trying to prove to your boss that you're ready for promotion they want to know how you can move the business what metrics can you move can you increase customer satisfaction can you increase Revenue can you make the operations faster can you make systems more productive

they're the one paying you right growth and the development and the skills they'll follow of course you'll learn and grow and do cool things and double your network but focus on what's in it for the company this is a quick tip for job interviews as well like I've I've hired lots of people over the years I have seen thousands of rums at this point I've done dozens of interviews and there are some people that are really good at job interviews and most people just really suck at doing job interviews cuz they haven't been taught this

kind of stuff but one very easy thing to do is to recognize that the person interviewing you they don't actually care about you they care about themselves they care care about what value you can add to their company if I'm hiring you and I ask you in a job interview why do you want this job you probably shouldn't say something like I want this job because it'll really help me learn and I love the idea of working with your team and I've seen some of your videos over the last few years and I would love

to learn how to do the Social Media stuff because I want a career in like the Creator economy this is the sort of stuff people say in in job interviews but it's not really what I want to hear it's like yeah great I know that you want to learn stuff but I'm going to be the one paying your salary like if you wanted to learn all this stuff you should be paying me but I'm the one paying you if you if you're going to get this job so like what's in it for me and so

an alternative way to answer the question of like why do you want this job might be to say something like I already want this job because I think I can add a lot of value to you and your business I've got skills in X Y and Z which I know can help your mission of helping people build a life they love or like growing a personal brand or like helping you sell more books or helping you sell more courses all of the stuff that I can do will help increase your revenue and your profits which

means you'll be able to invest more resources in like furthering the mission and on the side I'm hoping to learn stuff as well it's like you're leading with the value to the person you're communicating with you're leading with you and you're like bringing in the and I want to learn stuff on the site whereas people often like flip this around or they just don't think about the you thing at all and it's totally understandable like a question like why do you want this job the honest answer to the question is well because I think it

would be cool and it makes money and I I it will help me learn stuff but that is not the right thing to say at an interview because the employer doesn't care about you at that point they care about themselves they care about the value you can provide them because they are the one who are fundamentally payy all right let's move on to tip number five which is to tame the octopus and really the key skill that we want to learn here is communicating with conviction communicating with conviction is one of the most critical skills

that anybody can learn no matter where they are in their career no matter what level they are at any organization so this tool is called tame the octopus and it's about how to have more succinct communication so that you can be more compelling and more influential and speak with more Authority in a team meeting in a one-on-one with your boss it's basically how to stop rambling now here is an example of a little role play that Jenny and I did as an example of how to tame the octopus Jenny what are the challenges that your

team are facing this quarter oh well gosh there are so many challenges we're a brand new team so we've got all sorts of goals that we have to figure out we've got lots of priorities and we have to figure out like what's the important stuff and what's the unimportant stuff which reminds me that all the tools that we're working on are kind of like all over the place we've got some stuff in a in a spreadsheet we've got some third party tools we've got stuff going on with the API which also makes me think about

the fact that there's a lot to keep track of with our Global organizations we've got teams and Europe teams in America teams in in Asia and with all the people sitting across the globe like we really need to be aligned and it's hard to figure out the alignment and think about how that sounds to your boss God that sounds terrible it sounds terrible right you asked me what are your biggest challenges and I gave you a big bowl of word salad that is not going to get your boss to fall in love with you all

right so that was a bad example of what this looks like let's now look at what happens when Jenny tames the octopus and gives a better response so Jenny what are the challenges that your team is facing this quarter h good question let me think about that for just a sec the biggest challenges my team is facing are number one priorities number two tools and number three Global alignment priorities because we're a brand new team and we have to figure out the important versus the unimportant tools because we're doing some things in-house some things with

a third party and we want to be more buttoned up across all of our tooling strategy and number three Global alignment because we sit across America's Asia and Europe we need to work more in concert together not in opposition with each other so the three biggest challenges my team is facing right now are priorities tools and Global alignment that's much nicer how much easier was that to follow I'm like oh okay I get it right exactly and so what did I do there I paused I took a moment to write down maybe five or six

or seven things that I could say I circled three that felt the most relevant and then when I started talking I led with just those words just the word priorities just the word tools in just the phrase Global alignment then I gave a little bit of information on each one and finally I buttoned it all up repeating those same three key things people feel nervous feel insecure about pausing as if they'll sound stupid to their boss or to their teammates or they'll sound unprepared but it actually has the opposite effect you sound more prepared and

more poised and smarter and more buttoned up and it's the kind of thing you can do right there in your team meeting before you even come off of mute common sense but rarely common practice there is another key tip to taming the octopus which is something that I absolutely love I love it when my team do this it annoys me when they don't do this which is basically give three options with a point of view I call this give three options have a POV let's say you work at an ice cream manufacturer and you have

to decide should your strategy this next year be vanilla ice cream strawberry ice cream or chocolate ice cream no matter where you are in your career you will always impress your boss if you go to them and say well these are our three options strawberry vanilla and chocolate and I recommend that we double down on strawberry here's the data behind it here's what's trending in the market and I recommend it for XYZ reasons now this seems like common sense but it's really not common practice and I asked Jenny why don't people do this more often

people don't practice communicating this way people think that maybe it looks like they're trying too hard like oh what I'm going to write down my answers before I before I start talking heck yeah you're going to write down your answers before you start talking all right let's move on to point number six now which is the grab first slide template now if you're an employee in any kind of business chances are you're going to have to create some sort of slide deck from time to time and here are Jenny's thoughts on how to improve your

first slide so that you can be way more likely to become your boss's favorite employee and make more money and all of that fun stuff what's common is that everybody spends hours putting together their 40 slide deck perfecting the data making sure the font size and the design all looks great but what's counterintuitive is how critical that first slide is you want that first slide to grab their attention so they know exactly what you're asking asking for so again thank you Jenny for providing this example this is an example of a pretty bad slide there

too much data there unclear purpose there's no clear request behind why we're being presented with all this information again you want to recognize the executive or the boss or the manager or the person you're presenting to Chances Are they are way busier than you are because they probably have more stuff and more responsibilities on their plate with higher Stakes than you probably do and so the grab method that Jenny talks about is about how to make your first slide grab someone's attention by giving them the key information they need up front so this is an

example of what a normal person who hasn't been trained in this stuff might have as their crappy first slide and side by side we'll show you an example of what the grab slide looks like with the information filled in and if you are an executive or a manager attending a presentation it's just so much nicer to get all the information you need upfront and to know what the point of the presentation is rather than to have that thing happening 27 minutes into the half an hour presentation all right next we move on to point number

seven which is to become an Energizer and you know what there is no asset that's more in demand at any organization than being a net positive energy contributor now I want you to imagine a manager who has like six one-on-one meetings in a day back to back on their calendar that's what most manager calendars look like maybe that's what your calender looks like if you're a manager now there are some people on that list that they will look forward to the meeting and there are some people on that list that they're going to dread the

meeting now the question for you is are you one of those people where your manager looks forward to meeting with you or are you one of those people if you're being honest with yourself are you one of those people that your manager dreads meeting generally what separates these two groups is are you a net positive energy contributor are you an Energizer do you give the other person energy do you create energy for the people around you or are you a bit negative are you a bit down you bit are you a bit complainy a bit

criticizing do you drain energy from the contexts that you're in this is not to say that if you're having issues at work you shouldn't bring them up obviously but just sort of dayto day do you think you add more energy to the people around you or do you think you take energy away from the people around you you probably know people right that you you hang out with them you're in a meeting with them and you feel good about it afterwards you also probably know people some people in your team maybe some people in your

personal life you hang out with them and you sort of feel drained afterwards like which of those people are you you are way more likely to become your boss's favorite employee or to be your boss's favorite employee and therefore get all the promotions and raises and stuff if you are a net energy contributor there's actually research that I cited in my own book feeli good productivity that has been done in organizations where they create this sort of energy map and they ask all of the people in the organization who's like an Energizer and who's a

drainer and then they map it all on like a piece of paper or a graph whatever and they find that the people who are energizers they make more money they get more promotions they get better evaluations from their peers they get better evaluations from the managers they're better on objective tests of job performance as well there's just so much value to being a positive contributor to the environment that you are in you want to be one of the the energizers you want to be a radiator you want to be one of the people that your

boss looks forward to to meeting with each day when someone is a net positive energy contributor that relationship that that they build with their boss as a result of that ends up helping them stay around longer get promoted get a raise because people like to do work with people that they like and there is a bunch more advice in this book about exactly how to become an Energizer if you currently think you are not one of those people all right now we move on to tip number eight which is to schedule a career development conversation

it can be really hard to ask to ask for what you want or just even to ask for help in general but asking for help in your career is one of the ways that you can be most successful get a promotion get a raise have a dedicated 30 to 45 minute meeting title of the meeting and this is critical nobody who thinks about this the title should be Career Development conversation not your regular one-on-one title that sends the signal that this is all about your career your growth your desire to get a raise your desire

to get a promotion now this is something that you can do with your own manager it's also something you can do with your manager's manager you yes that's right you could actually get to know your boss's boss this is something Jenny talks about in the book as well honestly this is something I wish my team probably did more of like I'm not the direct manager for anyone in my team except my general manager Angus and almost no one in my team messages me to say hey Alie I would love to chat to you 15 minute

30 minute phone call to you know talk about my career career development or anything like that if they did I would say yeah sure of course of course that makes perfect sense but they're probably worried about messaging me because I'm not technically their manager and and they don't want to waste my time and stuff but like feels weird to admit this but they are probably holding themselves back by not proactively communicating with me directly and thinking that my time is too valuable for them yeah it might take me a while to respond to the message

it might have to be on a weird time because I'm in a weird time zone and stuff but like someone having a career development conversation with me directly even beyond their manager is going to be a very very very helpful thing for their career in fact this is something I talked to Jenny about in the podcast and this is what she said about her own experience for the first 10 years I was at Google I held back I was insecure I was Rife with impostor syndrome I was terrified to set up a one-on-one with my

boss's boss and it was so limiting in my career and it it it it cut off so many opportunities that I would have had otherwise when you build a relationship not just with your own manager but with your manager's manager and maybe the other people at that level of the leadership team or whatever size organization you're in you're way more likely to get raises and promotions cuz usually in most organizations raises and promotions are not a onep person decision there's usually a group of people that are making those decisions and so if you have positive

relationships not just with your manager but also with their peers or also your manager's manager and maybe some of their peers you're way more likely to get these promotions and get these raises and yeah you can maybe argue that oh this is workplace politics I shouldn't have to do that yeah I agree you shouldn't have to do that but again a point that comes up in Jenny's book quite a lot is that a business is simply a social group that needs customers a business is simply a social group that needs customers and I think this

is really true like I kind of laughed out loud when when she first told me this idea but that's basically what it is like I have a team of about 20 people and it's basically a social group that happens to need customers right cuz we got to pay the bills and so the stuff that works in a friendship group being an Energizer being a positive influence in the group being someone that people look forward to hanging out with that stuff goes a long way towards getting ahead and then finally tip number nine is to work

together with your manager on getting you a raise you always want to lead with what and how questions when you're asking for a promotion what might it look like to partner on a promotion how can we work together to achieve a raise in six months never yes or no questions can I get a raise no uh can my raise be $20,000 no you want to give them the opportunity to weigh in so that they can buy in and you do that by asking open-ended questions and making them part of the team that's going to get

you promoted we are not going to go into in-depth advice in this video about specifically how to get a raise she talks about it a lot in the book which you can check out and I'll put some links to more of Jenny's resources down in the video description so this video was a little bit of a departure from tradition the usual content we have about how to become financially free by starting your own business but if you're at this point in the video I hope you got some value from it and I would love to

know in the comments what is one actionable point that you are going to take forward from this video because otherwise the video just ends up being another one of those things that you watch and rarely take action on I'm not throwing shade on you I do the same as well I watch all these YouTube videos I very rarely take action on them but I but some videos where the YouTuber prompts me to take action I'll be like oh yeah I actually do want to take action of this I'm going to do something about it anyway

I'd love to hear in the comments what you thought of this video and what action you're going to take as a result and if you do have a normal job and you are interested in molding your career in a way that helps you build a career that you love check out this video over here this is a book club episode that I did with Professor Grace Lorden of the London School of Economics Which is less about how to specifically get a raise but more about how to mold your career in a way that actually feels

more meaningful and fulfilling for you so you can check that out right over there thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the next video bye