008. Gettin' Wealthy at Work- 5 Tips to Succeed at a Start Up

LifestyleMoney

Aug 22

Want to learn how to advance in your company?

Whether you're a recent graduate or transitioning to a new career path, Amber's unique framework that she used to achieve an executive role at age 29 will keep you organized and focused with precision on your money goals. From defining your North Star to a concrete set-up for organizing your "second brain," you'll learn the key strategies you need to thrive and step into your role as the CEO of your career.

In today's episode, we cover the following:

Upcoming guest speaker at RealPage, and becoming a mentor (00:54)

Succeeding at work and securing the bag (04:34)

Advice to recent grads and challenges Gen Z's face entering the workplace (06:53)

Birdie of the week: How Barbie's marketing changed the game (11:18)

Bogie of the week: Zoom requiring their employees to return to the office (18:41)

How to succeed in her new role (23:00)

Tip #1: Find your end game (26:00)

Tip #2: Record keeping (30:29)

Tip #3: Master your calendar (40:32)

Tip #4: Find your inside person/ mentor (43:08)

Tip #5: Get into therapy (46:10)

Hot stock tip: Set yourself up with a board of directors (48:22)

Transcript

Amber F. (00:00)
Welcome to Old Money, a show dedicated to helping you build the trust fund you wish you were born with. Ladies who lunch, listen up. Life is not about looking rich. I want you to build a life and a legacy that feels rich in every sense of the word. If you're ready to stack cash, talk shop, and trade insider secrets, you're in the right place. These are the new rules to Old Money, so let's get out for it. Hello, Rich Girls and Boys. It's Amber Frankhuizen and your host of The Old Money Podcast. Thanks for being with me here today on this episode. I'm really excited about this episode because we're talking about getting wealthy, at work. And what a perfect time to drop this episode. I'm so proud and honored to announce that I've been asked to speak at Reel Pages Empower Her conference this week. If you're listening the week of August 22nd, 24th, I will be speaking to a group of women there and their employee resource group, Empower Her, all about really being a woman at work and what that means. For those of you who don't work in the multifamily real estate space, RealPage is basically the Microsoft or the Google of apartment complexes.

Amber F. (01:19)
They own every single piece of software that you need to do anything in real estate development and multifamily, everything from collecting your insurance if you're a vendor or a construction person all the way through leasing apartments, renting them, having marketing online, the whole nine yards. They are a huge company, and I'm really honored to have been asked to speak. So it's perfect tie-in because I'm hoping that some of the audience from RealPage will be able to get something out of this. And this is actually my framework that I give to everybody that I mentor. So if you don't know, I went to San Diego State University and back in 2013, I found myself back in San Diego with very little network. So I turned to my college and thought, Well, okay, they call me and hit me up for money all the time. I just will see what's going on over there. And I wandered into the Alumni Center where I met an amazing woman, Jen Renalo, who somehow roped me into being the executive president of the Young Alumni Network at San Diego State. I had literally no idea what I was doing, but because I couldn't afford to give my college any more money, I said, Why don't I give my time?

Amber F. (02:29)
And through that, I started doing this program called the Aztec Mentorship Program, and they match you with a student. Even if you've just graduated, you're qualified as a mentor, and they match with the student. And since then, since 2013, I've been mentoring college students and recent grads, and through that, I've gotten all of these referrals from people who say, Hey, I know you mentor people. Will you help my friend? Or my friend has questions or wants advice or whatever? So I've been talking to literally dozens, maybe hundreds of recent grads, college students, peers now even, in just general work advice. And that's what this episode is about. It is all about somebody who reached out to me who is so lovely and had just gotten a new job at a startup and wanted to know what the heck to do because she was feeling really in over her head. So first of all, I just want to say this system that I teach everyone that comes through my mentorship program, it worked for me. It really works for me. I was carrying an executive title when I was 29 years old, and somehow I survived all of that.

Amber F. (03:33)
Now I'm a business owner and I'm applying the same practices to my own business to make sure that I keep myself on track. But I digress because one of the things that I think is out there in the ether is that if you want to really build wealth, you need to start your own business or start an OnlyFans page or invest in real estate or quit your 9:00-5:00 and figure out your side hustle. All of those things can help you build wealth. But to be quite honest, this corporate construct is the most common and honestly the most accessible way to build a great life for yourself. It's not just about earning a paycheck at work, it's about what you do with that paycheck to really build that beautiful, wealthy, expansive life for yourself. And we will talk about that, I promise. I have so much I want to talk to you guys about. But anyway, before we get to the building wealth part and leveraging the income that we get and turning it into something bigger than us, first we have to secure the bag. First you have to get the paycheck, right? And a big part of that is navigating how to succeed in work and what to do to set yourself up for success so that you can negotiate for your raise, your promotion, all these different things.

Amber F. (04:45)
And I will say this, while I've chosen the path now of entrepreneurship and starting my own business, I'm jealous of the people that I know that are in a really healthy, really great corporate structure because there are so many perks and benefits to being in a corporation. I'll just give you some of a company that I'm very close to and know quite a lot about. Not only are you getting amazing starting salaries if you're working at a tech company, a pharmaceutical company, something that's a large, like large-cap company, mid-cap company in the US, you're getting great salaries. You're probably getting amazing benefits. You're probably getting up to six months paid maternity or paternity leave. You could be getting employee stock purchase plans where you're really banking on the company doing well overall. You could be getting sabbaticals every couple of years, huge perks. In fact, I just saw this crazy blind item on a handbag forum about this woman who said she went to the 25th... No, she went to awards ceremony, and they were honoring people who had 25 years of service at the company. And if you have 25 years of service at the company, you get rewarded with either a Rolex, a trip to Australia, or a Birkin bag.

Amber F. (06:01)
And the Birkin bag that you got to choose was actually a yellowish color. It's not the cutest, I'm going to be totally honest, but it has to do with the company's brand. And I'm not 100 % sure what the company's brand was, but I think some of the people were speculating in the forum that it was for Dole, like Dole Pineapples, because there was a hint about the Dole Whip at Disneyland. I have no idea. Anyway, the perks are there. If you work for me for 25 years, I'll buy you a Birkin for goodness sakes, but it won't be yellow. Anyway, my point is that there's still a lot of opportunity within the corporate construct to really build wealth and do very well for yourself. If you're a seasoned employee, you've been working for 5, 10, 15, 20 years, you get it. But if you're young, if you're just out of college, here's the thing that you need to grasp right away. Right now, your job seems hard because you're new at it. But over time, the work becomes very easy or easier. And the most challenging part of your job is not going to be the work that you do.

Amber F. (07:04)
It's going to be navigating all of the politics and the personalities and management and the pressures of the job. And all of the extra stuff is what gets really, really challenging. And that's why people get paid more in management positions because dealing with other humans is hard. It's exhausting. And oftentimes your deliverables can become secondary to the people management and the personality management and the survival. So my biggest thing was setting myself up so that I could focus on doing a good job at work and knowing that I had systems in the background to support me. So that's what we're talking about today. And the other thing that I want to mention as well is I'm so sick of this. I'm so sick of this. But another article just came across my desk today on LinkedIn, and it was talking about how hiring managers are so sick of hiring Gen Z, and they're so challenging to manage, and Oh, my goodness, they're so entitled. How dare they? And you know what? They said that about millennials when we graduated from college too. They made fun of us for loving avocado toast and spending money on latte.

Amber F. (08:10)
And now everybody's making fun of Gen Z for being addicted to TikTok. It's like, get a new joke, guys. But the reality is it's always hard to manage a new generation because as the older generations get older, the gap in reliability grows. And it's this trope that I am just so tired of hearing again. I think actually Gen Z is going to be a challenging generation to work with, not because of their personality traits, but because they just got shafted by losing 2-3 years of work experience and life experience due to COVID. So if you think about it, a college student who just spent two years sitting at home doing classes online, they're at a total disadvantage because they didn't have the opportunity to work on group projects in school with other people or coordinate schedules or have to talk to somebody to sit with them at lunch when there was nowhere else to sit, or even getting work experience in very basic jobs. I will tell you, when I was in college, I basically paid for my whole life by working at a tanning salon. I feel as though I should do a whole episode on this tanning salon experience because it was honestly the most fundamental lesson that I ever had in business.

Amber F. (09:24)
When you strip away all of the confusing stuff, all you're talking about is literally putting somebody in a light bed with lotion. It really simplifies business, and it's 100 % the place I learned how to sell. It's 100 % the place I learned how to build relationships. Because when I was in college, I was an airbrush tanner. So I was airbrush tanning all of these naked people in La Jolla for all of their different events, I saw everybody naked. I had to make sure everybody was comfortable being naked in front of me and then wanted to come back. So I built so many relational skills through that opportunity. And the reality is I wasn't going to want to work at a tanning salon after I graduated. There's just a season in your life that that's appropriate for. So for everybody who was stuck at home, all the Gen Zs who did their college or high school online and they didn't have an opportunity to get jobs like that, they're disadvantaged and they're going to come into the work environment not having those skills developed, which is why it's our responsibility as the older generations to help them succeed.

Amber F. (10:25)
We want them to do well at their jobs. I don't want a Gen Z to fail. I want a new grad or somebody who's in college to do really well, because when people can add value to my business or to my client's business, we all succeed. I'm hopeful that today's episode will help somebody if they're in college and nervous about getting a job if they've just graduated and are looking for a job, or if you're seasoned, you've been in your role for many years, you can start this system now, see where it takes you. If you're transitioning to a new career, new job, I would definitely take notes on this today because it's helped succeed faster than I ever thought was possible for myself. So before we get into the tactics, let's talk about our birdie and bogey of the week. The birdie this week goes to big marketing visionaries with big or small budgets. And don't even get me started. I know that you've already heard so much about Barbie marketing, but honestly, it has literally changed the game and I think brought a lot of respect back to creative marketing and what it can really do for a brand.

Amber F. (11:32)
I saw something on social media a couple of weeks ago when it was in the thick of it, in the middle of the hype. Everybody was so excited about the pink billboards and all of the promo with Margot Robbie on AD and Airbnb doing their Barbie Dream House. The whole thing was exciting. And I saw somebody post something along the lines of, if your client is asking you for Barbie level marketing, tell them to adjust their expectations because it takes a lot of money to execute that. And the way that that just rubbed me such the wrong way because, yeah, of course, barbie-level marketing takes a lot of money, but to really prove yourself in the creative industry, being creative, part of that is not just about having big ideas, it's about how can we execute this within budget or with no budget? And now there are so many ways to do that. And I wanted to talk to you about them a few different ways. First of all, the Barbie marketing really, really inspired me. I was like, Oh, my God, Barbie's on a billboard. I should be on a billboard. I literally dug through my contacts and I was like, I know I've bought a billboard before, which I have done for a company in the past.

Amber F. (12:39)
I found my contact. Her name is Brooke. She's absolutely lovely. Brooke sells billboards. She's on Instagram if you need to buy a billboard. I was like, I need to buy a billboard for old money. And she was like, Yes, you absolutely do. And she was so brilliant and said, What about Pacific Beach? And if you know anything about Pacific Beach, that is the absolute best target market for the Old Money podcast. Can you just imagine a little 20-something-year-old cutie driving with her coffee on the way to work on Grand and Garnett or Ingram or whatever, being stuck in traffic, being like, I don't want to go to my job. And then seeing the Old Money podcast on a billboard and being like, Oh, I wonder what that podcast is about. That's marketing gold, right? And PS, billboards are not that expensive. But I digress, I decided to not invest in it right now because the reality is I really just wanted to photo op. So maybe we'll Photoshop something for the meantime. But eventually, when we have some more budget, I will be buying a billboard for old money. And it's that type of exposure.

Amber F. (13:36)
If I put a billboard on, I think it was the corner of Garnett and Ingram, I think I was going to get in a month half a million impressions on that billboard. And an impression is a set of eyeballs looking at that billboard. And it could be the same set of eyeballs more than once, but half a million eyeballs on my brand. I'm signing up for that. So 100 % totally achievable. And I love that. And the second thing that the Barbie mania inspired me to do was make a commercial. And if you are Gen Z, you do not know this reference, but if you are a millennial or older, you know the gray Poupon commercials. Do you remember the Rolls-Royce commercials from way back in the day? They were in the 80s originally, then redone in 1991, and they were iconic, right? Pardon me, sir. Do you have any gray Poupon? Has this guy drives by in his vintage Rolls-Royce? And to me, it is just old money. So I got to hire my amazing team, had my makeup done, my hair done from Stacey Triplow. I had Dominique do my video. She's tagged on all my Instagram stuff.

Amber F. (14:40)
And we filmed a gray Poupon commercial just for the hell of it just because that felt fun and expansive. And you guys, it's not that big of a budget. So I ask you if you're in marketing or you're in a role where you get to be creative, what types of alternatives can you do within budget that still feel special and creative? And one of the things that I'm loving right now is all of this augmented reality marketing. So two people are doing it so well, one of whom is Jack Moose, who is the designer. And he has done this amazing campaign with all of his different purses driving us little trolleys on the street. The purses look like as big as trolley cars, driving through these streets of all these different cities in Europe or all of the purses on the beach. It's so cute and inspiring and makes you do a second take and it's using the purses in such a creative way to feature them versus just taking a photo of this purse in a studio with somebody holding it. We've seen that a million times, right? And then you might have seen a few months ago, Maybelline London did this amazing campaign with an augmented reality artist where they put mascara brushes on the front of train stations or trains, excuse me, in the tube.

Amber F. (15:57)
And then they had the lashes hanging from the ceiling so that when the train passed to the lashes, the mascara wand swept through the lashes. I'll have to post this on Instagram so you know what I'm talking about. But both of those instances were done completely computer-generated. And you're saying, Well, I have no idea how to do that. And you're right, it does take a special skill and an artist, but you can hire the artist. And I've already found his name, the one that did the Maybelline London campaign. I'm going to have him do something for old money. Or you could hire somebody like my friend Michelle Winterstein. I'm going to call her out. She's an amazing brand designer in San Diego. And when I tell you she has mastered Midjourney, oh, my gosh, you guys, Midjourney is an AI generation tool where you can generate images based on the criteria that you put into it. It's like ChatGPT, but it gives you images or videos that come out of it. And she has done this incredible campaign for the San Diego Tennis Week or program or I don't know what it is, some championship.

Amber F. (17:01)
But you guys, she has done such an incredible job creating all of these images. One of them, for example, she had all these beachballs in the ocean. And people were commenting on the San Diego tennis page being like, Oh, this is so bad. This is pollution and you guys are littering and it's fake and it's hysterical because, of course, a boomer would get so upset about it. But also it starts a conversation and there's nothing that we're trying to do more on social media than start a conversation and surprise people. So props to you, Michelle, you've really done it right. I want to just emphasize again that big marketing can be done on relatively manageable budgets. And the other thing that I want to say here is that we need to pay people for their creativity. We get paid at AF Marketing for our ideas, for our brand, for the time that we take to create these campaigns or think of a funny new TikTok to do. And if you're scoped for social media management on a basic level with us, we're doing our social media management. We come up with some ideas. We have that baked into our calendar for brainstorming and content creation, all that stuff.

Amber F. (18:05)
But for us, it's really about when you hire us for consulting, for strategy, for branding, it's more than just what we can put on paper. It's big ideas, it's stories that we're telling. And that has been really fun. So if you are a brand that is looking for creativity, make sure you're paying people for their creative brains. And when you do pay for their brains, let them know that you want a Barbie-level marketing campaign and a champagne taste on a beer budget type of thing. And let's see what we can do because we are here to put art into the world if you are a marketer. Anyway, the bogey of the week... You guys, this is so embarrassing. The bogey of the week is that Zoom, the company, is requiring their team to go back into office. Now, I've never heard a more ironic thing in my entire life because if I were the CEO of Zoom, wouldn't you think my number one job in the world would be to prove to the rest of the world that remote work could work? Right? So the fact that they're requiring people, and there's some criteria, if you're within 50 miles of the campus, they're asking you to be in person two days a week, they're really going against their ethos.

Amber F. (19:16)
They're trying to make it easier for teams to connect remotely, yet they're requiring people to come into work. So what does this mean? I mean, it's a bogey for Zoom as a company because they are not doing it. But I'm not saying that I disagree. The thing is, for a team like mine, we are working creatively. And sometimes those creative conversations happen when we're catching up with a team member who just went to the Eras tour and I want to know everything that went on. What can we glean from that? Or what can we talk about? Or did you guys see last night's episode of Below Deck? Let's talk about it and how we're going to apply it to our yachting client or whatever it might be, right? But if you are a young person and you want to stay at home and click-clack on your computer and never see anyone, you're just never going to advance in a really meaningful way. And that's because you learn so much from being a sponge and being around other people. And I'll tell you that when I was in my last role in real estate development, I was working for someone else.

Amber F. (20:15)
When I started working for, I had three bosses, actually, but the two that I worked the most closely with, they were both brilliant in different ways. And what I did was I literally eavesdroped on them all the time. Whether they were talking to clients, talking to each other, talking to capital partners. I was taking notes about absolutely everything. And then when it was my turn to speak to clients or capital partners, I would use what I learned from eavesdropping on them, listening to them in my conversations. And that way, I was always perfectly positioned with the sales. I was always aligned with the things that were important to them. And it wasn't so much that I was eavesdroping with a cup up against the door. It was more along the lines as I was paying attention. I was being really present in understanding and listening for what was important to the leadership. And then that helped me identify opportunities to where I could say, Hey, I heard you guys talking about this. I think I could add value in this way. Would I be able to sit down on that next meeting? Or can I do this thing?

Amber F. (21:11)
And so for me, when I have a young team, a lot of what I want them to be good at is just knowing how my brain works, how I think about marketing problems, how I'm solving problems, how I'm speaking with clients. And if we're segmented at home all of the time, my team just don't have the benefit of hearing my years of experience. So I want them to be around me. And not only that, for the executive leadership side of things too, going through whether it's a budget meeting or strategy meetings, those can absolutely be done virtually. But I will say there's a magic to doing it in person and letting everybody come with their skill set and really collaborate. So my take on this is it's a bogey for Zoom because if I was the CEO, I'd be handling it a little bit differently. But I get it. I see it from both sides. I'd love to know, are you being required to go back to work? Are you in the office, I mean, are you interested in doing that? Are you a business owner wanting people to go back to work? I'll tell you, for AF marketing, we are hybrid.

Amber F. (22:16)
We're in office two days per week and remote three days per week. And you know what? That's always up for change. We were completely remote before COVID even happened. That's how I had originally set up the agency. And it's probably going to ebb and flow. And there will be periods of time when we're completely remote and then we're more in the office or working at coffee shops or private clubs or whatever that might look like. Sorry for Zoom employees, but let's get into what to do, whether you're working remote or you're back in office talking about this listener question. The question that I got was actually over the phone, so I don't have an actual letter to read you, but I spoke with this lovely young woman a few weeks back, and she was asking for advice about how to succeed in her new role. She had just gotten hired at a very competitive startup, and it was in the real estate space. And she was totally overwhelmed like, What am I doing? I don't know if this is the right job for me and am I on the right path? And how do I know if I'm on the right path?

Amber F. (23:19)
So to start, we talked a little bit about the upside to working at a startup or in a small business. There are a lot of them. You get to define your role pretty much independently because if there is a need for you to do a lot, you can grow very, very quickly. There's also potentially a bigger upside if you have the opportunity to get into a company pre-IPO or somebody who has stock options or even just a great runway. If you're going into a startup, typically you're looking at a growth rate that looks like a hockey stick. So that means that it goes up into the right, right? So the growth of the company should be pretty steep. And if you can get on that rocket ship, you'll be in a great position financially. But with that bigger upside, there's typically a bigger risk because sometimes you don't have a lot of stability. Your advancement or salary might be determined based on funding rounds or if you guys are looking to get investors or make sales and things aren't proven yet. There's a lot of risk in that. Also, you don't really often have the best pay or benefits as you're starting, and you don't always have the strongest HR background in some of these scrappier startups, if you will.

Amber F. (24:34)
Again, going back to the benefits of working in a corporate structure, you have a little bit more predictability. You maybe have some good options with stocks and benefits and things like that. And it's going to depend on where you are at in what period of your life that you're willing to tolerate the risk or the work or what type of job you're drawn to. The person I was speaking to, she's young, just out of college, very energetic and ready to take on a challenge. First, we identified the fact that, yes, startups sound very scary because there is a lot of uncertainty. And for her role, it wasn't very well defined, and she was confused about that. I said, Look, that could be an opportunity. Your role being undefined means that you get to add to your job description and then continue to go back to the leaders to show how you're adding value. And we'll get to that in just a second. However, whether working at a startup is right for you is going to be a personal decision. So we talked about a couple of different key things. I identified five key things that she should be looking out for in this job to make sure that she stays on track with her goals.

Amber F. (25:43)
So these are five tactics that I think really would benefit anybody, whether, again, you're new to a job, you're looking for a job, or you're already in your role. And this is what I did when I was in my role and why I advanced so quickly at a company when I was working for somebody else before. So number one thing is define your end game. You need to know what you're there to do. Are you there to get experience for a couple of years and pivot? Are you looking to grow within that company? Are you looking to get experience in a certain sector? Whatever it is, you need to define your North Star. Once you have a North Star, that's the thing that's going to pull you through. And let's get real. Times are going to get tough. Work is hard, you all. The personalities, the management, the drama, the uncertainty, the exhaustion, it's hard. So if you know what you want to get out of your job before you go into it, it's going to help you have your why that's going to pull you through. Here's the thing. Your why, your end game, that is your business only and not your boss's business.

Amber F. (26:50)
That is not something that you share in your interview. It is not something that you talk about. It is your personal North Star. And the reason I think that's really important is because when I interview college students now and we hire a ton of interns and a ton of recent grads. If somebody tells me they want to come to AF marketing to learn from me, I cannot hire them because, of course, when you come to a job, you're going to learn a lot. But if that's the reason why you want to come work for me, I'm now supposed to teach you everything I know and pay you, but you have yet to identify a way that you can provide value to my company. So when you have your North Star, it might be you want to learn a lot of things, but you need to be focused on the benefits for the company when you're interviewing, not the benefits for yourself. So I'll give you a really good example of this. At my last job, I was working on a development firm. And when I was interviewing at that firm, I was also looking at going back to school at USD for a Masters in real estate development.

Amber F. (27:52)
And I actually went to a couple of classes and sat in on them. And the classes that I sat in on were at four o'clock in the afternoon. So I'm already exhausted and tired, don't want to be there in a stuffy classroom. The couple of classes that I went to were taught by some very lovely old gentleman who really struggled with just putting a PowerPoint up on the screen. And we talked about type 1, type 2, type 3, type 4 construction, and there were slides and I was taking notes and I was bored out of my goddamn mind. I could not have sat through that for a whole master's program. But instead, I decided, Okay, you know what? I'm going to make this job, my master's program. I'm going to make it my personal mission to learn absolutely everything I can about real estate development from the construction side, from the construction management side, from the revenue side, finance, projections, all of the things. And that was my mission. I wanted to learn everything I could so I could basically replace my master's education with a working education because the reality was I could not afford to pay for a master's in real estate development at the University of San Diego.

Amber F. (28:53)
It's a private school. It's a little pricey, but if they want to have me back for something else for free, I'd totally go. Because the other thing was I knew that that master's program is notorious for being... And notorious is the wrong word because it should be a positive word. But it's known for making amazing connections and networking and getting your name out there in the real estate development community. I also knew because that was such a sales point of that program that if I wasn't going to do the masters program, it was going to be my responsibility to build incredible relationships everywhere that I went. So both the education and real estate development and then paired with that, my networking and my tactical networking, which I'm going to get into in just a second, those were my North Stars. And do you think if I would have gone to my bosses when I was interviewing and said, hey, I'm here because I want to meet everybody in the real estate industry so that when I decide to do something else in a couple of years, I still have those contacts. And also I want to be here just to learn a whole bunch of stuff about development so that eventually when I do something that's outside of this company, I learn everything I need to know, they'd be like, get out of here.

Amber F. (29:58)
That's not what the deal is, right? I'm there to work for them. And you know what? Maybe your North Star in this game is having really great benefits so that you can get your health taken care of. Or maybe your North Star is, This is the job for me right now while my kids are this age and it's doable, and then I have a plan for myself after that. The North Star can be whatever speaks to you, but it's private to you. So don't go broadcasting that all over the office, okay? And the second thing on my list, the second key is recordkeeping. I'm a freak about recordkeeping. I talked a little bit about this on the Be the CEO of your life episode, but I have to have a second brain. I have a lot of second brains, and there's a work-specific one that I recommend that you set up. You can either do Google Docs, but if you do Google Docs, make sure it's in your own account and not in your work account. You want to make sure that you own it. You can set up Notion, you can set up Evernote.

Amber F. (30:52)
This could be notes in your Apple iPhone, but you need to start record keeping, okay? So just for the sake of conversation, let's say you decide to do Google Sheets and Docs or Microsoft or whatever. So you have a folder on your personal computer that has documents in it and a spreadsheet of some sort, and it's called My Career. That folder is so important to you and it's going to hold all of your record keeping for your job. So first and foremost, what goes in that folder is your job description. This is so interesting because a lot of times people apply for jobs and then they never see that job description that they applied for ever again and they forget about it. But the job description is the thing that was the basis of your hiring, the skill sets that you were hired on, your salary. And if you've ever been in a high pressure job, probably like I have, you will learn that your job description is a great starting point, but you get asked to do 100 different things. And so your job description is a baseline, and then you're responsible for adding to that job description.

Amber F. (31:56)
So one of the pages in your record keeping folder, file, whatever, needs to be, What are you doing? What are you actually doing? Now, here's the interesting thing, is that you could be doing a lot but not actually adding a lot of value to the company. And that's something that's hard to delineate because you could be very busy all of the time, but doing very low-level tasks that need to get done but aren't necessarily advancing your career or your skill set or the goals of the company. So it's going to be a check-in that you need to do to make sure that you are adding value and you're growing your skill set. And the other great thing about doing this as you add to your job description, so to speak, it's going to make your resume writing for your next job super easy because you have everything that you've done, everything that you've accomplished written down there. And by the way, on that Google Sheet or the Excel file, you're going to keep track of your own personal KPIs. So for me, when I was working in property management, I kept track of how many contracts I signed.

Amber F. (33:00)
I was working in student housing, and we had 2,000 beds at max for the entire complex, and every single bed was its own freaking contract. So my amazing, beautiful, wonderful, talented sales team sold two, 1,000 freaking contracts a year, and I had to review and sign all of them. And that was a really big deal for me of just maintaining all of that, keeping it super organized and streamlined. And that was a stat and a KPI that I tracked. I also tracked when what the dollar value was of all of the properties that I managed. I tracked how many renewals we had. When I got my next job, which was in real estate development. I was tracking the total sales prices of all of the homes that I sold or that were sold as when I was a sales manager. Those facts and figures are still in my professional biographies today. So you need to keep track of your own stats, your own KPIs. And then the other thing in there needs to be your networking tracker. And this has been the key to my success. I have a crazy file of basically everybody that I've ever met with, and it's organized now in many different ways in different categories of whether it's photo and video vendors, brand designers I know, copywriters, real estate people, lenders, agents that I like, anybody that I've met over the years, they go into my spreadsheet.

Amber F. (34:21)
And I comb through it every quarter, and I'll talk about that in a second as well. And I make sure I'm reaching out to people that I want to stay in contact with. For example, there is a couple of incredible women, both of whom run PR agencies here in San Diego that have been mentors to me. And if I don't maintain that relationship with them, it's going to go away. So that's somebody that I reach out to or those two women are people I reach out to twice a year just to say hello, see what's going on with them, make sure I send a text, a note, an email, whatever it might be. And that's my responsibility to manage and maintain it. Now, I started making this list in 2011 when I started working at my first property management job. I will tell you that last year I signed a huge deal with somebody that I met in 2011 at that first job. So it's crazy when we think about it. You're in this job now and it's hard to see the forest from the trees, but every relationship you make is a long-term relationship.

Amber F. (35:17)
You never know when you're going to get connected with people again. And it's good to keep track of them, remember them, and make sure you maintain those conversations in a really strategic way, not just liking people's LinkedIn posts when they post something because not everybody's posting on LinkedIn. So in your record keeping docs, you're saving your job description, one of your documents you are adding to your job description of how you're adding value. That's going to make writing your resume really easy. Oh, my God, I totally forgot to tell you this part. It's so important that you write that down because when you go to your boss and you say you want a raise, you better not come to me without proof that you've added value and revenue to the company. So having all of that stuff right now and doing it on a regular basis so that you can make sure that you are tracking all the things that you're doing is your leverage for getting more money at your job. That is how you're going to get promotions. That's how you're going to succeed. That's how you can move laterally. That's how you can have more control of what you want, because I'm going to guarantee you your peers are not doing this.

Amber F. (36:17)
Got your job description, you've got your extended job description, you've got your networking tracker, you've got your KPIs. And then the other thing that I want you to do is a little journal entry. And the journal entry is what are you liking to do? What are your wins? I want to know what your big wins are. And more importantly, what's exciting for you? What are the projects you really like to work on? Or what are you good at? And so this is the key. I just talked to one of my interns about this today on a call, and she was expressing to me that she doesn't really know where she wants to go. So she's throwing her application here and there, but she's not really sure. And there's nothing that I hate more than ambiguity. If you want to work for me, you better know my company inside and out and be fucking stoked to come work on our clients. That's the type of candidate I'm going to hire. But if you come to me and you have no idea what you want to do, we don't really have a match. And a lot of young people don't know what they want to do because they don't know what they're good at.

Amber F. (37:14)
Because what we're good at is usually something that comes naturally to us, and we don't recognize that we have a skill because it comes naturally to us. One of my very first interns, she was such a talented writer, she actually didn't even fit the intern criteria, but her cover letter was so good that I said, I'm going to give this girl a shot. I hired her within three months, and she was with the company for two years. I love her. She is the best, and she just had a skill, but she had no idea that she was a good writer. She literally had no idea until I was continually telling her. Maybe she was just being humble, I don't know. But my goodness, she had such a skill, and I felt it was really something that she could develop. But it was something that came naturally, so she didn't really value it as much. So my homework assignment for you, if you're a young person and you don't know what you're good at, you need to ask. Ask three people in your life. Send a text message and say, Hey, mom, hey, BFF, hey, old boss, could you tell me three things that you think I'm really strong at professionally speaking?

Amber F. (38:18)
And what you want to do is you want to look for the common threads. I want you to write these things down, okay? These are your seagulls. And this is something I talk about all of this time, the seagulls folder. In this folder, maybe you have a document, maybe you have a folder of screenshots, whatever it might be, you need to save the things that people are praising you for. Seagulls are the clues in your life that you are on the right track. And the reason I use seagulls as an example, and I believe I got this from Ramit Sethi probably like 10 years ago, but a seagull is a beacon for a sailor. Back in the olden days when people were yeting across the ocean, they didn't have any GPS, they were looking for signs they were close to land. They have the moon and the stars or whatever to navigate. But can you imagine out there in circles, like on the Nina Pinto and Santa Maria, not knowing where you are, not knowing how much longer till you get somewhere until when you're on lookout, you see a bird. Because birds have to be close to land, that's where they nest, but they fly out into the ocean to get food.

Amber F. (39:21)
So if you're a sailor back in the olden days and you're looking for a clue that you're close to land and you see a bird, you are stoked, you are ringing that bell. People are partying, popping champagne because you're getting closer to your goal. And the seagulls in your life are the hints, the things that people are telling you, those common threads that you're good at. And it's good to remember them in times when things get tough. And it's actually one of the reasons why this podcast exists today, because every time I gave a talk or speech or something publicly facing, I would get this feedback like, Wow, you were really good at speaking, and I really enjoyed that. And I thought, Okay, that's really interesting. But who am I to start a podcast? Who am I to speak on stage? But over time, I kept on getting these seagulls that I should probably learn how to speak more and figure out a venue in which to do it. And that's why we're here today. So looking for seagulls in your life can be really, really helpful in deciding where you want to go because we shouldn't be struggling at work.

Amber F. (40:21)
We should be aligning our talents with the things that we can add value on. And it's about making those decisions strategically based on what we're good at naturally. I am so happy to share that today's episode is sponsored by Emily Stead of By Method Financial Collective. You don't have to figure out your financial future or retirement or an investing strategy on your own. I didn't. I worked with Emily who has been instrumental in helping me feel secure and confident in building wealth. Emily will break down any concepts I have questions on. She's super patient and she is so fun to work with. She has helped me with my investment strategy, asset allocation, finetuning my retirement plans, and she even set up our employer sponsored retirement plan at AF marketing. Schedule your consultation with Emily and tell her old money sent you. You can find her online. There is a link in our show notes or find her on social @emily_by-method. By the way, the information of this material is not intended as tax or legal advice, please consult legal or tax professionals for specific information regarding your individual situation, or please consult Caterra Investors for more disclosure information.

Amber F. (41:23)
Find Emily in our show notes, on our Instagram page, or on our website, and take control of your financial future today. Okay, so tip number three, this is a really easy one, and it's a repeat from live your life like a CEO, and it's about mastering your calendar. So if you're in a job, especially if you're in a new job, you need to set up your tasks as recurring reminders. And I'll be honest, I'm a Google girly, so I don't really know what's happening over on the Outlook side of things, but I'm sure they have something along those lines. But here's what you should do. Set up a 30, 60, 90-day task to make sure that you are meeting with your manager if you're starting a new job. Your first 30 days at a new job should be you being a sponge, just writing down absolutely everything, trying to figure it out, and really studying. This does require working outside of work hours to figure out how you're going to succeed, because from days 30 to 60, you're going to be really focused on asking great questions, getting super tactical, and really learning the systems.

Amber F. (42:19)
And then from 60 to 90 days, you should start to be on training wheels, like actually executing the job really, really well, but going slow to make sure that you're checking with your manager's leadership, et cetera, to make sure you're aligned. But by 90 days, you should be able to train somebody new on what you just learned in the last 90 days. So for me, at 90 days, that is really the litmus test of, can you cut it on this team? And it's really important that you are checking in with your manager every step of the way. But after that, make sure you're on a cadence at least quarterly to be reviewing your job description. Making sure you've mastered everything on that list, making sure that your manager is getting what they need out of you. You've got to be adding value to the company, increasing revenue or productivity in some way, shape or form. And a lot of times people are not paying attention to you. They've got their own shit going on. An easy 30-minute, 20-minute check-in once a quarter to align on goals, make sure you're tracking in the right way is really important.

Amber F. (43:20)
And here's the thing. You need to be saying, What does a good, better, and best look like in my role? What is the most excellent I can be? What are the pie in the sky goals that you don't think I can reach? And what could I really do to really make an impact here? And then your job as the employee is to figure out how to do that. So I would say that if you are having those meetings and then continually reinforcing that you're striving for excellence and then showing that you're doing it, you have a much better chance when your year-end review comes around to negotiate for your raise or your title bump or whatever it might be. But you need to be the one to initiate making sure that you are taking care of your own career because nobody cares more about your career than you do, right? Okay, so item number four, and this is one that I think gets really overlooked, no matter how hard you work or how good you do or how dedicated you are to working late or trying hard or tracking all of the added value that you've done, if you do not have an inside man who's going to champion for you from within your organization, you will not succeed.

Amber F. (44:29)
And that is something that I think is really overlooked. You really need to have somebody who is a couple of layers up from you who wants to see you succeed and will take a vested interest in saying your name when the time arises for you to shine. I would go back to your Google Sheet, your networking, as you're integrating yourself in this new company and ask yourself, Who is my inside guy? And I say guy, but obviously woman could be as well, right? This is really important because I will tell you, if it were not for my mentor and my boss at my last job, I wouldn't have been able to advance as much as I did. I wasn't going to be able to go to my CEO and have the conversations like I'm suggesting you have now if here's how I've added value or this is what I'd like to do next, because that CEO was busy running crazy deals that I had no idea about. But I had a guy on the inside that saw my potential and gave me the at-bats. He gave me the opportunities to go do the things I wanted to do.

Amber F. (45:26)
Granted, there was no one else around to do it, right? I was the only person I was marketing team party of one. But the reality is I really needed his support in order to succeed. And that's a big part of my role now as a leader of my company, is identifying that talent and making sure that my team is shepherded through their growth. And that takes responsibility on both of our parts. I need my team members to turn up and show out for everything that they do, but I also need to make sure that I'm creating opportunities for them to speak in front of our clients, show off their talents, or grow within our company. So when you have somebody who can mentor you, shepherd you, et cetera, this person is somebody that you really want to be focused on building a relationship with and continuing to add value. Make sure you pick this person wisely. Do not align yourself with a gossiper, somebody who's caught up in drama. You're not looking to align yourself just for the sake of your own advancement. But how can you support this person at the same time? Because everything here needs to be reciprocal.

Amber F. (46:27)
And when you can find a win-win and you can focus on adding value to your career and theirs, they're going to be not thinking of you as, Oh, this person's asked me to say their name in a room full of people when there's an opportunity. It's like, Oh, my gosh, this person has always showed up for me in times of struggle and is a problem solver and has proven to me time and time again that they are the right person for this role, this opportunity, et cetera. So finding yourself an inside man, inside woman, that is an absolute key to success. And by the way, when you have the opportunity to do that for someone else, you better pass it along. And the last thing that I suggest that you do as you're navigating a new career, you're in a startup, you're in a corporation, I cannot stress this enough, when we work really hard at something and we are confronted with challenges, whether it's personality or we bump up against our upper limits and comfort levels or trying to navigate having kids and going to work and whatever it would be, it takes a village and you are not expected to do it alone.

Amber F. (47:33)
And I really think that tip number five to me succeeding in my workplace was getting into therapy and having someone to decompress all of my feelings about work, all of my insecurities, my imposter syndrome, my challenges, my fears, my struggles, with somebody who could guide me through it and really direct that energy into something positive. Because I'll tell you what, if you are coming home from work every single day and dumping on your partner, how shitty for them. And if you are dumping on your coworkers, that's a bad look, baby. I would definitely recommend you reconsider. And having somebody just to verbally process things with or to share your disappointments or your wins, I really believe that having somebody that is a steady hand for you to walk you through these challenges is so instrumental in growth. And if you're a business owner, you probably have heard this before, but there's never been any more intense personal development that I've done than being a business leader. Holy shit, this stuff is hard. And every single day I'm challenged, and every single day I'm having conversations like, Okay, I'm the CEO. It's my job to solve problems.

Amber F. (48:43)
But gosh, dang, I'm tired of solving problems. And by the way, why can't things just be easier for me? And all these conversations, I have to take them to my therapist or executive coach or executive leader or anybody like that. But making sure that you're doing it in a therapeutic way where you have a place to process. And life is hard, work is really hard, and we spend so much of our time working. You do deserve the opportunity to have feelings and express them, but don't dump them all on your partner and don't dump them all on your coworkers because that will come back around to bite you in the ass. And so to wrap it up, I have a really hot stock tip for you today. These are my little insider trading secrets, the stuff nobody's telling you about, but could make you very wealthy. A la Nancy Pelosi, little sneaky, sneaky, right? But here's the thing that I've done, and it's a little weird, but it's honestly been such a game-changer for me. And what it's been and what I suggest that you do is that you set yourself up with a board of directors.

Amber F. (49:44)
Because as we've established, being the CEO of your life or your career is your responsibility. And when you are the CEO of a company, publicly traded company, that is, you will have a board of directors. And the board of directors at Apple or Google or whatever, that is a group of people, they're the smartest people in the world, and they're there to advise you on everything you, as a CEO, does in the business. And by the way, a board of directors can fire a CEO if they're doing a bad job. So don't get fired by your own board of directors, but you do need to set up your board of directors so that you have this network of people that can advise you. Here's the thing. Your therapist is 100 % a part of your board of directors. You might have a friend that you can talk to that's in the industry. I have that friend, Susanna, I love you. She's my marketing running buddy for so many years. We talk about everything work-related, but also my real board of directors, they're all made up. And you're like, What? Yeah, I literally have a group of imaginary friends that are my board of directors because I need to look outside of myself, outside of my immediate network to people that I admire and say, What is it about what they're doing that I can learn from?

Amber F. (51:00)
And what would they say? This is like the WWJD moment, except mine is what would Joe Regan do? Honestly, Joe Regan is one of the people on my board of directors because I, for this podcast, for example, want to be curious like Joe Regan is. I want to ask questions that people aren't asking, and I want to be leaning into the crazy things that I'm interested in. And for Joe, that might be Bigfoot and aliens and MMA and whatever else. But for me, it's health and wellness and mental health and personal development and money and real housewives. And those are all of my things. And another person on my board of directors is Young Jamie, who if you've ever listened to The Joe Regan Show, he's the fact checker. He's just on Google. He's on my board of directors because as I'm developing big ideas or things I want to talk about, I want somebody like young Jamie to be there to be like, Actually, that's not correct. Here's the real article. The other people on my personal board of directors are Dr. Lois Olson, who was my first marketing professor at San Diego State University.

Amber F. (52:03)
And she was the one that got me excited about business and marketing because she told really good stories and really good anecdotes. And that's something that I try really hard to weave into this podcast to make the learning engaging as opposed to really dry. Also most important person on my list, John Mellaney, the comedian. I'm obsessed with him. And the thing that he does so well in his stand-up is that he will weave a common thread at the beginning and then at the end of his act, you will, boom, snap it in there. And you didn't see it coming, and it just all ties together and it's so perfect. His most recent stand-up special, by the way, not a fan, should we discuss? I don't know. But before that, really, really good stuff. And he's the type of person where I'm scripting out my shows. I'm like, What can I weave through this whole story so that it all connects and has a common thread? John Mulaney is on my board of directors. Also on my board of directors, of course, Oprah practicing humility and humanness and talking to people really like they are maybe like group chat, my favorite podcast.

Amber F. (53:03)
They really are about democratizing information. The Toast Girls, Jackie and Claudia O'Shrey, like my number one obsession because they're just having fun. They're just being normal girlies and talking about whatever interests them and not making it so damn serious. So my board of directors in my mind, when I'm sitting and I'm thinking about what I want this podcast to be or what the episode should be, I would treat it like I'm pitching it to this conference table of Joe Regan, young Jamie, Oprah, the Girls from the Toast, the guys from group chat, John Mellaney, Dr. Lois Olson. And I'd be like, What do you guys think? And I think about the feedback they would give me and how each of their skill sets would make my episode or my podcast stronger. So if you set up yourself with a board of directors, imaginary or otherwise, it could be a mix of your favorite celebrities or your therapist, your friends, your family. But it's these people whose opinions and skills you hold in high regard so that you can make sure that you're making the best decision because you have a fiduciary duty to yourself to do well at work, to do well with your finances, and this board of directors is there to keep you in check.

Amber F. (54:10)
So that's a little bonus tip for you. To wrap it up today, let's recap what we talked about, the five things you need to do to be successful in work. Number one, define your end game. Number two, record keeping, making a Google Doc, Notion, Evernote, et cetera, and making sure that you're tracking things like your job description, your C goals, your all that good stuff. Number three, set your calendar up so that you can maintain that record keeping on a regular basis and make sure you're checking in with your manager. Actually, I don't know if I mentioned that, but you should be setting up reminders in your calendar tasks to have you go in and maintain those record keeping things. So whether it's once a month or biweekly or you're going in and you're making updates to your networking tracker or the things that you've done, that's something that you should add into your recurring task list. Number four is to find yourself an inside man or inside lady, somebody who can pull you up through the ranks when it's your time. Number five is going to therapy because Lord knows we all need the support.

Speaker 1 (55:11)
Here's the thing. This is a framework to keep you and this focused on making money so that you can be rewarded for the hard work that you do, and it's easier for you to negotiate for a raise or build your resume to go on to your next job. And it's your responsibility to manage your career, right? But let's get really real. This doesn't even scratch the surface of the things that are going to come up for you at work. Because if you're good at what you do, you will have people try to sabotage you. You will be the victim of workplace gossip. You will mess up. You will getin trouble, you will lose your temper and yell at somebody and then have to apologize in front of the whole company. All of these things are things that have happened to me. And if they're happening to you and you need help with them, please write me an email, send me a DM. I am here for giving you my feedback, my honest, straight to the point, Bethany Frankl style feedback on what I would do if I were in your shoes. So feel free to DM me on Old Money Podcast on social media or send me an email at oldmoneypodcast@gmail.com

Speaker 1 (56:13)
Because when we can take care of the foundations, it allows us to go be better at our job. When we're making good money, we have the creative ideas. We put a mascara wand on a train in London and do something crazy, even though that was AI. My point is, when we take care of ourselves at work and our careers and we have these systems running in the background to support our growth, we get to focus on doing good work instead and bringing Barbie-level marketing to our clients, to our teams on a beard budget. And with that, I will leave you today. Thank you again for being here. Wow, this was a long episode. I've been hearing that people are liking the mix of long and short. So let me know what you think. I will talk to you on the next episode. Thank you so much. Stay inspired. Love you lots. Bye-bye. Feeling rich? I hope so. Thank you for joining me on this episode of Old Money. If you have questions you want answered, email me at oldmoneypodcast@gmail. Com or hit us up on social. We are at Old Money Podcast and I am at your service.

Amber F. (57:15)
If this episode spoke to you, inspired you, helped you, if you took a single note, it would mean the world to me. If you could please just take a minute to write and review the podcast. And if you're not doing so already, subscribe. And if you have friends who like getting rich, please share this episode with them, even if it's just on your Instagram story. And I'd love you more than Jeff Bezos loves Amazon Pride. Thank you so much and I will talk to you on the next episode. Remember, I'm not your lawyer, I'm not your tax professional, and I'm not your financial advisor. The content presented in this podcast is intended to entertain, educate, inspire, and support listeners and their personal and professional development and does not constitute business, financial, or legal advice. In addition to that, this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services.

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Episode 006: Be the CEO Of Your Life - Systems for Success

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The content presented in this podcast is intended to entertain, educate, inspire and support listeners in their personal and professional development and does not constitute business, financial, or legal advice. Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services for which individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services related to the episode.

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