5 Career Moves You’ll Wish You Made Sooner: How to Become the Most Valued Professional in the Room

I wish someone had shared these nuggets with me when I was out of school and hustling. As I mature in my career, I’ve noticed these principles are relevant in building an impactful and resilient life. The compounding benefits these values deliver over time sets you up for life

- Be the hardest worker you know

Writer Malcom Gladwell popularized the 10,000 hour rule in his popular book “Outliers”. he proposes, it takes 10,000 hours to be an expert at any craft. Anyone who’s willing to put in that many hours in a certain skill is bound to succeed and be amongst the world’s top performers in that skill.

In his famous “How to Be Rich” tweetstorm, Investor Naval Ravikant, emphasizes the importance of hard work. Anyone looking to build wealth should be open to working hard for years. Hard work, Finding product market fit and working with like-minded people will make any average employee a great business leader.

- Seek Quality Mentors

Warren Buffett had Charlie Monger, Bill Gates had Paul Allen, Steve Jobs had Steve Wozniak.

Socrates mentored Plato, who then mentored Aristotle, together they’re considered the greatest minds in philosophy.

Mentors open career doors, mention your name in important spaces and teach their mentees the ropes. A great mentor provides resources, pointers in order not to collapse into career and social pitfalls. Mentors help their mentees in defining their goals to build focus.

Technology makes finding mentors and learning from them at a distance much simpler with the added benefit of choosing several mentors based on your respective needs.

- Aim for Financial Literacy

There’s often a misalignment between academic learning and financial literacy. Schools do a poor job of helping the modern adult to be financially literate. According to the World Economic Forum “Just 1 in 3 people worldwide are financially literate”

The average adult must understand Real estate, fixed deposit, treasury bills, foreign currency exchange, cryptocurrency (Web3) etc There are tons of digital resources and channels to be subscribe in helping your financial literacy journey.

- Invest in Meaningful Relationships

“You’re the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with”, this popular quote is attributed to American Author and Entrepreneur Jim Rohn and is factual.

If you spend time with rich people you will be rich

If you spend time with lazy people, you will be lazy

If you spend time with idiots, you will be an idiot

Choosing close associates wisely is a skill every professional must adopt. Its important to select hardworking, high-integrity, decent people into our close circle. The best relationships are symbiotic relationships where you bring out the best in each other

- Adopt core skill

Hiring Managers and Recruiters agree specialists command higher salary than generalists simply because a specialist’s role is harder to fill

Adopting a core skill and building a specialty on that skill is “Hub and Spoke” model Writer and Investor James Altucher preaches

Specialist continue to be in high demand. For example data scientists, a specialized field, earn an average of 36% more than general IT professionals globally. Furthermore, a 2022 Robert Half Salary Guide showed that niche specialists in fields like cybersecurity and software engineering were among the highest-paid professionals, with salaries reaching up to 50% more than comparable generalist roles.