No contacts or connections — just a clear strategy with a BIG payoff — Look, I love my day job. It’s a pretty great gig as far as 9–5s go. The right industry, fantastic boss, incredible learning opportunities, and, best of all, it’s setting me up for a long-term, successful career doing what I am passionate about. The only issue is the pay. While…

Six little steps to earn serious respect from senior management — At the start of 2022 one of my junior colleagues, Ellie*, reached out to me for advice. Ellie joined the company as part of a graduate program two years ago and is someone I love working with — smart, hardworking, and an all-around lovely person. …

A #gifted strategy approach to adopt for small businesses — Influencers generate sales. Regardless of how you feel about them, of your personal opinions about the Kardashians — they just do. In the modern age of social media, one influencer endorsement has the potential to skyrocket a brand overnight — tapping into massive audiences of engaged, trusting, and responsive followers. …

How switched up my habits and took control of my finances - and you can too! — Do you ever wonder how some of your friends, family members, and workers just seem to have ‘more money than you — Despite you knowing that your salaries and situations are roughly the same? I used to. I would sit at dinner with friends, praying my card didn’t decline as…

Lessons from the fallout from an unexpected loss — Where I grew up, nothing bad really ever happened — or at least nothing really bad ever happened. If this were to play out like one of those 3-part Netflix documentaries, cliched clips of a ‘sleepy little town’, ‘children playing unsupervised in the streets’, and ‘unlocked doors’ would flicker across…

How to shift your thinking from hobby to job, and get paid! — I’ve always been a writer. Even before I could physically get it all down on the page, before I knew how the letters formed into words, sentences, and then into paragraphs, I would spend days lost in my own daydreams, inventing little stories to share with my stuffed animals. …

Dave from accounts has entered the chat — and he’s not here to play nice — At the age of 23, I started a small advertising and publishing company in my hometown. It was moderately successful and over my 5 years in business, I built up a nice little client base, however, it was just me. All alone, working off a crappy laptop, perched precariously on…

How to survive a hellish environment and make it work for you — In some workplaces, the toxicity is obvious and upfront — harassment, sexism, and even racism and abuse. In others, however, it is shrouded. Lurking just below the surface of a seemingly happy workforce, so engrained in the culture that there is no single perpetrator, but rather an entire ecosystem of…

A definitive guide to setting your rates and getting paid as a freelancer — Please stop working for free. Please stop accepting $5 Upwork jobs. Please do not work for less than minimum wage. Why? Because you’re worth more, and, honestly, I’m worth more. Recently I documented my first foray into freelancing, where I made $7800 over 40-ish hours of work — averaging out…