Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep234: How to take a career break (without going broke). Part 2.

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

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Welcome to the Corporate Survivor Podcast, where we talk about how to grow your career confidence, build your skills and value, increase your salary, and the many lessons we learn in the corporate world. For more career support, click on over to www.mayping.com. This is Mayping, your corporate leader turned career coach. I hope you enjoy, like and subscribe. Yesterday, I shared with you some of the key considerations you need to think about if you want to take a career break and how to set yourself up for success when you are ready to return to the working world.

However, I realized that I forgot to cover one very, very important thing. And that is about how am I actually going to fund this career break? How can I make sure that I can happily go on my career break without going broke? So welcome, welcome back to a Corporate Survivor podcast with me, Mei Ping, ex-corporate leader turned career coach and founder of the Corporate Survivor, the ultimate career program for 9 to 5 professionals just like you. So for more info about what I do, you can go to www.meiping.com. You should be able to find it somewhere in the description below. Okay, so getting back to the practical question around,

okay, Beiping, if I have already decided I'm going to take a career break, but what can I do to make sure that my finances are in order? I will have money to sustain this period of my career break, you know, so that I don't stress out over money. Super, super fair question. And in today's episode, we can consider it the part two of the career break episode. I'm going to share it with you in two categories as well. So the first part, I'm going to share with you what to do now, right? You're already going to go on the career break. So two things that you need to think about now. And on the second half of today's episode, I'm going to share with you two things that you can

set yourself up for the future in case you need to take a career break you know a rainy day right some family situation or some personal situation that pop up maybe in the future so the first part as i said is something that you can do now and you should do now before immediately like resigning and going on break to do now then the second part we're going to talk about like future for your future in case you want to take a career break at some point in the near or far future so let's talk about the two things that you really really need to get clear before you know quitting your job and going on a career break now two questions for you and these are the exact two questions that i thought about before taking my career break as well so first question is how long do you think you're gonna take this career break like how long is your career break gonna be now this is a very

important question because if you don't know how long your career break is gonna be it's gonna be very difficult to plan which then ties into the second super related question, which is how much money do you need to survive, right, in your life, right? Basically, you're not going to be working. So how much money do you need every single month to continue on the lifestyle that you're going to go on, right? So these two questions are super duper related because first thing is that if you don't know how long you're going to go on a career break, then how do you know whether your existing savings is even enough to sustain this period that you're going to go on a break? And that is very dangerous and I usually don't recommend any of my clients or corporate survival members to just drop everything and then go be happy go lucky and then stress out later

the reason is because like if you don't know how long the career break is going to be then you don't want to be in a situation whereby you know one day you wake up and then you realize that oh i don't have any more money and you know money is very tight so that means that i need to now urgently go and apply for a job and it's not that you can't get a job urgently the thing is that like what is your state of mind like what is your mindset gonna be and your emotions are gonna be when you're in a state of financial stress then it's like you desperately need to get the job and that is like not a good feeling to be in because likely you end up settling for a job that may or may not be suitable for you which is not a good thing so

really really ask yourself clearly right how long do you think the career break is going to be now you may not have a very specific or definite answer like for me that time when my mom was quite ill i told myself that well i think it's going to be at least six months, realistically, maybe a year or two. But that was like a rough number I had in mind. So now that I had a rough number in mind, then I started calculating how much do I need to survive every single month. So these should include things like mortgage, if you have a house, rental, if you're renting, you know, transportation costs, like maybe car, you know, amount of money for food, you know, your insurances, whatever, like the stuff that you are paying out every single month, you should calculate it for the timeline that you are thinking of in terms of career break. And you might also want to double it in case something else happens right so it kind of gives you a bit more leeway to continue to extend the break and

also gives you a little bit more leeway in case you know you're ready to get back to the working world but you want to take a little bit more time to look for a role that makes sense for you so it kind of gives you a little bit more space which i think think is really important. So please do not go on a career break without thinking about these two important questions. Because if you cannot plan or if you don't, I won't say cannot,

but it's like if you don't plan financially, you don't plan around your savings, then you are not going to have a very peaceful career break. Okay, because every time you're going to be thinking about, oh, how much money, you know, do I still have?

Can I survive this month? Oh shit, what about next month? What about next month? Oh, I need to get back on your job. I've been applying, but I don't feel I'm getting back. And then I'm feeling, I'm feeling terrible, right?

My mood is so bad. And every single day, then the career break is not going to, you know, fulfill any purpose, right? If you're taking a career break for mental health and like that financial stress situation is definitely not going to be helping your mental health so take a piece out take out a piece of paper really write it down very clearly the two questions that i've just said so recap how long you think the career break is going to be and how

much money do you need to survive right so basically your lifestyle every single month so calculate those numbers and then times two. So the times two allows you to have more space, more leeway in case you need to extend the break or it also gives you a little bit more time to seek out the right roles right before you actually accept the new company, the new job offer. It's something that, you know, it would be a good opportunity. I don't want you to just jump on the opportunity because that's the only one and you were already desperate. So I don't want you to be in that situation. Okay. So the other part that I want

to talk about, which I think is a much more longer term view and yes, right. Of course, there are many things that if it's something is urgent, it's important, you prioritize, you want to get it done now, which is something that I talked about in the earlier part of this episode. But this second portion I want to talk about is more around how do you make sure that you always have cash, you always have savings, you have your finances sorted out so that in the future, maybe in the near future or much longer future, that you want to take a break and you can actually take a career break

without worrying whether you can pay your bills or not. So there are two strategies that personally, these are things that I have been applying in my career that actually made it really easy for me to just decide that, okay, you know, I'm going to quit. I know I have the money. I know I have the money. I know I have the finances. Everything is going to be very stable

and I can take a curbing for a very long time. So these are two core strategies that I want you to really take to heart if you are someone that wants to have a lot more flexibility, a lot more freedom in your career and in your life. Now, the first strategy is to make sure that you are always growing your career and income every single year. Now, why that is very important is that every time you grow your career, so whether it's a promotion, a salary increment,

a new job offer, a career change, right? These are situations where I consider career growth. So with each career growth, right? Each sort of of next opportunity, the next phase of your career, most of the time, you are being rewarded on a monetary basis, right?

So if you're going to get promoted, then it means more money. New job offer, money, right? Salary increment, pay rise, it's money. So if you apply, everything that I teach in my career program the corporate

survivor you follow my advice and guidance every single time that you're getting a promotion you're changing career you are definitely increasing your income so obviously on the ideal situation every single year if you apply my three step framework get clear get confident get visible you learn how to communicate your contributions for your performance here to your boss and you follow every single thing that I teach, ideal situation, you get promoted every year. Or at a minimum, you are getting salary increment as a sort of a recognition of your hard work.

So that's kind of like actively growing your income every single year. If not, every few years, when you are changing careers, meaning you're moving to a different company a different role maybe a different industry when you make that career change right when you accept the new job offer it's something that the salary increment is going to be super huge so for my own situation for my own career for internal promotions up to external offers usually is a minimum of 20 obviously you want to consider the country that you're in like for example um for corporate survival members there are many of them are from malaysia so in malaysia you are able to get right 50 maybe even

80 like one of the members got gotten an 80 salary increment recently recently. Or maybe like for Singapore, right, you're able to get maybe 20% and you go in, you do well in your role. And one of the members, corporate members messaged me recently, right, after one and a half years in the role, she actually managed to get an 80% increment as compared to the day that she joined. So she got the big increment, 50%, when she joined the new company. And then she got promoted within that 18 months that it brought up the overall salary increment to about 80%. So again, like I said, really focusing on growing your career, it's going to allow you to actually have more savings for a rainy day, for a personal reason in the future, for a career break in the future. So this is kind of a long-term way

of making sure that whenever you need the money, then you can, it's like you don't have to worry about it. Like you can take the career break because you know that finances are there, like your finances are stable. You have more than enough money to be able to cover the period

that you're thinking about. So that's something that I have done. And I think this is a strategy that you really want to think about because this involves career planning. It involves learning how to get recognized for your hard work. It involves learning how to communicate and articulate your contributions in a way that your boss will recognize you with promotions, increments, and new opportunities. It also involves learning how to articulate your value and finding the right time to make a career change and selling, positioning your value in your resume, LinkedIn, and interviews. And that's kind of like part of the job search element. So there are a lot of like strategy and very, very specific steps in there. And this is something that is

taught in the Corporate Survival Career course. So if you want to learn more about the program, you can go to www.mapin.com. Okay, so moving on to the second part of the strategy. So remember what I said just now, I'm going to share a few two strategies. So like I said, the first one is making sure that you are actively growing your career every single year, right? So promotion, salary increments, huge pay rise when you're changing careers in an ID situation. However, I think the second part in terms of like actually making that strategy successful, like being successful to get like the increments, right, the pay rises and so forth,

is something that is actually more fundamental. And that is around, that's about being that person who is deserving of the promotion and the increment. Now, this is a little bit different because actually getting that promotion and increment, it covers around communication, packaging, articulating your value. But when I say becoming that person who is actually deserving of it, this actually comes from inner confidence. It comes from career confidence. It comes from knowing that you are doing a good job, knowing that you are delivering at your job

so that you have the inner confidence to have that conversation with your boss. You have the clear clarity to be able to identify and articulate all the hard work that you have done. So this is more what I consider the fundamental corporate mindset, the fundamental corporate skill set, so that you can meet expectations, exceed expectations, meet KPIs, over-deliver, so that you will have the confidence when the time is right, which is your mid-year and year-end, to be able to communicate and articulate. So I'll say that, like I said, this is a little bit more of the fundamental element that you really, really need to master.

So I don't want you to be in a situation whereby, and I've seen these cases as well, some people, what they do is that they're like, okay, maybe the fastest way for me to increase my salary is to change jobs. Every few months, they keep jumping from one company to the other. However, what happens is that at some point, right, their salary and career level is going to stay stuck. The reason is because they have not really learned to adapt at any job. So they haven't gone through the process. They haven't gone through the process they haven't gained full clarity they haven't learned how to really build relationships so they go jumping around it feels

fun initially right maybe in the first like two jobs right you're able to get salary increments but guess what at some point right your company boss, the management team is going to realize that like, hey, this person, right, doesn't really know anything, but this person is asking for a very high salary.

And of course, you need to remember that when you join a company, when you start on a role, you're asking for a lot of money, the expectation is going to be very high. And that time, if you don't really have

a clear foundation around, you know, job clarity, meeting expectations, managing relationships, people skills, work organization, work structure,

presentation skills, handling performance reviews and so forth, it is going to be a struggle. And you will eventually reach a point that your career level is going to stagnant.

Your salary is going to stagnant because guess what? Everybody around you knows that you actually can't do it you're all top but you cannot deliver but the worst thing is that inside you also know that you probably rushed it and you always feel that that little bit of like uncertainty of like i don't think i can do it i always worry on like someone finding out that i don't know how to do it. I always worry on someone finding out that I don't know how to do this and that. So this is not a good feeling. So what you want to do is to really make sure

that you focus on the fundamentals. So in The Corporate Survivor, I really, really focus on career clarity, career confidence, competence, and then only we talk about visibility. And I can tell you that there are also many people who come to me and say that, you know, Miping, I don't want to learn all these like fundamental stuff, like, you know,

I don't care. But just teach me how to ask for a promotion. Just teach me how to ask for a salary increment. I've been at this job for five years. I haven't gotten promoted once. And guess what? Do you think the problem is your ability to ask for a promotion? It's not. It's not. There are probably more fundamental issues that you need to fix. But I think it's really up to you whether you think about long-term career development and everything else is just the outcome. If you're very good at what you do, then every single strategy that I teach you, right, that helps you elevate, helps you level up, makes it easier, makes it faster for you to get to the career level, as well as the income and the salary that you want. But you really, really need to focus on the fundamentals. It's the fundamentals is everything. I always say that understanding

the corporate world, the corporate world mindset, understanding your boss's thinking, your boss's expectation, understanding what management thinks about how, understanding how to manage stakeholders, people skills, all these things are relevant at every single job. And if you want to become a top performer, you want to become a high performer, you want to get recognized for your hard work, you need to master all the corporate skills. And which is why in my program, I cover all these things. I don't want to create a program

that is just about salary negotiation. And the worst thing is then, yeah, of course, right, if you apply what I teach, I'm sure you can get a very high salary,

but I don't want you to go into a job and then every two months you resign because you can't handle the job but you're very very good at right having that salary conversation that is not a winning strategy so i'll end this episode here and i just want to give you uh just a very very quick recap so of course right make the right decision for you if let's, that is something that is a priority in your life, right? It's urgent,

it's important. Make the right decision for you. However, as I said, there are some long-term strategies that you can apply to make the time, not exactly make the time less stressful, but I think it makes the decision easier. So, wrapping up with my own story because i knew that um at that time right my mom was not well and i knew that i really had to spend time before i i instinctively knew that this is this was going to be her last sort of like journey because she was really really unwell so i knew that it's likely going to be probably minimum a year, if not a bit more. And it wasn't something that I worried about in terms of the financial element because I've been actively growing my career.

I've been actively growing my salary. So everything was fine. So that's like one less thing to stress about during the important, important times of your life. And I hope that you also see this perspective and I hope that it motivates you to want to continue to focus on your career development, want to focus on improving your career

so that you can actually grow your career, get to the career level, get to the salary and income that you want for a better life for you and your family. And when the time comes, I don't want you to worry about whether you have the money or not. It's like you know you have the money for it

because you have been planning for it. So with that, I hope that you found today's episode super duper helpful. If you want to check out the earlier, the episode yesterday where I shared with you some of the key considerations

on deciding whether you want to take a career break or not, you can then check it out in my podcast library at www.mayping.com. So with that, I'll see you in the next episode. Bye! check it out in my podcast library at www.maping.com. So with that, I'll see you in the next episode. Bye.