01- How To Advance Your Career With Smartcuts

Summary

In the first episode of career smartcuts, we explore my background and qualifications, and what makes me successful. We will clearly define the term “career smartcut” and summarize what you can expect and look forward to in future episodes. This podcast applies mostly to listeners who work in business at a company with a management hierarchy, however, many of these smartcuts apply to many other jobs or even other aspects of life.

Episode Transcribed

Host Bio

To introduce myself and to give some context to this podcast, let me quickly go over my resume. I’ve worked at multiple global investment banks in both NYC and Paris. At one bank, I was the founding president of an employee resource group for juniors, where I planned events and conferences on Wall Street for hundreds of finance professionals. Outside of my day job, I am the chair of the junior board for a non-profit. I’ve launched my own startups, worked in a startup incubator, and in my own definition of success, I would say I am successful. 

Definition of Success

I define success as having a job that you enjoy most days because of the work you do and the people around you. A job where you feel a sense of purpose and a  job where you make enough money to live the life you want to live. I’m that guy at work that everyone knows because I am involved in so many groups outside of my day job and have worked on so many projects with people from so many departments. Colleagues are never surprised to hear my name in any situation and every boss I’ve had has said I can come back and work for them anytime. Perhaps I can attribute some of my success to the fact that I surround myself with smart people and good mentors, I ask for feedback constantly, and I spend a lot of time reflecting on the work i’ve done to find better ways of doing things. To find Career Smartcuts.

Career Smartcut Definition

You may be wondering, what are smartcuts and specifically what are career smartcuts? Smartcuts are actions you can take to have the best results with less effort. Don’t confuse these with shortcuts which are actions that usually produce almost as good results with less effort. Career smartcuts are intelligent ways of navigating your work environment to advance in your career as quickly as possible. They are pieces of advice I wish people had told me when I first began my career. They are pieces of advice I have received from successful people, and pieces of feedback I have collected from people whose opinions I trust. And I have compiled them, here in this podcast for you, my listeners. 

What to Expect

In order for you to better understand what you can expect throughout each episode of this podcast, I can tell you that when you hear this sound (DING) you should listen up closely because you are about to hear an important career smartcut. Some of the smarcuts may be less useful to you at this moment of your career. Some may be useful right now, like, When listening to long educational podcasts, see if you can increase the speed so you can learn more in a shorter period of time. 

And you will hear much more than just smartcuts. I will provide examples of tangible ways to apply these smartcuts into your day to day job. You will hear anecdotes of times when these smartcuts worked for me or someone I know, And you will hear from other successful people on the subjects they’ve mastered. 

Some of the smartcuts will seem obvious to you, but they aren’t to others. Or they may seem obvious to you, until you find yourself in a real life situation doing the opposite. For example, (Ding) You don’t have to know how to do everything, but you have to know how to google it. This seems obvious, but you may find yourself doing the opposite in situations when your boss will ask you if you can do something that you’ve never tried. Rather than saying you dont know how, You should say, “Let me see if I can figure it out”. Everyone knows they can probably google something to figure it out, but what really allows you to stand out is if you actually put this into practice, google everything you don’t know, and learn it for the future. 

Conclusion

Finally, you can go on careersmartcuts.com anytime to 1) see the smartcuts from the podcast, 2) to listen to the episodes, or 3) to provide feedback on anything! You should also follow career smartcuts on instagram or twitter so you are constantly reminded of these smartcuts. Because (DING) in order to really learn something, you need to be reminded again, and you need to apply what you’ve learned. It is rare for anyone to commit something to long-term memory, that they’ve only heard once. Thank you for listening to Career Smartcuts. Follow or subscribe to this podcast now, because it's time… to accelerate your career towards success....however you define it.