How to make your work work for you

Most people are trapped in one of two career prisons - and they don't even know it.

In this episode of the Earn Your Worth series, Terry Condon reveals the "Hotel California Problem" that keeps smart, capable people stuck in work that either pays well but drains their soul, or feeds their identity but leaves them financially insecure.

You'll discover:

• The two toxic career mentalities that trap 90% of professionals (and why smart people fall for them)
• Why chasing money OR passion without purpose always leads to career prison
• The simple mindset shift that lets you have meaning, mastery AND money
• Terry's 3-quest superhero framework: Know Yourself, Serve Others, Amplify Impact

The brutal truth: We spend months researching where to invest our money, but only minutes thinking about where we invest our time and talent to EARN that money.

If you're tired of feeling trapped by golden handcuffs or struggling in a "cool" job that doesn't pay the bills, this episode shows you the way out - and how to create a career that energizes you while accelerating your financial progress.

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Transcript

Tex: 0:29

Hey there, legend. It's Terry Conn, and I'm here jumping into the second episode in the Earn Your Worth Series. And this series has been focused on making more money, doing work that you find meaningful. And a quick recap on what we've covered so far. So earning more isn't about working more, it's about creating more value. And value is created when demand exceeds supply. And if you know how to engineer this demand supply tension, then you can make your own markets. And the internet makes making your own market 10 times easier because it unlocks an notion of new demand for even the most obscure interests. It allows you to connect to people all over the world and build that social capital and it makes that much more accessible so you can get the word out 10 times easier than in the past. So we know how value is created and we know the opportunity you have with the internet. The big question we're gonna be answering this episode is how do we create value by doing work that we find meaningful? Because if we can do that, we can avoid getting trapped in work that pays the bills, but sucks the life out of us. Or escape that work. If we find ourselves stuck in it, we can actually look forward to the week ahead on a Sunday night and tap dance to work on a Monday morning because we find joy in doing what we do for its own sake. And if we do that and we're earning more money doing it, then we can accelerate our financial progress whilst we're having fun. And that's what this whole thing's about living the good life, making great progress, and finding joy in the journey. So what we're gonna cover in this episode is the two ways that we get stuck in jobs that constrain us. And then we're gonna talk about the way out. There's a three part framework that's gonna help you escape that job and start covering out a career instead, a career that energizes you, a career that inspires you and helps you make great money while you do it. And a little observation here. If you see your work as a job, it's probably a sign that you do need to redesign it. On some level, a job is an obligation that you wanna quit, whereas a career is a contribution that you wanna make and this framework that you're gonna learn in this episode, it's based on deeply observing the people who figured out how to have both money and meaning, and modeling what they do, not what they say. There's so many people that give really bad advice once they figured it out because they forget what they did to get there, and they talk from where they are right now. And so it's really more about watching what people do. Now. This isn't about throwing caution to the wind and quitting without a plan. It is a way to design and redesign your work to make it work for you. It's not about judging or criticizing yourself. It's about thinking critically about what you want out of life. And think about this for a second. We'll spend months thinking about where to invest our money. Reading books, talking to people, discussing, debating, deciding. But we'll only spend minutes thinking about where we're actually investing our time and talent to earn that money. Now I find that crazy because we spend the biggest chunk of our life at work and we spend next to no time thinking about working on how we're working. That's so crazy because if you can make that work for you. Then you don't have to escape anything. The real cheat code here is creating a life that we don't wanna escape from. And I believe that's how you escape the right race. But this framework isn't how I think you should do it. I'm showing you how I think about it, and I use this framework to guide my decisions. So what I want you to do is take what you find useful from this and just leave the rest. But you do need to think critically about it. And the whole thing here is how to think critically about that problem. So let's jump into the first part of this because we need to decode the problem if we're gonna overcome it and transcend it. And I love that quote from Einstein. He says, we cannot solve our problems on the same level of thinking that created them. So the way out of this is to understand how we get stuck, and there are two ways that we get stuck or lost in jobs instead of carving out a career. And the first way I call the mercenary mentality. This is about just doing a job for the money, following the money and showing me the money. And I'll show you what I can do. It's just taking on work that pays well, but doesn't necessarily feed yourself. You don't get any intrinsic reward from this. You're just doing it for the paycheck, turning up, clocking in, clocking out, taking the money and leaving. Usually smart and intelligent people. Move towards careers like this because they can see these, these opportunities, and that'll provide a level of stability and security, and in certain industries it can be really quite profitable as well because there's high demand in these places, so it makes sense from that commercial perspective. The only drawback with this is you are usually compensated for competence without ever necessarily being brilliant. You can get to a point where you go, all I'm actually good enough to be able to do this. And that can breed a level of complacency, a bit of entitlement, and. You don't really get any intrinsic reward from the work itself. So you don't relate to it anyway. You don't take pride in what you do. And eventually you'll be outcompeted by people who are committed, who have energy, who have drive, and they wanna get good at what they do. And so what I usually see with smart people like this is, you know, you'll kind of rise through the ranks in the inning'cause you know how to play the game, but you cap out at a point where. You're either not really interested in getting better, or you actually cannot get better because you just don't have the interest or the curiosity to get to that next level, to get to the frontier and become really good at what you do. And the gap between the people who are committed and you begins to rise really, really quickly. And so you find that you raise your income to a level of incompetency or complacency, and that becomes the cap. Then your reputation starts working against you because you're kind of never quite getting to the next level. But you don't know what to do because you're trapped by the money. You are making great money here, and you don't know how to make that kind of money anywhere else because you've invested so much time in this space and you feel like it's too late. And frequently what you'll see is this kind of person has a resume that looks great, but as they go through their career, they spend less and less time in one place. They're moving around a lot more. Because they're doing a pente. They're not necessarily moving up. They're always moving sideways, but never necessarily continuing to progress and improve in any way. Basically they're just stop growing. Now, if we're going to decode this, we need to understand what the underlying belief is and the dominant drivers of this. So the folks who fall victim to the mercenary mentality are people who believe that work is a resource game, and the winners are the rich and they're driven primarily by logic and money. A really good example of this is a guy I knew who is actually one of the most talented, most intelligent, smartest individuals I ever had the pleasure of being mates with. And he was kind of tracked because of that intelligence into a career in medicine, and he was depressed. All the way through it. And he's quite brilliant and he's really good at what he does now. He's gone through the whole process. But this guy always loved music. And whenever I saw him light up, it was when he was listening to playing or talking about music, and he's just so good at it. And that doesn't necessarily mean that he should have been a musician. What I'm saying is he wasn't in an area where he had the energy. His energy was elsewhere. And when he's a doctor. He's gonna be a good doctor, but can he ever be a great doctor? I don't know. And he might be happy enough with that, but he will never necessarily reach his potential in that space because he has greater potential elsewhere. I. And I think that's such a classic example of that sort of mercenary mentality where it sort of like makes sense, like it's logical, it's practical, there's just no emotional connection to what you're doing in that same way. But there's always a reversal of every sort of principle here. So I really believe that these aren't mistakes and these aren't problems and things like that. And actually in the short term, having a mercenary mentality that can work if you, if you're strategic about acquiring resources for a bigger goal. For example, like when we started this business, I talked about that period of uncertainty we had where we ran outta runway or running outta runway. We had to figure out how to create more runway. One of the things I did was take money about out of my portfolio. Another thing I did was went to work consulting and this turned out to be actually. Really important because I learned all these really important skills through that process. I wasn't necessarily always connected to the work itself, but I actually enjoyed learning the skills and I was doing it for that purpose. And so I actually kind of look at like, almost like bank robbery. I'm getting paid to learn these things, but I'm gonna take these skills and I'm gonna apply them in an area where I find a lot of purpose in that sense, a mercenary mentality can be quite useful. You can go into these industries, get paid really well to learn certain things, stack up the skills that really matter to you, and then apply them in context where you have that level of commitment. So I kind of look at it like work to learn while you earn and then do that bank robbery and use that information, use those skills, use those connections in a way that actually works for you as well. So it's not like the mercenary mentality is always bad or never quite work or a big mistake. It's whether you are trapped in that. And the folks that get trapped in it, they get trapped by the money because they don't know how to make that kind of money anywhere else. And they just feel like it's too late and it becomes this kind of a little bit of a prison, really. So that's the mercenary mentality. The second way we get stuck is what I call the mata mentality. And a martyr is someone who will suffer greatly or is killed for their religious or political beliefs or advocating for some sort of, cause. They put the cause above everything. They sacrifice everything, all parts of who they are for the cause. And this happens a lot when we get really romantic about careers and we just. Are just way too emotional and attached to them because they form part of our identity in some way. And this is exactly what it was like in sport. There's so many people who wanna be involved in that on just any level they possibly could be. And that's exactly how I kind of got started. I was just like absolutely obsessed with it. And I didn't see any difference between me and the job, you know? And the pros of this is, you know, you can tap into really high levels of commitment. The competition for these jobs is really, really fierce, and that can bring out the best in you because you rise to the levels of that competition. You can collaborate with really equally committed people and do really cool things. You can access top experts and top people in the different fields, and you have that sort of admiration from others. Whenever I used to meet new people in social settings and things like that and talk about what I did, there was always that sort of. Look people gave you because they go, oh, that's a cool job. And I always laugh now because I think about the work I do now. I work in personal finance and money, and whenever I talk about that, people just don't wanna talk about it. The average kind of person just, they kind of just slink away, just like I used to slink away, from that topic because of how I felt about. That's kind of area of my life, but these are the pros, right? Commitment competition's bringing out the best in you. You're a, you can be collaborating with people who are equally committed and you can do cool things, and you have that sense of admiration from others. The cons of this are pretty significant though, and these cons compound over time and they get worse and worse. Kind of similar to the mercenary mentality. The big con here is overcommitment. You can jump into this and have no boundaries and just let people walk all over you and give absolutely everything and. That can lead to resentment, and can make you kind of bitter and particularly if you're not necessarily getting ahead because the opportunities in these careers are so scarce, you need actually quite a bit of luck to get a break in these careers. and I'm not blind to that. I think my career in sport, there was a lot of luck in involved. The only reason I got my first job is'cause they offered it to somebody else and that person declined and I was next in line. And the only reason I was next in line wasn't because the people who were employing me. Wanted to employ me is because I was put there by the athletes that had seen the work that I was doing at the sub elite levels, and that sort of pushed me and promoted me into that space. So I had a lot of things going right for me in that moment. I put myself in a position to be lucky, but I absolutely was lucky. And the harsh thing is in jobs like this, like, you know, entertainment, all the cool type jobs that everybody has this sense of status around it. There's so much you have to put up with that works against you. That's not cool. Not cool at all because supply and demand's working against you and there's a level of insecurity in that industry and that insecurity. Can breed bad behavior. people can become really protective. They can become really egoic and they can be really aggressive. and there's a lot of power, a lot of ego, and it just frankly gets exhausting. That's kind of what wore me down when it comes to sport, these corrosive cultures where there are people who are running their own agendas and acting one way, and they're just kind of not nice people. And you always have to justify your existence and you are always wondering whether you're gonna get the next contract. Because you don't have any security in these careers. So whenever you are romantic about this, because you're a martyr, you are always in a position where you can be taken for a ride. and the cost if you get lucky, is you could be paranoid. You're just always wondering when someone's gonna take your job or you're gonna lose your job or what's gonna happen. And if you don't get lucky. You could just work for a long period of time for very, very little. and so the martyr mentality does get us lost as well. And we get stuck because we get stuck with identity. we need to be that kind of person and if we're gonna decode this, let's talk about the belief and the drivers underneath it. The belief that's getting us stuck here in the martyr mentality is that work is a status game where the winners are revered. And the dominant drivers are emotion and identity. And we can get stuck and trapped in that identity. I worked with someone like this, you know, 12 years ago the lines were touring Australia and the Lions tour in Australia is a massive thing for rugby union. It's kinda like. The Olympics, but it doesn't happen every four years. It happens every 12 years'cause the best rugby union players from England, island, Scotland, Wales. They team up and create this like super team and they tour. Africa, New Zealand or Australia, and it's kind of like playing the best of right. And so it's a massive deal and I found myself 12 years ago in the middle of that camp and working with somebody who was just absolutely insufferable. This person was so insecure. Absolutely everything they did was about projecting some sort of sense of superiority, trying to undermine other people to sort of sort make themselves look good, trying to create all these different allies. And it was just unbelievable how hard it was to work with this person. And I'm, I'm. Generally pretty unflappable. And I ended up telling this person to go fuck themselves and stay outta my way and pretty aggressively as well. it was just really, really hard to cop. And what's interesting about this is this person I. This was a career coach and they end up crippling their own career because their reputation preceded them everywhere they went. Everybody knew this person and everybody said, this person is terrible to work with. You don't wanna work with or for this person'cause this is what's gonna end up happening. It's kinda like Donald Trump, you know, anyone that gets too close to Donald Trump is like, oh man, that guy stinks. it was kind of like this. And this kind of person just simply doesn't know themselves if they're not that person. They have to be that kind of person, and they get trapped by that identity. And what's interesting about this though, is that instability, right? You have this like sense of status, but you have no subsistence, you have no security, and so you're just chronically insecure and it's just a horrible way to be. So if you're gonna work a job in a place where there's a lot of people with this Marty mentality, or if you're stuck in that Marty mentality yourself, you just got to be wary of how that's impacting you or how you will be impacted in careers like that. Because in all these jobs I. Where it's very much about status or the identity that you adopt. When you actually get to do these jobs, you're gonna come up against that supply demand tension working against you. There's gonna be so many people who want your job, and there's gonna be a few people who want to keep those jobs make sure that they protect their patch. the reversal here though is that the martyr mentality can absolutely help you. If you start out in this set, really high standards, build specific knowledge and skills that are highly valued in other contexts. And again, it's kind of what I've done with sport, right? Like everything I learned from coaching, I've gone and applied in the consulting context. It adds a lot of value over there. And in the personal finance space, it's a massive differentiator for us as well. So I kind of like to think of it like if you're really into something you re, you should do it, like go and pursue it. But don't be blind as to what's going on and don't be blind. Don't get stuck there because of some sort of sense of identity or status. I like to think of it more like a tour of duty, like do the tour of duty, take the good with the bad, build the skills, get the experience, and then keep moving. Keep moving on. Don't let that define you basically. That's how I think about it. Now, we've just gone through. The mercenary mentality, and we've gone through the martyr mentality, and these are the two ways that we get stuck. And if you think about the common thread here between these two different mentalities, they're both making the same mistake. they're chasing prestige Instead of seeking purpose, they're chasing the symbols of success. It's like when I get the trophy, then I'll be happy. And this, this gets us stuck. This becomes a prison of its own making. I call it the Hotel California problem. Right? And if you don't know what I'm talking about, Google, the Eagles and Hotel California. It's a record breaking song and just a real good listen. but there's a line in that song where it says you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. And the mercenary is trapped by the money. And the lifestyle they build around that income, whereas the martyrs trapped by identity and the story they've told themselves and sold to the world as well. And so these are the two ways that we get stuck and exactly how and why we get stuck. The mercenaries trapped by those two things because they believe that work is a game of resources, and the winners are the rich. The martyr gets trapped by identity, and they get stuck because they believe that work is a game of status, and the winners are the revered, and both of these are mistakes. So now that we know that and we know how and why we get stuck, let's talk about how we can avoid or escape these two traps. What if you could bring the positives of those two mentalities together in one approach? Without the downsides, without the mindless part of it where you're being really conscious and intentional? Then you could escape the Hotel California problem. Make sure it never happens. You could enjoy Leisurer time for what it is instead of using it to recover and go again. You could not feel trapped by the work you do. You could feel absolutely enthused, engaged, energized, and inspired by it so that you'd wake up on a Monday morning and as I said at the start, tap dance to work because you find joy in the work you do for its own sake, and you just happen to make great money doing it. Well, here's the good news. You can do it. You can have the positives of those two mindsets without the negatives and it's been called the missionary mindset, whereas the mercenary chases money, the martyr chaser status, the missionary mindset's a little bit different. The missionary mindset focuses on contribution. I. And that might sound a little bit touchy feely, but Jeff Basos is somebody who says he's always gonna choose someone with a missionary mindset because there are competitive advantages to being a missionary a missionary focuses on creating value for others. And the byproduct of value creation is value exchange, which is money, right? They think and act longer term, so their reputation is always great and they'll will achieve mastery, which separates'em from competition, and they build strength through struggle. When others burn out and quit, they keep going and they become rarer. Because of that, they learn more through those processes, and there's just a level of experience and expertise and intuition and understanding that most people don't have. And those three things together, focusing on creating value thinking and acting longer term and building strength through struggle.'cause they don't quit. All of these get the law of supply and demand on your side, which pushes up your income, right? Because you are just more rare, you are more valuable and that law's working for you. And there's three career quests that'll help you unlock the missionary mindset and use that as a way to improve the way that you work and make it work for you. but Before we talk about how you can apply these, I just wanna remind you, this is a model, It's made up of principles that are the result of these different patterns that I've observed. And the thing about models are they're meant to be useful. They're not meant to be accurate. If it was accurate, it would actually be reality itself. It would be. The pure copy of some one person's career. And so in order to make a lot of people's experience useful, we have to kind of chunk it up a little bit and sort of make it more applicable and make it more of a guideline. So you, you're gonna need to think, and you're gonna need to reflect on how you can configure these principles to fit your own context and just a bit of a reminder, I've created that Action Coach in the episode show notes in order to be able to help you do this. So reference that link at the bottom of this episode, and when you get to the end of it, jump in and spend a little bit of time with that action coach to figure out what to do with this information as well. But the rest of the series is actually gonna help you start applying it too. So I'm gonna give you the high level here. But I want you to see it as an ideal not to measure yourself against, but to guide decisions to help you keep designing and redesigning your work.'cause that's exactly how I do it, and I'm gonna show you how I'm doing it right now at the end, once I've shared it with you. So. How do we adopt the missionary mindset? Well, to understand this, I just wanna give you kind of high level conceptual understanding, and I wanna do it through a bit of a metaphor. So I want you to imagine that you're a superhero, Superman, wonder Woman, one of these two, right? Your job as a superhero is to uncover and master your superpowers and avoid kryptonite, because that renders your powers useless. Then you wanna be able to use your gifts to save the people who need you, and you want to help as many people as possible. So that's the three things I want you to think about because this framework is kind of those three things. The first quest is knowing yourself. This is how you master your superpowers and avoid kryptonite. And the reason why is because your life has led you to develop gifts, strengths, specific knowledge and skills that distinguish and differentiate you and make you really special and unique and valuable. But if you don't know what they are and how to nurture them, you'll be continually playing yourself out of position all of the time. So what we need to learn is how to create that moat by pursuing mastery in this space. And mode is this concept of defensibility in commercial acumen. So in the first deep dive of this series, I'm gonna show you how to cultivate that sense of purpose in your work by finding those strengths, those gifts, those skills, and then honing those superpowers and getting the most outta those gifts. And this is how you turn work into play. So that's what we're gonna cover in the first deep dive of this series. But what I want you to get is that the first quest is to master your superpower and avoid kryptonite. Superpower is all the skills and strengths that you have. And kryptonite is those environments that actually make it harder for you to get the best outta yourself. The second quest is serving others, and this is saving the people who need your superpowers because the most rewarding work is where your gifts intersect with other people's needs at the moments that matter. When you can see that the work is rewarding in and of itself, you don't just get paid money. You get this sense of satisfaction contribution. And so in the second deep dive in this series, I'm gonna show you how to identify the most lucrative opportunities to find those intersections. How to become the most undeniable, best option for the people that you wanna serve. And how to transcend competition for good because of the way that you position yourself. And that's essentially what we're gonna be covering in that second deep dive. And this is how you can make sure that you're always well rewarded for your effort beyond just the money. The third quest is amplifying your impact, and this is all about using what you can to help as many people as possible because your compensation reflects your contribution. So in the third deep dive in this series, I'm gonna show you how to start building assets instead of just buying them. I'm gonna show you how to bypass gatekeepers and I'm gonna show you how to decouple time and money so that you stop trading time for money and you can explode your earning potential. Once you know how to use leverage, you can start making more because you're having a high contribution, but less effort, less brute force because you're doing it smarter. And again, this is how the internet has changed everything and there's a whole new set of rules and there are a few people who are playing by these rules. But if you're still playing by the old rules, it's getting harder and harder. So that's why it's so, so important as a vehicle. Now? How am I applying this? Well, I'm constantly using this framework to design and redesign my work. Knowing self is about mastery. Serving others is about meaning and amplifying. My impact is about money. If work is feeling a little bit too much like work, I need to focus here. I need to tap back into my superpowers and make sure that I'm giving my gifts away and I'm actually honing and strengthening those gifts. I'm doing more, I'm becoming more and evolving in that space if the work itself is not rewarding. When I'm giving my gifts to others, I need to think about who I'm giving the gifts to and whether they care enough about it and whether I need to think about different contexts or doing the work in a different way. So I focus here and redesign. There. If I'm working too much for what I earn and I feel like the effort's too much, then I think about leverage. I think about how do I change? The way that I'm working so that for every input, I create more outputs without necessarily working harder or longer to do it. And this series is actually a pretty good example, right? This is based off the conversations that I've had with several members where I'm really understanding what I do particularly well in the mentorship and how I actually help people. I'm not the person who jumps into the spreadsheet and helps you zero in on the answer. I'm the person who's helping you figure out, that's the hill I want to climb. That's the person I'm gonna become. To be able to make that happen and get committed into the actual process, and then actually go through that process, pay the price, and make those critical decisions along the way. so I've been redesigning our delivery model to incorporate more coaching, more conversations around income earning potential, and all the things that I do particularly well to be able to do more of that. and help more people more often to be able to speed things up because honestly, there's nothing more motivating for me than seeing somebody do something they didn't think they could do. I don't need to get paid to do that, and I wanna see it happen faster, more often for more people. and that's why we've sort of started talking more about income because it is really the cheat code, it's the accelerator. It makes everything happen so much faster. So let's talk about how you can apply this. If you are thinking through this different framework, right, knowing self-serving others, amplifying impact, rate yourself one to 10 for mastery, meaning and money. You might say, look, I'm probably really not pursuing mastery much at all at the moment. Or I'm not really tapping into it. I don't feel like I'm really there. Meaning might be really low because something's wrong in that space. Or money might be really low'cause there's not enough leverage around what you do. And then you wanna make a bit of a comment on each and use that as a way to kind of think through how to get the most outta the rest of this series. That's a good way to reflect on this information and start thinking about how to apply it. So here's what I want you to take from this episode. We get stuck playing ourselves outta position when we chase profit or passion without any purpose. But if you wanna create a lasting competitive advantage in a way that compounds, you wanna move away from being a mercenary or being a martyr, and you wanna step into that missionary mindset because a missionary mindset is commercial and considered, but it's also committed to mastery and contribution and value. And there's three career quests to be able to do this. The first one is knowing yourself, which is all about honing those superpowers. The second one's about serving others, which is finding those who need saving. And the third one is all about amplifying your impact, which is about helping as many people as possible. In the rest of this series, I'm gonna be doing a deep dive codified case study into each of these career quests to show you how to bring it to life and ground it and a little bit more real world examples for you. And a bit of a reminder before I wrap this up as well, that link in the show notes to the Earn Your Worth survey, that's gonna help you link what you're learning to your own context and help you reflect on it as well. The second one, again, is at Action Coach. Go down in there at the end of this episode, click that link, and spend a bit of time with me helping you figure out how to act on this information and apply it to your own situation. So that's it for this episode. We spend a bit more time really understanding the problem, and I've given you a bit of a high level of the solution, which is that missionary mentality. And for the rest of this series, we're gonna be deep diving into each of those career quests. coming up next is a deep dive into knowing self, and I'm gonna be introducing you or reintroducing you to a really well known Aussie person who absolutely exemplified this and can really show you. How to step into knowing yourself, getting the most outta those superpowers. So if you wanna transform your work into play, make sure you're subscribed so you get this next episode as soon as it drops. Talk soon.