As we step further into 2025, a lot is happening in the world. Competition is not slowing down. We live in a world of enormous change. This is good for your career because there are more opportunities. But it can also be bad for your career if you’re not the best-suited person for that opportunity.

Recently, we worked with a client from the search engine division of a prominent tech firm. He said there was nothing he could take to his superiors that would get them excited about putting the investment in to grow their division.

When we have discussions with clients, clearly, we can’t give them all the answers because we don’t know all the problems involved. Sometimes when people talk about their problems, they sanitize it to make it sound like there’s really nothing they can do. They may want us to affirm their lack of options and say it’s not their fault.

In this particular case, it’s his career and his division—he has a lot of opportunities, so he needs to do something about it.

You will be telling yourself stories as you go further into the new year. Stories about why you cannot change your career. Stories about why you’re up against a tough peer at the office, an external competitor, or an industrial giant. Be careful of the stories you tell yourself about your career. There are always ways to compete. The question is whether you can see it.

Do you have the wherewithal to work on putting together the business case over the next 30 days to convince your superiors to back you? When your board or your executive team doesn’t back you, it’s not their fault; it’s because you haven’t made the case. At the end of the day, if your company goes out of business because someone didn’t make the case to fight against competitors, you can’t use the argument, “Well, my board is too busy.” No, your job is to convince them.

We always ask clients to follow one of our anchor FC Insider programs—one of our most powerful, relevant programs—called How to Sell >$10MM Consulting Studies. The Andrew Program. It’s a detailed program showcasing how we helped a senior manager at a professional services firm to reinvent his career, reinvent his company, and go from senior manager to senior partner in the space of three years, which is a pretty daunting task. It’s even more daunting when you consider he did it not by taking on a front-facing sales role but by taking over a cost center in the firm, which he converted into a moneymaker.

What’s interesting is the sequence of steps we guided him to take to create opportunities. One of the big insights that you’ll see in the program is that nothing is going to be given to you. No one will build your career for you. I think a lot of people fail to grasp this for far too long. If you want to join a lucrative division or a money-making part of the business, it won’t be given to you unless there’s a reason.

With Andrew, we created a series of pilots so he could demonstrate that he could do what he wanted to do and build a coalition to back him so that he could incrementally get more and more responsibility. That’s a three-year journey.

As you go into the new year, listen to the Andrew program. It’s a remarkable program because it speaks to the heart of why you’re reading this email. It is an in-depth program, so it will keep you busy for a while. It is designed to be consumed on the go (while working out, doing errands, etc). I think you will be blown away by how much you will learn and by the results you will get once you start applying what you learn in your daily life.

At the end of the day, you want to make your company successful. But you also have to be successful. It’s one thing to put together a nice strategy for your company, but you also have to put together and execute the right strategy for your career.

If you are inclined to do so, I would love to know: What results you would like to accomplish in 2025 for you to feel you had an extraordinary year for your career and business, or even generally for your life? 

Life passes by so quickly. Don’t let this year fly by and be just another year you were doing ok, but not living up to your potential.

Reply and let us know.

Take care,

Kris Safarova
CEO, FIRMSconsulting