#TBCResults: From overworked, underpaid SEO copywriter for PH agency to well-paid with a great work life balance for AU agency in 69 days
#TBCResults - 050 - Nikki: From overworked and underpaid SEO copywriter for a PH agency to well-paid with a great work life balance for an AU agency in 69 days
Nikki's Problem:
“How actively do I need to apply to a job?”
”For this call, talk about my situation and options because rn I'm at a bad spot at work “
”Eventually secure a job that allows me greater control of my time and set me free from worrying all the time about my finances; become wiser in job hunting.“ - Nikki’s initial questions from October 2024
Nikki and I have actually spoken about her job before she decided to work together.
In July 2024, I decided to offer 30 minute calls to anyone signed up to my newsletter. You come with a question or an uncomfortable thought about your career, and in 30 minutes I've told you what the real problems are and what you should do about it.
Nikki took me up on that offer and wanted to talk about her job. She talked about her workload, her workplace, the people there, and that it felt toxic and nakakasakal (like it was choking her).
After a few more minutes of asking questions about her situation, I agreed with her that her workplace was terrible, and told her that the only action was for her to quit and move to a new job. There was no way she could influence the team culture to change at this point. All she could do was save herself.
But that's the problem which Nikki couldn't accept just yet.
“She was so entangled with the workplace and the people there, she had no idea how she was going to leave for a new job or even how she’d find the time for a new job.
She was frequently the target of emotional outbursts from the management, even though she was doing the work of 3 people for the same small pay.
The most common phrase she heard was “you’re the senior so you need to set a good example to everyone else”, which pressured her into working long hours to get everything done.
Every waking moment of her day was spent either doing something for this job or thinking about the job or feeling sorry for herself for being in this job.”
It made leaving incredibly hard for Nikki since she worried about how they'll proceed without her and also because she didn't have a lot of time to use for her job hunt. This is the problem when you become the default person who does the extra work for little recognition or thanks.
The Bumpy Career’s Proposed Solution:
The plan was simple but the execution difficult. Nikki had all the skills to find a better paying job with a better work life balance.
But she didn't have the willpower to see it through on her own. That was all gone from how toxic her workplace was.
The biggest problem in my opinion was Nikki's mindset; she kept thinking about who would do her job, how would the team cope, that she didn't have any time at all to job hunt. Even though she wanted to leave her job in July, she had taken little action about it and had done a ton of overthinking.
At this point, she was feeling even worse and was already worrying that it was going to be Christmas (dead time for job hunting) then she'd be stuck another year in this terrible job. She was paralyzing herself just thinking about it all.
So I was going to give her the exact step-by-step plan and all she had to do was execute it.
I didn't want her to spend any time thinking about next steps or what to do because that was overwhelming her. She just needed to move on autopilot and if anything was unclear, she was to text me immediately.
This was again incredibly hard for her to accept. Nikki is an overthinker and really wanted to overcome her problems with her workplace first before going to another. But as I pointed out, she had 4 months to think about her problems (July - October), and nothing came out of it. So for the next 2 months, let's work on actually solving it by getting her out of there. You can't process your feelings if you're constantly under attack.
I told her what we were going to do.
First, I wanted Nikki to practice quiet quitting at her job. Just focus on herself and the goals so we could get her out of there.
Stop trying to finish the work every day, stop trying to defend herself or the team, stop reacting to whatever happened at work. Just say "okay" and then go back to applying for jobs. We already knew she wasn't going to be in this job 3 months from now, so she had to let go.
Second, she had to use this newly freed up time to focus on the job hunt.
In my opinion, she only had to document all her skills and experiences, then train for interviews and how to reject job offers because I was sure she'd receive multiple. I felt she was already highly skilled and it wouldn’t take long to get her out of this job.
Her goal was to leave this job ASAP. My goal was for her to enter a better environment that valued her skills, experiences, and work ethic plus paid her 2x more than what she was making.
Small obstacles we had to work around:
Nikki was working way too many hours and that left her little time and headspace to job hunt. The first thing I told her to do was to learn about quiet quitting and start practicing it.
I would remind her regularly as well that the work would still exist tomorrow but these job listings wouldn't. She had to prioritize her job hunt over her current job because we already knew she'd be leaving.
Timeline and Deliverables:
Across 32 days, we had 3 1-hour calls and a lot of back-and-forth texting to keep her mindset sharp as we:
✅ Redid her entire resume, highlighting her skills in SEO, team management, project management, and then random ones she picked up along the way
✅ Built her first ever portfolio, covering her SEO skills from research to copywriting.
People often forget you can make a portfolio for anything; you just need to build it in a way that shows the right metrics.
✅ Built out her ideal offer checklist, where we made it clear what her next workplace had to offer before she considered accepting the role.
There's no point leaving a bad situation to get into an equally bad one after all.
✅ Built out her job hunting tracker to make it clear what level of roles should she be applying for given the variety of skills she had and the ideal life she wanted to live (which was to be more relaxed than her current life).
✅ Revised her LinkedIn fully
✅ Interview practice, especially on asking about the new workplace's current workload and setup.
✅ Salary negotiation practice on asking for what she was worth
Nikki had tons of work experience and I wanted her to really focus on getting as much salary as for as little workload as possible because she was providing expertise and speed.
✅ !! Most important !! Worked a lot on her mindset as Nikki had a hundred mindset blocks from her current workplace
If I listed them all down, I would need infinite scroll on this page so I'll only highlight 1:
3 weeks in a row, Nikki kept texting me that she wanted to quit her job already. Just be unemployed while job hunting.
I helped her understand how much worse that situation would be compared to her just quiet quitting at this job.
First off, her expenses and her salary were almost equal, and she didn't have much in savings. So her financial runway was quite short. Second, to be unemployed and job hunting is a mental challenge that not everyone can face; I really don't recommend that if you get easily overwhelmed and that your default action is to shut down and not take action.
Reminding her of what we discussed, she agreed that she wouldn't handle it well and kept going for another week. I needed to remind her all the time to stop going above and beyond at work, stop finishing all of the work in a day, just stop. Focus on getting interviews.
Outcome:
Nikki came out of our calls with a strong resume, portfolio, and interview skill set. She was prepped to negotiate on her salary and more importantly, her work life balance needs.
Unfortunately, it was mid-November already. But I was optimistic that her skills would get her into interviews easily. She just needed to do the hard part of applying and interviewing.
And I was absolutely right. Nikki was booked and busy with interviews nonstop from the moment she started applying.
She was firm in the negotiations, sticking to her target salary and interviewing the employers back on what their management style was. She didn’t want to go into another toxic workplace; she had given up way too much of her life already to the previous one.
69 days after signing on to work together, Nikki signed her new job offer with a company she recently started dreaming of working for. She started her Christmas holiday feeling light and happy and at peace, knowing full well that she’d be in a much better place this 2025.
She’s just started her new job this January, so it’s a bit early to claim it. But I have a good feeling for these things. I’m sure she’s going to have a great time.
Some words from Nikki herself:
***
The Bumpy Career is the career coach for the confused high achiever.
Meaning you're the type of person that if you know where to go and what you had to do, you'd be number 1 in an instant. But you're a bit confused today on exactly that: where to go and what to do.
That's where I come in.
We'll work together to give you a actionable roadmap to make your career live up to your expectations. If that sounds great to you, then book a call here and let's talk soon~