Aliza Knox - Dont Quit Your Day Job: The 6 Mindshifts You Need to Rise and Thrive at Work

Aliza shares real stories in a fresh, original and relatable manner. And they add up to great advice on how you can make the most of your career.

Claire Hughes Johnson,
COO, Stripe

Don't Quit Your Day Job is an inspiring, engaging, and essential read on how to be the best you can be in life and your career. Aliza provides her uniquely human, practical and honest insights into what can help you achieve your full potential, drawing on her rich career and experiences to provide pragmatic ways to successfully respond to the many challenges of becoming a great leader.

David Thodey,
Chair, Xero and Tyro; former Chair, CSIRO; former CEO, Telstra

This is the best career advice I've read. Follow it and you will enjoy your life and work, and excel in what matters to you. Aliza brings her extensive senior global experience across a range of industries to help readers work out what they want and how to get it. It answers every question I've ever been asked by people seeking career direction and advice. Wish I'd written it.

Margie Seale,
NonExecutive Director, Scentre Group and Westpac; former CEO, Random House Australia and New Zealand

When I started my career at BCG 30 years ago, Aliza Knox taught me some of the principles that got me to where I am today. In Don't Quit Your Day Job, you'll learn them too. Her advice is priceless.

Brad Banducci,
CEO Woolworths Group

Don't Quit Your Day Job provides practical tips and advice for success in your career. Aliza Knox distils her vast experience as a global business leader and mentor to highlight the mindshifts you need to expand your career opportunities and build your success at any stage of your life.

Dig Howitt,
CEO and President, Cochlear Ltd

Good people are hard to find and keeping them is even harder. Don't Quit Your Day Job will show individuals how they can get the most from where they are, and give managers the tips and tools to keep their talent from moving on.

Alison Deitz,
Chief Executive Partner, Norton Rose Fulbright Australia

Your career can take you anywhere. This highly readable and relatable book by Aliza Knox, Don't Quit Your Day Job, is an inspiration for how to make your career and your life work for you.

Alison Davis,
Managing Partner, Blockchain Coinvestors

First published in 2022 by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd

42 McDougall St, Milton Qld 4064

Office also in Melbourne

Aliza Knox and Wendy Paris, 2022

The moral rights of the authors have been asserted

ISBN: 9780730396598

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (for example, a fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review), no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, communicated or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. All inquiries should be made to the publisher at the address above.

Cover design by Wiley

Disclaimer

The material in this publication is of the nature of general comment only, and does not represent professional advice. It is not intended to provide specific guidance for particular circumstances and it should not be relied on as the basis for any decision to take action or not take action on any matter which it covers. Readers should obtain professional advice where appropriate, before making any such decision. To the maximum extent permitted by law, the authors and publisher disclaim all responsibility and liability to any person, arising directly or indirectly from any person taking or not taking action based on the information in this publication.

If you have a job or are seeking one, this book is for you. While the conversation in the media or even at a dinner party might be about entrepreneurship or exploiting your side hustle or the great resignation, the daytoday reality is that most of us work for someone else, and, increasingly, in large organisations. We also work for decades, which may sound daunting (and exhausting), but as you'll see in this book, plenty of people find ways to make work rewarding, fulfilling and, dare I say, fun.

Across the globe, an increasing percentage of people work for large companies. In the UK alone, nearly half of the workers are employed by firms with 250 people or more. In the US, as of the 2014 Census data, nearly 40 per cent of workers were employed at either large companies (those with 2500 people or more), Close to another third of workers in the US were at midsized companies (with 100 to 2500 employees).

As corporations and businesses continue to grow, so will opportunities within them. What you need to succeed are the six mindshifts laid out as chapters in this book. The mindshifts are outlined, then brought to life with relatable examples of people I've met along the way. All of these people are real, though some names, and occasionally some genders, have been changedas they used to say on TVto protect the innocent. Ways to put the mindshifts into practice are listed at the end of each chapter so you can adopt the ones that work for you.

***

If my life had worked out differently, I might have been a foresterplanting trees, assessing timber plotsand writing about it all in a roughhewn log cabin surrounded by towering redwoods, with the occasional bear ambling by.

This wasn't actually a dream of mine as a child; growing up in the US, I had no specific vision of what my career would be. I worked odd jobs to earn and save money in high school, and one of these jobs involved taking aptitude and personality tests at Stanford University's Graduate School of Education. One test indicated that I'd be wellsuited to a life in forestry or the clergy.

Neither option, I confess, interested me remotely.

I wasn't really exposed to people working within large corporations, and I never particularly thought about corporate life either. I've now spent the past 40 years working for, and leading, businesses at some of the world's most interesting, innovative companiesincluding more than a decade heading the Asia Pacific (APAC) region for parts of Google, as well as for Twitter and Cloudflare. Before that, I served as the first female partner in Asia at Boston Consulting Group (BCG). Over the years, I also had roles in the financial services sector, including at Visa, American Express and Charles Schwab.

I went to Brown University, where you didn't have to declare a major until your junior year, which was one reason I chose the school. After graduating with a degree in applied math and economics, I took a job in banking because it ticked two boxes on my wish list: a great training program, and the opportunity to move to New York City, which seemed like an exciting place to live.

While much of my career has been in sales and general management, these were not early interests. As a teen, I subscribed to Seventeen magazine (typical) and