Yahoo Finance Career Experts: 5 Surprising Strategies To Help You Earn $100K or More a Year
Many people enter the workforce hoping to achieve a dream salary and someday tell friends and family that they now earn at least six figures. According to a Bloomberg article highlighting the findings of a study conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the wage floor for American workers has risen to record highs. However, earning that first $100,000 remains an important milestone for many workers — and in some states, that salary can stretch quite far.
Explore More: 26 Ways To Make $1,000 Fast — In a Week or Less
Try This: 6 Unusual Ways To Make Extra Money (That Actually Work)
To give you insights on how to earn your first $100K, or more, within a year, GOBankingRates turned to career coaches and financial experts for advice. With some confidence and a willingness to sharpen your skills across disciplines, you can have the ability to turn that dream salary into your reality.
Find the Earning Power in Self-Knowledge
When Kelly Roehm, SHRM-SCP, founder of The Resume Realist, coaches clients, she encourages them to start by forming a complete perspective of their career.
Gaining a clear understanding of your strengths, skills and experience, as well as opportunities for growth, helps you get clarity about your best fit within the workforce. Knowing where you’ll thrive helps you build a brand for yourself around what you can offer potential clients or employers.
But your assessment should be even broader than the confines of your resume. You should be researching the market based on your strengths to develop a gap analysis that can chart a pathway between where you are now and where you want to go in your career.
Roehm said that your gap analysis can help you identify where you might need additional learning, training, mentorship or coaching to achieve your career goals and put you in a position to earn $100K.
Read Next: Grant Cardone: Here’s How To Become Rich If You’re Earning an Average Salary
Seek Your Mentors
Once you’ve taken a clear look at the skills you’ve nurtured and the areas you still need to grow, you should focus on finding mentors who can help you reach the next stage in your career.
For Paul Bramson, CEO and keynote speaker at The Paul Bramson Companies, mentorship is essential toward boosting your professional — and personal — potential over the long-term. The real-life expertise of a good mentor offers more personalized guidance and advice that simply don’t exist within textbooks.
“This type of guidance extends beyond technical aspects, including workplace dynamics, effective communication, relationship management, finance, conflict resolution, negotiation and more,” he said. “All of these skills will help you secure a high-paying salary much faster.”
Finding valuable mentors can also open doors across your field in the form of potential networking, as well as job and collaboration opportunities. In fact, Bramson advises ambitious people looking to earn at least $100K a year to create a personal board of advisors centered around mentorship.
“It transforms what can be or feels like a solitary journey into a collaborative expedition, where shared experiences and collective wisdom propel your career growth,” he said. “In the pursuit of financial success, establishing a network of mentors ensures a resilient foundation and a sustainable path toward achieving high salaries.”
Take Ownership of Your Growth
Seeking the right mentors is a powerful step forward in your career. To reach elevated peaks of earning potential, you should be proactive in searching for the people and opportunities that will help you succeed.
Roehm advises taking full ownership of your ambitions, instead of waiting for the perfect gig with the perfect salary to fall into your lap.
“Build, maintain and invest in your own development, learning and career trajectory,” she said. “Do not rely on employers, managers or others at work to define your next steps; Rather, own your plan and build a path to get there.”
Show Your Value in Numbers
If your resume is the story of your career to-date, being as specific as possible will help employers see your accomplishments in full technicolor.
As the founder of Ladders, Inc., a job platform dedicated to careers paying $100,000 or above, Marc Cenedella knows a thing or two about getting high-earning positions. Cenedella explained that numbers are the best way to demonstrate your value in terms of boosting sales, revenue or productivity. You can also rely on numbers to depict how you’ve decreased things like cost or waste.
“A resume bullet that says something like, ‘created a new social media marketing strategy that increased revenue 18% in three months,’ is far more impactful than a bullet point that says, ‘oversaw social media marketing,'” he said.
Don’t Be Afraid To Learn New Tech Skills
Cenedella also encourages people with their sights set on making at least $100K a year to always be learning new skills that boost their overall marketability. He strongly advises people to stay updated about the latest AI and coding tools.
“Even if the job you want isn’t specifically in the tech field, we are entering an era in which everyone will need to have at least some basic AI tool knowledge,” he said. “The more you know, the higher the salary you’ll be able to command.”
More From GOBankingRates
This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: Career Experts: 5 Surprising Strategies To Help You Earn $100K or More a Year
