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Years ago, I was working as a telemarketer. There were about 100 of us, all making 250+ calls a day to angry people, trying to get the sale.

But after 14 months of telemarketing, my 99 other coworkers were still stuck at their job. On the other hand, I was offered a high salary, a huge promotion, and an enormous network of top-tier company executives.

When I told people how I did it, they didn’t believe me. They thought I was making it up.

“No,” I insisted. “I’m telling you — I just bought coffee and lunch for anyone willing to sit down and chat with me about their job. And it worked.”

If you want to get a raise, promotion, or build your network — especially in your company — the secret is simple: informational interviews. Because once you start to build relationships with the higher-ups (something any employee can do, using this method), you can expect to move up quickly in the company while the rest of your coworkers look on with confusion, jealousy, and awe.

In the meantime — because frankly, just because you start meeting people doesn’t magically create job openings, these things take time — start asking people what skills you should be learning. Then, start practicing those things.

For me, I learned the Career Services department wanted leadership and project management skills. It was really hard to be motivated in my telemarketing job, and there were lots of committees, projects, and leadership roles I could’ve been doing. So, that’s where I started. I became a team lead. I helped with the Title IX committee. I offered to volunteer to help with the sexual harassment training program. Anything to learn the skills my new job would want.

As for raises and promotions, those come with the territory for new jobs. Still, I’ve had several high-stakes salary negotiations (the conversations that determine how much money you get), and the most helpful strategy I learned was simple: know your stuff, and know the people. If you can present who you are, the skills you learned for that exact role, and how that will benefit the company, the rest of the conversation swings heavily in your favor. Compare that with the random employee with the short resume who has no idea what the company wants.

In short: focus on learning and creating. It’s easy to take the minimum-amount-of-work road at your job — frankly, most people do. But spend your free time becoming the person your next job wants you to be. As Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert once wrote, “Every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success.”

Take it From a Hardcore Introvert - Meeting People Can Actually Be Fun

I’m a soft-spoken introvert. I don’t excel at talking to new people. (Why do you think I’m writing this??) But I managed to build tight relationships with some of the most senior-level executives at my company, many of whom were 10-20 years older than me, which I used to get a huge raise, promotion, and great network I still use to this day.

Take the first step — send an email to the person in your company you want to meet. Start with the people/department you want to work with. They’re going to be the key to finding the shortcut past all the job postings, hiring managers, and timetables.

I used to work at an online university. I wanted to switch from telemarketing to Career Services. So I began systematically reaching out to every single employee in that department. I took over a dozen of them out to coffee and lunch. By the 8th or 9th person, I began hearing the same thing: “I’ve heard about you. It’s Anthony, right? You took Sharon out to lunch!” They were talking about me. And guess who’s name came up when the new job opened?

The truth is, this is fun. It’s not about all work-related stuff — my coworkers-to-be and I talked about sports, current events, hobbies, anything fun. People are going to pick the nice guy who bought them lunch instead of the other just-as-qualified guy 9 times out of 10. Build relationships, and have fun doing it.

-Anthony Moore, author of What Extraordinary People Know

For more on living your best life, check out What Extraordinary People Know>>

The holidays will be here before we know it. It’s a magical time of beautiful decorations and lights, gifts, parties... and money stress. Yes, you read that right. Almost half of us stress out about money during the holidays.

It makes complete sense. We take on a lot of extra expenses this time of year. There are expenses that come to mind right away like gifts, vacations, and hosting parties, but there are also expenses that are less obvious. We might purchase a sparkly dress for the office holiday party, take more Ubers than we normally do, or forget that we always give a cash gift to the mail person.

The crazy part is that while we know we’re going to spend more this time of year, very few people plan for it. Even if we set a budget, we’re probably not putting money aside in advance. That means we end up stressing out over how to make these expenses work and most Americans end up with more credit card debt.

Then we’re playing catch up going into the New Year, which makes it even more difficult to succeed in our financial goals.

The good news is, we can plan for our holiday expenses, and the sooner we do, the less pain we’ll feel financially.

Here are 7 easy steps to a financially stress-free holiday season:

Take a step back and think about what’s most important to you about the holidays. What are your favorite holiday memories? What made those memories special? These are the things you’ll want to prioritize spending money on this holiday season. When you prioritize what’s important and let go of the rest, a magical thing happens. Your lifestyle ends up feeling bigger and more meaningful, yet you end up saving more money.

What do you plan to spend money on this year? You can start with the things that are most important (from step #1 above), but there are probably other expenses to plan for. Make a list. For example, you may want to buy gifts, travel, host a party, account for extra dining out, purchase party clothes, or pay for additional transportation.

Get specific and add up the numbers. For example, if you listed gifts above, how many gifts do you plan to buy? What will you plan to spend on each gift? If you decide to buy five gifts and plan to spend $50 per gift, that’s $250 in total spending on gifts. You can make a spending estimate for each item on your list.

Is there any way to reduce the total above while maintaining the quality or making it better? Let’s continue with the gift example. Instead of getting five gifts, you might decide to do a Secret Santa where each person involved gets one person a $50 gift. This adds some excitement to the process. Now you’ve reduced your total spend from $250 to $50 in the gifts category.

Next you want to make the space for your holiday fund. I highly recommend creating a separate savings account for it so that it’s clear that this money is specifically for your holiday fund. I’m a big fan of using an online savings account so you can keep the fund out of sight and out of mind - in its own bucket - while also earning some interest. You can use this method for other larger, less frequent expenses as well.

Then, it’s time to account for your income. How many paychecks do you have from now until you plan to make your holiday purchases? If you don’t get a regular paycheck, break it up by time. How many weeks or months do you have until you plan to make the purchases?

It’s important to account for any expenses you plan to make in advance. For example, you may prefer to buy gifts the month before. That’s when you’ll want to have the money there and waiting for you.

From there, you can calculate it out. If you plan to spend $500 total on the holidays and you have five paychecks until you want to start spending the money, you will want to transfer $100 per paycheck into your holiday fund.

If you’re not sure how to find $100 per paycheck, here are six steps to save $1,000 this month.

Set this transfer up to be automatic. Automation ensures that we don’t have to depend on willpower or our memory to transfer the money over each paycheck. This gives us peace of mind because we can feel confident it’s going to happen.

Schedule the calculated per paycheck or per week amount to transfer to your holiday fund automatically. Continuing with our example above, you’d set up an automatic transfer for $100 per paycheck to go to your holiday fund. Then the cash will be there waiting there for you when it’s time to start your holiday spending. You can transfer it over in advance or put expenses on your credit card and pay them off immediately using the funds from your holiday fund.

The earlier we start planning for the holidays, the smaller our transfers can be and the less “pain” we’ll feel per paycheck. When we aren’t playing catch up after the holidays, we can start planning for next year and that will reduce our financial stress even more.

Let’s say you start right after the holidays and have 24 paychecks to put aside $500 for the holidays next year. You’d only have to transfer $21 per paycheck to your holiday fund to have $500 saved in time for next year.

Taking a step back and mapping out a conscious and intentional plan for the holidays allows us to prioritize what’s most important while decreasing our financial stress. If you walk through each of these seven steps, you’ll know exactly how to plan for your holiday expenses this year and get started early for the next.

Then get a head start on your New Year’s goals with our free 48 Hour Personal Finance Financial Makeover.

-Ashley Feinstein Gerstley

For more tips on budgeting your money, check out The 30-Day Money Cleanse>>

Studies have shown that almost 40% of employees say that working with a great team is their primary reason for staying. So how can you make sure you're leading a collaborative team? Think back to a high pressure situation your team went through - did they stick together, or did they focus on themselves? However your team responded, there are four steps you can take to create team collaboration and accountability:

1. Define Your Purpose

In order to have an accountable team, each team member must know their individual purpose and the goal of the team as a whole. Have you defined your purpose to the team? Take action: ask your team to write down what they think the team is accountable for and see how closely the answers match. Depending on their answers, you may have to take additional steps to get everyone on the same page.

2. Track Team Progress

In order to lead a collaborative team, each team member must have a measurable way to track their progress. This will enable them to see how they're progressing towards their goals, allow them to pivot based on project milestone results and give the team a chance to celebrate their successes throughout the project. Take action: Discuss how you’re tracking progress with your team and find a way to make a visible progress tracker (i.e. whiteboard, poster, etc.) that everyone can see and update.

3. Create a Shared Fate

In order to go from an individual to team mindset, the team must have a shared fate; meaning, whatever happens to the individual happens to everyone. Unless they have a real and meaningful share fate, the team will fracture under pressure – worrying about themselves instead of the group's success. To create this mindset as a leader, you should model the behavior you're hoping to inspire and reward successful collaborative results more than individual performance. Take action: write down a list of behaviors you want to see in your team. Keep track of your own behavior for a week, writing down whether or not you’re emulating those behaviors as well.

4. Work Through Real Issues Together

How important is open and honest communication in the workplace? Research has shown that 99% of employees prefer a workplace where people identify and discuss issues truthfully and effectively. In addition, studies showed that 33% of workers said a lack of open, honest communication has the most negative impact on employee morale.

In order to motivate a team and make it safe for them to process real issues together, there needs to be a strong sense of shared fate and high levels of trust. The first part of this means that the team's level of decision-making authority needs to be clearly defined. The second part requires setting clear performance expectations so that any gaps in performance can be identified. This is crucial because giving honest feedback requires understanding what is expected and identifying what is getting in the way of success. Take action: set-up a time each week for open and honest feedback with your team.

For more on creating accountable teams, check out Revolutionize Teamwork>>