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How to get ahead at work

Find your “AND”

The most successful people I know don’t “trust life’s timing”.

They don’t accept the standard pace as the pace they have to go at.

They don’t let life happen to them. They happen to life.

They figure out what they want. Then they stop at nothing until they get what they want.

It’s an intense, relentless, all-consuming pursuit until the mission is accomplished. They accept nothing short of complete success.

Because why would they have it any other way?

There are two types of people in the world: those who get what they want and those who settle and change what they want to fit what the world wants them to want.

You don’t need a lot of attention to build a great reputation.

But if you don’t have a great reputation, none of your attention will matter.

“If God actually chooses you he ruins you for normal life, marks you so obviously that other people can smell it on you and they will hate you for it, not consciously but in their bones, because your existence proves that settling was optional and they chose it anyway. The blessed man sleeps alone because everyone around him is engaged in a silent conspiracy to worship their own limitations and he refuses to join, and that refusal is an act of violence against the social contract. They will forgive you for being evil before they forgive you for being called.”

— @lichthauch on Twitter

One of my favorite mental frames when I’m going through something challenging is:

What story do I want to tell at the end of this?

That things were hard and Jay quit?
Or that things were hard, Jay pushed through, and he won because he's a winner.

Here’s an essay I wrote for a friend. Enjoy :)

Find your “AND”

Here’s a career trajectory that should terrify you:

You get a role. You do a good job. You wait for someone to notice. You keep waiting. A year passes. You ask for more responsibility. They say “not yet.” Another year passes. You leave for another company and start the cycle over again.

Most people approach their careers like a vending machine. Put in effort, press a button, wait for a reward to fall out. Do the job well enough, and eventually someone will tap you on the shoulder and say, “Hey, you’re ready for more.”

It almost never works that way.

The people who advance fastest don’t wait for permission. They don’t stay neatly inside the lines of their job description. They don’t assume that excellence in their current role automatically earns them the next one.

They find their AND.

* * *

What Is Your AND?

If you’re only focused on your core job, you’re doing it wrong.

Don’t misread that. You have to deliver in your core role. That’s table stakes. But if you want to advance—genuinely accelerate your trajectory, not just inch forward—you need to think about your AND.

If you’re in a sales role but want to move into marketing: do your sales job AND help the marketing team on the side.

If you’re an intern making copies but want a full-time offer: make the copies AND offer feedback on a current process.

If you’re an individual contributor but want to be a people manager: do your IC work AND start mentoring to build your coaching skills.

The AND is the bridge between where you are and where you want to be. It’s the work you take on before it’s officially yours. And it’s the single most effective way to collapse the timeline between your current role and your next one.

* * *

Why This Works (When Waiting Doesn’t)

Put yourself in the business’s shoes for a moment.

Giving someone a promotion is a risk. It can disrupt workflows. It changes team dynamics. The person might not like the new role. They might not be good at it. Every promotion is a bet—and most organizations are risk-averse with bets they don’t need to make.

So what tips the scales?

Evidence. When you’ve already been doing the work of the next role—when you’ve demonstrated the competence, the initiative, and the track record—the promotion stops being a risk. It becomes a formality. At that point, giving you more responsibility is the better risk-adjusted move. You’re not asking them to gamble on your potential. You’re showing them proof of your capability.

The question shifts from “Can this person handle more?” to “Why haven’t we given this person more already?”

That’s where you want to be.

* * *

How I Found My AND

When I joined the media team at Acquisition.com, my role was focused on content. But I didn’t want to just learn about media. I wanted to understand the business.

If I had waited for that to happen organically, I’d still be waiting.

So instead, I woke up at 3:30am in the morning with a teammate and we studied our business playbooks before the day started (don’t worry, it was only for about a month). When the team held workshops, I volunteered to be the “notetaker.” I sat in on sessions, took detailed notes, and shared them with the team afterwards. People loved them. Suddenly, I was useful in a room I had no business being in.

I started taking work off other people’s plates before anyone asked me to. That earned me a seat in L3 workshops—the highest level we offered, where business owners paid $135,000 to spend a day with Alex Hormozi in the boardroom working on their businesses.

I did the same thing with marketing. I wanted to learn about the paid side, so instead of requesting a transfer or waiting for a rotation, I wrote a batch of ads and sent them to our director of marketing. When I wanted to write for Alex, I wrote a batch of tweets and sent them to him. When I wanted to write the Mozi Minutes newsletter, I wrote ten editions and sent them over.

Every single one of these moves followed the same pattern: I did the job I had AND the job I wanted. I didn’t wait for someone to give me the opportunity. I created proof that I was ready for it.

This isn’t a prescription to live at that intensity forever. But if you commit to a season of it—really commit—you can compress four years of progress into one.

* * *

Two Frameworks to Find Your AND

Framework 1: The No-Brainer Test

Before you take action, ask yourself one question: “How can I make this a no-brainer for them?”

The mistake most people make is asking for opportunity. They walk into their boss’s office and say, “I’d love to take on more responsibility.” But that puts the burden on the other person to evaluate the risk, create the opportunity, and manage the transition.

Instead, remove the risk entirely. Do the work first. Show up with a finished product. Write the ads before you ask to join the marketing team. Build the deck before you pitch the idea.

When you hand someone a solved problem instead of a request, you’ve turned a decision into a no-brainer. They’re no longer weighing whether to take a chance on you. They’re looking at evidence that you’ve already done the thing.

Framework 2: The Reverse Job Description

Here’s the exercise:

Step one: Find the job description of the role you want to hold in the next two to three years. Not a vague aspiration—an actual job listing with specific skills and qualifications.

Step two: List every skill that role requires.

Step three: Circle the ones you don’t have yet.

Step four: Start building those skills now, inside or alongside your current role.

This is how you close the gap before the gap matters. If the role you want requires experience managing people, start mentoring someone today. If it requires data analysis skills, take a course this month. If it requires cross-functional collaboration, volunteer for a project outside your team this week.

Every skill you build now is one less reason for someone to say “not yet” when the opportunity arrives.

“It is too late to prepare for war when the time for peace has passed.” — Theodore Roosevelt

* * *

The Real Secret

The people who get ahead fastest aren’t the ones who do their job perfectly and wait. They’re the ones who do their job AND the next one. They treat their current role as the foundation and their AND as the bridge.

You don’t need permission to start learning. You don’t need a title to start contributing. You don’t need a promotion to start proving you’re ready for one.

Start doing the work of the role you want before you have the role. That way, when they’re looking to promote someone, you’re not a candidate…

You’re the obvious choice.

Until next week,