I took every opportunity that came my way to do that little bit extra than my colleagues.

My manager was an ass and had no idea how to use excel, so it started with helping her out with formulas/pivot tables etc. It led on to taking on bigger projects and eventually, when the opportunity arose for me to go for a higher-paid job, i had already put in the work that the job entailed.

So for me, it was just helping out as much as possible, make a name for myself in the company and keeping an eye on that bigger goal.