Unless you are independently wealthy or have found a way to make a living without doing any actual work, your financial success is going to depend on providing some type of product or service. Something as important as your financial success should be based on your own desires and values, however, not by the type of work that is available.
We've all done it. We decide to find a new job, or start a business, and the first things that we think about are the types of work we are qualified for, what employment is available, or what type of business we think that we could succeed at. How is it possible that an entire culture so completely ignores their own desires when it comes to making career decisions?
Your skills, the job market, and business planning dogma should have nothing to do with your career decisions.
Am I saying that you should ignore the facts and try to sell surfboards in Siberia? No. However, if you lived in Siberia and you really wanted to sell surfboards, you COULD find a way!
There is an almost global self-limiting belief that our ability to make money is dependent on factors that - in truth - are merely side notes to a wealth creation plan, rather than being the main considerations:
- To do a certain type of work you need a certain type of education. I call B.S.! Actually, what you need is experience, and the only way to get experience is to do the work. Ask any college grad under the age of 25 who is out looking for a job right now how effective their degree has been in landing them a high-paying position.
- The economy has a lot to do with the success of any given business model. I call B.S.! Yes, the economy is a factor, but if the economy is the main consideration, why are people still buying Jaguars, Ferrari's, 5-figure pieces of jewelry, cinema-like home entertainment systems, and why are they still taking vacations to the Bahamas?
- A proper business plan is needed to ensure success. I call B.S.! When I ran my own personal training business, I shut it down at the height of my success when I would have made $100,000 that year. My entire business plan consisted of a website and one monthly advertisement that I paid less than $10 per month for.
There is only one factor that should be your prime consideration when you are trying to decide what you want to do for a living, and that is what you want to do. No matter what it is that you truly enjoy doing in life, there is some way that you can make money by doing it.
- People get paid right now to go bar-hopping with tourists on paid "pub crawls".
- People get paid to design, test, and play video games.
- People get paid to eat at the finest restaurants, and then write about it.
- People get paid to write smarmy content on the Internet even though the content is given away for free.
- People get paid to travel all over the world and film themselves enjoying the global culture.
- People get paid to go diving and snorkeling in the most beautiful waters that this planet has to offer.
I could go on and on, but you should get the point by now. You can get paid to do what you love, no matter what it is that you love to do.
Pretty cool, huh?
The fastest way to determine whether or not your present career or a career that you are considering is going to be successful over the long-term is to write up a Personal Vision Statement for your career, and then simply compare your career options to that statement.
In order to write up your Personal Vision Statement, you simply need to ask yourself:
- What do I truly enjoy doing?
- What parameters have to be a part of (or absent from) my career?
That's it! Don't turn it into an 8-page dissertation - this is just an outline that you can use as a sanity check when you are considering your career options. Here is my example:
- What do I truly enjoy doing? I enjoy empowering people to create success and happiness in their lives.
- What parameters have to be a part of (or absent from) my career? The majority of my work has to be able to be done from anywhere in the world, and my work has to include residual sources of income.
Do you see how this is an outline that I can use to compare career options, rather than it being a business plan? Whenever I come up with an idea for a business, or when I am offered a job, or when I consider getting involved in a joint venture, all I have to do is compare that opportunity to my Personal Vision Statement. If the business idea, the job, or the joint venture does not fit into my Personal Vision Statement, then I do not get involved in it.
This is not rocket science, people, so please don't over-think it. Ask yourself those 2 questions, and then give yourself honest answers based on what you want - not on what you think is possible.
What is possible is limited only by what you believe that you can do. Create that belief by being passionate about your desires, and success will be a natural - and glorious - side effect.
Acknowledgment: This post was inspired by Shama Hyder's free report, Online Marketing Plan. Thanks, Shama!
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