There is a standard piece of advice that many career coaches and guidance counselors give to the people who visit their offices: decide on what you love to do and find a way to make a career out of it.
Do you love to cook? Maybe you should go to culinary school and train to be a chef. The idea is you will find a career that you will enjoy rather than a job that you will grudgingly endure on a daily basis. That much makes sense. It’s also true that we should have the opportunity to pursue our passions and find a way to parlay them into a livable salary.
Getting Beyond Yourself
Unfortunately, there is at least one major hiccup lying in the way of that plan. In order for you to get paid doing what you love to do, you have to find someone who is willing to pay for you to do it. It boils down to a “what’s in it for me” complex.
I like to write and people find value in hiring me to do their writing. That allows me to value my work and charge accordingly, but I don’t always get to write on exactly the topics of my choosing. Those are assigned to me and some of them are less desirable than others. It comes with the territory and I accept it as a part of my career.
If You Build It, They Won’t Come
However, what if your area of interest or your passion doesn’t seem to have a direct correlation with a reasonably high market value? We see this all the time on television shows like Dragons’ Den and Shark Tank. The aspiring entrepreneurs come forward with a business idea, but it just isn’t viable. The venture capitalists don’t see the market value. They don’t see a large enough potential customer base.
Say that you enjoy shopping for shoes. Some may tell you that you can parlay that into a career as a personal shopper for someone else, but I think part of the appeal of shopping is the ownership of a purchased items after the fact. It’s not the same shopping for yourself as it is shopping for someone else. It probably wouldn’t help if you had a very unique fashion sense too. This could prove to be a very challenging career option.
Flipping Your Perspective
Yes, you should absolutely do what you love, but you also have to consider what sort of value you are bringing to the table for others. Sit on the other side of the table and ask yourself, “What’s in it for me?”
As Gordon Gekko would tell you, “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.”
It is very true that greed is good when you need to make money. It is also good to do what you are passionate about. But if you are passionate about making chicklet paintings I don’t think you are going to be a rich person no matter how well you do the job. 🙂
Do something you like, but something that you can be greedy at. Just look at John Chow 😉