Several readers have asked me for advice on how to work out what to do for a living, how to recognise or choose a profession without getting it wrong. Cosmograma.com put together a chart that is useful both when choosing a profession and when choosing a business, although going from employee to entrepreneur brings a few differences, even if all the points are shared.
How do you know what to do in the future? What would your ideal job or business be?
Let’s go through it point by point.
1. Do what you love
This advice is nothing new to those of you who have been following us for a while, because in every one of our articles on business figures such as Donald Trump or Warren Buffett, passion for what you do always comes first. Whatever you do, do it with passion. If you feel real passion for what you do, you’ll never work a single day in your life.
So when choosing a profession or a business, think about what you’re passionate about. One great piece of advice would be:
“Think of something you would be willing to do for free for the rest of your life. Now find a way to make money from it.”
2. You have to be good at what you do
If your passion is cooking but you’re not good at it, you won’t find a way to make money from your passion, unless you publish a book detailing what not to do in the kitchen if you want to succeed. The same goes for business: if we start a business that has competition, we have to offer something different from the competition or simply be better than our competitors (more innovative, better price, better service, better value for money).
See also: New businesses: the wellness industry
3. What the world needs
Translated into business terms, this is the same as saying that our product or service must have demand. Applied to a profession, it means that our profession must have a future. Last week we published a list of jobs that will probably disappear, so if your passion happened to be one of those jobs that are going to become obsolete, it doesn’t matter whether you’re good at it, because it simply wouldn’t have a future.
That’s where the word REINVENT comes in, a word that makes a lot of sense in times of crisis, because you have to adapt to the new situation.
Back in the business world, in a previous article we published the 3 initial keys to a successful business. In it, we argued that to come up with profitable businesses we needed a product or service, a potential market for that product and enough capacity to bring the product to market. If the passion you’re good at doesn’t have these three elements, we have nothing.
4. What you can be paid for
You feel passion, you’re good at what you do and your work is in demand, but it’s badly paid, so if you go into that profession you’d have to give up the idea of a stable financial position. When it comes to business, you may meet all the requirements above, but if your business works on a minimal profit margin and can’t expand or grow, it might be time to ask yourself whether it’s the ideal business for you.
These would be four of the most important points to bear in mind when choosing a profession or a business. But some of you will find that you don’t always know clearly what you like, and it doesn’t matter whether you’re 17 or 43. Some people have found their calling at 30, and others at 40, so there’s no need to beat yourself up about it, especially if you’re young.
Believe me when I tell you that what I do today was what interested me least when I was 17. So don’t be afraid to experiment and learn new things every day.
Featured image: P L Chadwick, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
