Last week I wrote about the career seesaw, with quality of life on one side and compensation on the other.
This week I want to look at the pinnacle of career aspiration.
To do what you love (high quality of life) and to get paid well to do it (high monetary compensation).
To do this I’m pretty sure you’re going to have to get off the damn seesaw and move to the monkey bars.
The monkey bars are being your own boss. Finding your own clients. Learning how to generate income.
The monkey bars are scarier. They involve a totally different skill set than sitting on the seesaw (being an employee). You’ll have to practice and get stronger for quite awhile before you’ll be able to do them well.
The possibility to do what you love and get paid for it is there.
It’s there in providing a valuable product or service to people. It’s there in building a community and a fan base. It’s there in pursuing multiple streams of income, like writing, speaking, consulting, coaching, or teaching. It’s there in learning marketing.
The monkey bars take a heckuva lot of work, learning, missteps, trial and error, and persistence. Much like going to school, they may entail an initial sacrifice of time and income.
The possibility is there. And it’s there today in a way that it really wasn’t a generation or two ago, because of the online world.
It’s possible to do what you love (as long as it’s of service to other people) and make money.
But it’s not easy.
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