The Education of Millionaires - Michael Ellsberg [25]
With the newly flexible hours in your day and week (from Step 2), you can also begin experimenting more intensively with potential sources of meaning, passion, and purpose outside of work, from artistic endeavors to charity and causes.
Many people are quite content to leave things here: they have a career that pays the bills and in which they’re increasingly making a difference and finding meaning, through exercising leadership. And they also have time during their day or week to pursue meaningful passions outside of work.
Seth Godin recommends this path for many people. He told me: “For fifty thousand years, humans did what they were passionate about, and then they did something else to eat. I don’t think there’s anything written down to say that those days are gone forever. We don’t have a poetry shortage. There’s plenty of poetry. No one gets paid to write poetry. If you want to write poetry, write poetry.”
There’s really not much downside to this path. It works. Worst case, you have a day job that pays the bills with increasing artistry, creativity, and leadership, and you get to explore your passions (for poetry, singing-songwriting, charity, etc.) on the side.
■ STEP 4: Striking Out on Your Own (for Those Who Want to Change Careers, Become Entrepreneurs, or Become Self-Employed)
If your current field, industry, company, or organization does not reflect your deepest sense of purpose and meaning, however, then you’re going to need to go beyond Step 3 in Aligning Your Money and Your Meaning. You don’t want your passion and meaning to come either from your current job or organization, or “on the side”—you want to find a new main dish. With the flexible hours in your day and week gained in Steps 2 and 3, begin experimenting with things that might one day become both a source of meaning and a source of serious income for you outside of your current job.
This might mean starting a small business on the side, moonlighting in a second “start-up” career, pursuing self-study to prepare for a different career, or finding ways to earn money from your artistic and creative passions.
Whatever it may be, if you want to make a living from it and leave your current job, you’re going to have to do a deep dive into the success skills in this book, particularly marketing, sales, and networking. You’re going to have to wrap your own passions, talents, and purpose—the things you care most about and are best at—in the package of these fundamental success skills. If you know how to do that, you get paid a lot, and you’re living your passion and purpose. Keep reading. A major pitfall in this journey is that we are so conditioned to thinking of money and meaning as separate, we overlook creative ways that we can bring them together. If you use your noggin—and the success skills in this book—you can find a zillion ways to interface your creative skills, passions, visions, and dreams with the already-existing worlds of capitalism and commerce. I’m not going to say this will be an easy or risk-free task. However, the stories throughout this book should provide plenty of examples and inspiration on how to do it.
As I was interviewing Seth Godin (who went to Tufts and got an MBA from Stanford), we were sitting in the main dining room of the architecturally stunning Capital Grille on Forty-second Street in Manhattan. Seth told me: “People have this idea that either you’re a cog in the machine, just working for the man, or you’re out singing onstage, making your living that way. It seems like there’s a lot in between—there are a lot of people who may not have what it takes to become the next famous musician, but who are finding ways to make money with what they care about.
“Think about this restaurant right now. It’s not really like any restaurant in New York City that I’ve ever been in. Where did it come from? It’s not here because someone made chairs or china, which are available to everyone. It’s here because someone’s putting on a show. And