Finding and Choosing a Career:
Problems into Opportunities
The key to right livelihood is to find a passion. But that is only part of the quest. Next you have to find a problem with the passion or some new angle that nobody has considered. This is the trick to making a passion into something you can derive an income from. You have to find a way to present this passion in a manner in which people are willing to pay you for it and typically this means you solve a problem for them.
Think about books. We usually cherish books that
take a mundane subject and put a new spin on it or present a solution.
Businesses are the same way. A new business is usually founded on finding
a particular unique creation or solving a problem from something that existed
before. Professionals such as doctors and lawyers and almost anybody
else are actually just experts at solving problems that they are able to solve
because of their education. Everything is about solving problems.
Therefore take a passion that you have listed earlier and think about ways in which you can solve a problem for it or that you can present it in a new and unique way.
I know this sounds a bit abstract but you really must be able to do this.
We will do an example to show you what I am talking about. Let’s say for
example that your passion is stamp collecting. First of all what problems
are there with stamp collecting? For one, the stamps are rather hard to store
and keep track of. That is a problem that we might be able to present a
solution for that could be the basis for a business. Okay, let’s
look at it from an information angle. Maybe we are interested in stamps
that were created between 1920 and 1942 and we have special knowledge in stamps
from that era. This knowledge we have can be a commodity if we express our
knowledge in the form of a book or even an article in a magazine. Again,
it is solving a problem (lack of knowledge of stamps made between 1920 and
1942).
Now go through your list and think of any problem or special information you can provide for each and every passion. You should have a pretty exhaustive list by the time you finish. As you go back through it you will find that some ideas do not appeal to you at all and then you will find others that do interest you somewhat. Separate these ideas out until you have around five ideas that are particularly appealing to you. We will work with those five ideas throughout the rest of this course.
More Career and Business
skills information
To teach and learn money skills, personal finance, money management, business,
careers, and life skills please go to the Money
Instructor home page.
