In every person’s life there comes a day when he or she realize that they have to make money. This realization taints all our future planning and it works as a paint brush that colors all our decisions. And not only our own decisions but advices from all around us come with this fact in mind. Because we know for sure, just like death, the necessity to make money for ourselves is inevitable. And at some point, or another we have to start it. The amount of money we make will determine the quality of life we get to live to some extent, the status that we get from our peers to some extent. Thus, somehow it creeps into everything a person does. When we see the adults, we realize that there are not very many of them that will not like some more money in their life. So, we start racing with everyone else to get into a better school, to get a high paying job and after we get the job we are in a race to get promotions etc. Some of us ditch that race and become entrepreneurs. There they fight even more and work for longer hours if they want to make their business successful. In all this process, we lose life. We lose the childlike explorer mentality in us.
The one fact we can’t avoid is death. All of us are gonna die. We are doomed to fail as an organism. It makes little sense to me to play it safe. What is safety for a life form that has yet not found any ways to avoid death? But these philosophies are not practical. The practical reality is that we live quite a long life. And in this long life, money makes all the difference. It’s something worth striving for. Money doesn’t only make our own life better, but it also makes the life of our loved ones better. It makes the life of our children better. It gives them a good platform for the future. It is then very practical and rational to chase after money.
But the this we got stuck on from the last century is that, we still think there are a set fields of works, set types of works that we are supposed to do to be rich. This is not true anymore. The economy is changing. The world has become a very different place than it was 10 years ago. People can make money from so many different paths that it sounds almost too good to be true! It doesn’t matter what exactly is it that you do. What matters is, how many people can you serve and how well can you serve? If you manage to serve a lot of people well, then there’s really no barrier on what you can or cannot do. Some of the youtubers are a great example of this. Take Nick Nimmin for example. He is in the business of teaching youtuber, how to do YouTube! And in this process, he has amassed almost a half of a million subscribers. Then again, he works from his own studio, and is effectively his own boss. I think this is an amazing achievement. Just search for making a chair or make a table on YouTube, and you will see how some carpenters are attracting hundreds of thousands of subscribers to their channel.
In the new economy, attention is the new currency. If you can capture eyeballs, you can be rich. Facebook has built a fortune by capturing people’s attention. In this new era, all you have to do, is to create a following. Yes, you may have to work 3 to 4 years unpaid and possibly alone in your own room, to amass subscribers or followers etc., but after that, there are no shortage of ways to monetize those eyeballs. You can sell directly to them, like many of the biggest social media influencers are doing. They sell merch such as T-shirts and coffee mugs etc. You can sell other types of product that you produce, like Nathaniel Drew selling Photos of his travelling in his website or Nick Nimmin selling end screens to new youtubers. Heck, you can even sell other people’s products by getting affiliate links from Amazon, Clickbank etc. I guess you have seen YouTubers linking the camera or gaming gear that they use with amazon links in the descriptions. Those are affiliate links. If you are big enough you may start landing sponsors like Squarespace, audible or G-fuel. And then there is obviously ad revenue.
It is a great time to be alive for the dreamers who want to rebel against the cultural norms and live unique and different lives. Take Nathaniel Drew for example, a 21-year-old photographer, who travelled different places of the world and now sells his photos on his own website. He has amassed almost 300k subscribers on YouTube and is showing no signs of stopping soon! Then there is Matt D’avella. He is a filmmaker that is on a self-improvement journey. And people donate him on ‘Patreon’ to watch him in his journey. In short, it doesn’t matter if you a love making chairs or making movies, you could love making music or maybe you want to travel the world. Do whatever you want to do, live your dream life and you can find a way to monetize that lifestyle.
Do we realize how lucky we are to be born in this generation? Huge systems have been built to work as our platforms for communicating with the world. Potential customers are only one viral post or one good ad campaign away. These platforms took the smartest people of our planet and millions if not billions of dollars to build. Take YouTube for example, the artificial intelligence of YouTube works day and night to bring creators to the type of audience they might connect with. This as a software would be invaluable to anyone and we get it for free. You can now reach millions of other people who might be interested on what you are saying. What other generation could boast giving such power to each individual?
There is very little reason now to conform, to not pursue a dream, to not go after the lifestyle you want. I’d rather argue that conforming to the existing trends of carrier choice is the wrong way to go. First, there is too much competition. If everyone is trying to be a doctor or a lawyer, it just gets so much harder to become those. Then there’s the fact that, you learn better when you are interested in the topic. It is a well-documented phenomenon. If you look for it you will even find research paper citing 152 sources that claim that learning is easier when the subject has interest in it.
Life is cruel. It is very hard. To succeed in any field, you will have to learn a lot, work hard and basically outwork all your competition to make a name for yourself in the industry as a newcomer. And it’s very hard to learn complex ideas or tools in large quantity, when you are not interested in the topic. And it is also very hard to work longer hours and give your best output if you are not passionate about your work. But, when you are interest in the field of work, you learn better naturally, you work more, stay longer and get the best out of you naturally. I am still not saying that the journey won’t be hard. It will be, no matter what you do. But the hardships will be more bearable. Casey Neistat starts one of his videos with the quote: If you compromise and you fail it hurts, it hurts more than failing at what you love.
There is another very very practical reason for pursuing your passion. This reason is illustrated in great length in the book called “The Dip” by Seth Godin. It is exponentially more rewarding to be the top of any field than to be just average. As Seth Godin says, Quit or be exceptional. Average is for losers. When You Pursue a career that is saturated, it is very hard to be the top of the hierarchy. But when you pursue unique paths, the game changes to your advantage. There are many people who play the piano for a living on YouTube. But the top guys don’t do the same things. There is Vinheteiro who does skits using his crazy keyboard skills and has got almost 4 million subscribers, then there are the people who cover popular songs as soon as they come out. The latter group of people have it hard as they have to compete with each other for each pop song that comes out. But Vinheteiro does his own thing and thus avoids competition in the first place. My point is, you don’t have to be the best piano player, just do unique fun things that you love to do, that other people may want to see too.
Now consider my last argument in favor of following your passion- what if you put your 100%, what if you worked as hard as Elon Musk does, if not a 100 hours a week maybe 80 hours a week, or heck, if you have school or a job to attend, maybe even 30 hours a week into one field of work. What if you stop taking breaks in the weekend? And work with focus and everything you’ve got? For 3-5 years, don’t you think you’d be making enough money from that field, to justify your efforts? If that’s not a fair price in exchange of the type of life that you want? With that thought in mind, I’d like to stop. If you enjoyed this don’t forget to like and follow.
RaihanRiad 