Do what you love and the money will follow! …. but when?

I know a colleague who is undergoing a mid life career change. We are both familiar with the phrase “do what you love and the money will follow”. We discussed silent issue that this statement doesn’t address – the fact / fear that between the doing and flowing, there can be a gap of many months or even years. For a solo person, who don’t have a working partner or financially supportive family, or existing capital, this can make a career change dangerous if the income dries up in the transition.

In a similar vein I’ve recently had conversations with Uni colleagues about choosing research topics based initially on “market attractiveness” and less on passion, but then changing topics because the passion is what sees us through the long grind of research projects and we have to trust that at the end there is some interest in our expertise.

Along with passion, I keep noticing the power of a supportive environment. When I put up my hand at Uni and said I needed help, the support was there. My supervisor, (the equivalent in the academic system of my boss / mentor) has created a fabulous learning environment where research students meet and share progress every two months, are invited to seminars with other students and researchers and get to meet people who are further along the path and who can help them. When I needed support and advice, I already knew the people to ask.

So I think that the key piece to add to the title phrase is “Get some support to do what you love and the money or other benefits will flow”.

If you don’t have a supportive environment to make a change at work, or you operate solo and you wonder what a supportive environment could be like – contact us we will see if we can connect you to a supportive group – or discuss whether group or individual coaching is appropriate support for you.

We are also working on a model for entrepreneurs and sole traders to help you identify what sort of team support would be most useful. Stay tuned.

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