You Will Find Out What You Don't Want To Do Before What You Love To Do

The world is a much different place then when your parents and certainly your grandparents where wide eyed and ready to start a career. 

They were most likely raised to go to a good college, get a job with a pension, buy a house, have kids, load up the family truckster and save their way to retirement. 

 It’s interesting how the world has changed. 

 We now live in an on-demand world of a freelance work force with a swipe of a smart phone or asking a talking hockey puck for on-demand transportation, on-demand housing, on-demand dating, on-demand food and status symbols that are rooting in “The Experience” rather than material possessions.

 The massive difference is that most of our parents and grandparents settled for the safe road and probably didn’t chase what they were really passionate about for their careers. 

Not sure many were satisfied unless they found a purpose.

 Life may have got in the way and they didn’t have a chance the explore more or simply didn’t want to take on the risk of change.

 That was not always a bad thing, but the benefit of today’s world is the ability to create more time through an on-demand culture. 

 By creating time, I define that as having access to faster resources that allow gaps in the process.

 In the late 80’s, colleges were in the infancy stages of incorporating Sports, Media & Entertainment into their business schools and just started to acknowledge that this was an industry that could stand on it’s own because of the massive interest.  

 That era is very similar to the where the business and interest is with ESports today.

 Today there are over 450+ colleges around the world offering undergraduate and post graduate degrees in sports management and the talent pool entering the marketplace is extremely crowded and competitive.

 Because of the amount of talent entering the workforce, and this is very important to know; 

landing a job in sports today is much easier than keeping a job in sports. 

 What will keep you employable is a diverse skill set to first and foremost have the ability to do one of these three things really, really well; create, sell and execute. 

 Always remember it’s a business first and the value of entertainment and consumers experiences is the result of sustainable profits over time. 

 Now where does this leave you to figure out what you love to do by landing and keeping a job in the industry?

 I mentioned in the title you will figure out what you don’t like before you find out what you love.

 A good portion of your discovery process besides education is practical experience.

 So think about the following;

•  Did you like accounting, legal and finance classes? 
•  Did you enjoy collaborating on case studies and analytics on consumer behavior? 
•  How was it volunteering for the 5K setting up tables at 5am and going home twelve hours later dirty, broke, tired and hungry?  
•  Did you lose sleep the night before knowing you had to cold call 100 businesses the next morning?
•  Did you enjoy being creative with graphic design software or editing short form videos? 

My point is you will find the things you don’t like to do through this elimination process by doing a little bit of everything. 

 Now think about what did you enjoyed during the process.

•  What did you do well in school and working?
•  Do you like interacting with the general public? 
•  Do you like the creative side with design, social media, video, etc?
•  Do you like outside work with getting dirty?
•  Was it on the client side with activation, hospitality, solving problems?
•  How did you do planning, scheduling and the behind the scenes work?

 Now here is the point that will help you with a long career more than anything else.

 Despite how smart you are or how smart people say you are, having a true sense of self awareness is critical.

 This is a look yourself in the mirror moment.

 It is a sign of maturity when you can accept the fact that perhaps you may not be great at designing graphics but you are obsessive about details, love checking off your task lists and P&L’s. 

 You will need to get there mentally to focus on landing and doing a great job.  

 Going all in with what you enjoy doing because you are really good at it, combined with your passion in that specific area / sport is the magical moment of clarity and will be your career compass.  

 But what you should do is create time. Time to explore geographically, teams, leagues, vendors, agency's and time to try as many areas of the industry you are interested in and finding out what you don’t like will lead to what you love.

 When you reach that point of meeting on the corner of self awareness and passion, your career will take off regardless if you’re still dirty, broke, tired and hungry. 

 But I do promise you one thing, you will be satisfied with your journey. 

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What are you good at and passionate about? Has it served you well with your career? What are you doing now? Where did you start? Let me know in the comments below.

Rob Thompson survived 25+ years in the wild sports, media and music industries, lived to tell about it and now helps others with their journeys.

The Host of weekly podcast "Interview W/ Influencers In Sports & Entertainment" www.RobThompsonLive.com