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opportunity > passion
A few weeks ago I wrote an a-typical post about my journey from corporate world to failed startup—and back to the corporate world. I titled it Killing Your Passion because that’s exactly what it did to me.
Zach Tyler of the famed Instagram account Behavior Hack (and lesser famed Twitter account) recently wrote a post on opportunity being greater than passion when aiming for success & freedom. What many of us want more than money is freedom. Money is just the tool that enables freedom.
Zach believes the “follow your passion” mantra is bad advice because:
many don’t actually know what their passion is
even if you do know, it’s unlikely to lead towards freedom/success anytime soon
He was much more succinct than I in explaining how he’s using opportunity to find freedom:
Follow opportunity
Use opportunity to achieve freedom (time + money)
Use freedom to follow your passion
Easier said than done? Sure.
But for the one in 99.98% of us who can’t instantly earn six figures following our passion, we need to leverage opportunity and build our career capital (ie. experience) on the road to freedom—whatever that looks like for you.
Digital Curations
Here are the things I was digging into this week you may enjoy.
🎧Podcast
What’s Essential?
Greg McKeown published Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less back in 2014. It took me until January 2021 to uncover the brilliance of his writings 🙃. Fail. I was stoked to learn he also started a podcast called What’s Essential—a must listen for someone like me who thinks 20 Chrome tabs are essential—along with the 4 books I’m trying to simultaneously read || Follow Greg McKeown on Twitter
✏Write
Ship30For30.com
The biggest challenge an aspiring writer faces is consistency. It’s not easy putting pen to paper (fingers to keyboard doesn’t have the same ring to it) on a daily basis. That’s where Dickie Bush’s Ship30for30 comes in. Write 250 words every day—what Dickie has dubbed an Atomic Essay—for 30 days. You’ll have a group of peers providing accountability and support. It’s been a game-changer for many, just read the reviews in the link above || Follow Dickie Bush on Twitter
🤝Marketing
“First niche down. Then niche down some more!”
”Carve out your niche!!”
Hold up a sec. Yes—a niche is important to hone your brand’s focus. But maybe you should find your key differentiator instead. This article on GrowthMachine.com provides rationale and 3 ways to uncover and highlight your brand’s key differentiator—instead of spending all your energy carving || Growth Machine on Twitter
💰 Side Hustle
Building apps isn’t just for nerdy coders anymore (kidding, coders—we love you). Check out Glide where you can build a free apps with their no-code technology. Get good at it and then sell your apps for some side income.
Free to sign up! || glideapps.com/pricing
💳 Personal Finance
Dividend stocks: get paid to own stocks. Sounds appealing! But there are obvious risks to dividend investing (like the company deciding to stop paying dividends!). Despite the risks, there are people who earn an impressive monthly income just by owning these stocks. I was curious how much money you’d have to invest to get a decent monthly dividend yield.
Here’s one answer: How To Make $500 A Month In Dividends
Thanks for reading to the end! I hope this week’s email provided some value to you.
Let me know what you liked and what sucked.
I am a sucker for constructive feedback!
Until next week 💪
-Dylan