Two speakers argue against chasing passion in careers. Instead, pick fields where 90%+ of workers are employed, like tax law where top earners make over a million dollars. Get passionate about business mechanics and creating market value, not the product itself.
The less sexy an industry, the greater the return on your capital. I mean, we were just talking about the creative industry. You have to be in the top 1%, if not the top 0.1%. Last year, 83% didn't qualify for health insurance 'cause they didn't make $23,000. And basically it has almost an 80% unemployment rate. You wanna be in modeling, sports, nightclubs, hospitality, fashion, anything that sounds cool. And I don't wanna crush your dreams, but if you aren't getting bright, crushing bright green signals that you might be in the top 1.1%, go do something that sounds much less romantic. At NYU, we invite two types of speakers: one, really impressive credentialed people, or billionaires. And they always end the session with the worst advice you can give to a young person: follow your passion. Anyone telling you to follow your passion is already rich, and the guy telling you to follow your passion made his billions in iron ore smelting. Here's what you do: when you're young, you want to find out what you're good at. And what you could be amazing at. And ideally in an industry that has a 90+ percent employment rate. No kid dreams of being a tax lawyer. The top 10% of tax lawyers probably make over a million bucks a year. The top 1% fly private and have a much broader selection set of mates than they deserve because they went into something that didn't have an overabundance of human capital. Every tax lawyer is employed.
Yeah, I mean, he's right. What I think he's really saying is that too many people approach business and entrepreneurship from a me-centric perspective. What do I want to do? What's my passion? The reality is that the marketplace doesn't care. We need to ask, where can I actually create surplus value? Because at the end of the day, that's the only thing that matters. Here's my advice. You can be passionate about two things. You can be passionate about the product, the thing that you're doing, or you can be passionate about the process. My advice is to get passionate about the process. Be passionate about the process of business. Because the most successful people I know, that's what they're passionate about. They love the process of business, they love the game. And if you're passionate about the process of business, then the product becomes interchangeable and you can be successful no matter what industry you're in.
