Sunday 24 February 2013

"Become your own Boss"

WJNPYZK38E2R

Adam Greenwald is the founder of OneJobOneCause.com. When he’s not helping others find their passion, he is also perfecting his all-natural sleep aid shot at BedTimeDrink.com. Because you simply can’t to what you want to do without some quality shut-eye. Adam can be contacted at adam@OneJobOneCause.com. Follow him @AdamNGreenwald.


If you have aspirations of becoming your own boss and finding your passion in life, you have the power to do so. I'm here to curb all the skepticism that any person cannot do what he or she wants. You can make a change in your career if you're not satisfied.
Just like you, I read all the "Become your own Boss" books ever sold (even the ones that make you at-home millionaires in a week) and still found myself with lackluster motivation to get off my couch and make a change. I read all the stories, journals and blogs about people who had given up everything to pursue their dream. Did people really have the power within themselves to go for it? I kept asking myself if these stories were true. I didn't believe it at that time and I know a lot of people have a hard time relating.
I call myself an "ideas" guy -- like many aspiring entrepreneurs I've met. For years, I would come home every day and share with my fiancée my next big business idea. She would roll her eyes at me because she knew I wouldn't do a single thing about it. I would get all hyped up because I had this new, innovative idea that would bring me overnight success. I would get on these "highs" as this was my next great business and I was about to tell the world about it! But you know what happened next. A deep low would come rolling in because I would do about an hour of research online, find that idea or product already developed and immediately stop what I was doing. This would happen repeatedly. Highs and lows. Highs and lows. I loved the highs and hated the lows.
We've all heard the saying "To do what you want to do in life, you MUST take action." For some reason it finally clicked and I realized to get more of those highs in succession and for them to last for longer periods of time, I couldn't just sit on the couch anymore. I couldn't just do an hour of research or spend tons of money for a developer to create my website and let it sit by the wayside.
Taking action means sacrificing your time, your money (if possible) and taking everything that you do on a routine basis and turning it upside down. Taking action means leaving your comfort zone and meeting like-minded people. Taking action means when you come up with your business idea, go for it and follow it through until there is no more physical or mental means of moving forward. If you fail or lose interest (which in my case was about 95 percent of the time), that is perfectly OK and normal. Keep moving forward. Take another idea and roll with it. Nothing will ever happen out of your inaction.
These are the three questions that helped me move forward:
What did I want to do with my career?
What is my passion in life?
How do I turn my passion into what I want to do with my career?
The answers changed every day, and still change frequently. But I did have a general answer to the first question -- that I wanted to be my own boss and work on my own terms.
The second question was tough for me to answer. I thought about my passions in life: sports, traveling, meeting people, making money. But those are too conventional. Billions of people share those same passions. If you have a very specific passion like becoming a fashion designer, a civil engineer or a PR executive, it makes answering this question much easier. But that wasn't me, either. Although I didn't have a well-defined passion or career that I wanted to pursue, I came to accept that as being OK.
Finally, here is how I answered the third and most important question of how I turned my passion into what I wanted to do with my career. Who knew that the ideas I actually pursued by getting up off the couch would turn out to be my passion all along! I never realized that all my business ideas had one central theme: a drive to help others who may be struggling (financially, mentally or physically) and give them a means to find their passion in life. I started OneJobOneCause.com based on the fact that I knew I wanted to do something about our nation's high unemployment. At its core, OneJobOneCause.com is a job search platform that unites employers with qualified job candidates. In its initial iteration, I had decided that I would give a portion of the proceeds from paid employer postings back to those individuals who were struggling to make ends meet.
As we continue to work out the philanthropic side of the business model, we decided to make OneJobOneCause.com the most simplified and cost-effective job-search engine. I was doing exactly what I wanted to do without even knowing it by creating a marketplace for others to find their passion.
So if there is one takeaway, it is this: you can become your own boss simply by taking action. Try answering those three questions and you may find yourself on your way sooner than you expected. And yes, I'm much happier now than I ever was before and there is no excuse for you not to be either.
Adam Greenwald is the founder of OneJobOneCause.com. When he's not helping others find their passion, he is also perfecting his all-natural sleep aid shot at BedTimeDrink.com. Because you simply can't to what you want to do without some quality shut-eye. Adam can be contacted at adam@OneJobOneCause.com. Follow him @AdamGreenwald.