Khaberni -Billionaires tend to offer one bad piece of career advice, according to self-made millionaire and bestselling author Scott Galloway, which is "follow your passion"!
Galloway, a serial entrepreneur and marketing professor at New York University, said in an episode of the "Pathways" video series on LinkedIn published on June 3: "The worst advice billionaires give is 'follow your passion.' The person telling you to follow your passion is already rich."
Galloway was born in Los Angeles to a single mother, and said his family income never exceeded $40,000 during his childhood, and he believed his passion for sports would lead him to financial freedom. After discovering that professional sports were out of his reach, he graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, and landed a job as an analyst at Morgan Stanley.
He soon realized he lacked the necessary skills for that, as he said. He started discussing different ideas, and decided that entrepreneurship would be a better fit for him than working at a big company. In 1992, he co-founded the marketing firm "Prophet," and eventually sold it in 2002 for $33 million, according to LinkedIn.
Latter, Galloway co-founded a research company called L2 in 2010, which was acquired in 2017 for more than $130 million. His career path indicates that success doesn't mean blindly following passion or pursuing a typically lucrative field. Instead, he said, "combine what you're good at and what can make you money, and seize opportunities to change your career path."
Galloway added: "I applied to 29 jobs [after graduating]. I received one offer. My key to success is rejection, or rather my ability to endure it. Because if you're not frequently told 'no,' you'll never say a great 'yes'."
Galloway's views echo similar comments from Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach, who often advises young people to look beyond their passion when choosing their career path. Early in his career, he recognized his leadership talent and passion for helping others, leading to him holding several positions on boards like "IBM" and "Metropolitan Opera," and approximately 16 years at Mastercard, according to "CNBC."
Miebach tells interns in a recent interview with LinkedIn’s editor in chief, Daniel Roth: "I love that you're following your passion, but you also need to focus on what you're really good at. What makes you stand out? Identify the intersection of your passion, what's truly important, and what you can excel at. Combine all that together."
Discovering your strengths doesn't happen overnight, and it may require some fine-tuning, indeed it may involve failure. Suppose you're a news producer who was recently laid off, and you started filming and editing documentaries to keep yourself busy. Now, you’ve realized your strength lies in long-form content and storytelling, not in serious news and brief shows.
According to Yale psychologist and happiness expert Laurie Santos, you can turn tough setbacks into opportunities to learn by embracing a growth mindset, or the idea that you can always hone your skills. This way, if you face failure or rejection again, you'll know the steps to take, and those to avoid, to continue advancing in your life and career.
Santos says, "This allows us to learn more about how to improve in the future.".
