In the Fall of 2014, I remember Kate and I had just moved into our new house in Spring Hill, TN, and I felt completely broke. That's basically because we were. We had just spent all of our money on the down payment, and still had some minor credit card debt. Altogether, we were about $5k in the hole. Seriously.
We were having a conversation about it, and I just said to her, "Sweets, I have to be honest, I WANT MORE MONEY!"
Now, those of you close to me know I always joke about wanting to be the guy who, like Uncle Scrooge in Duck Tales, gets to jump into a swimming pool filled with nothing but his own money. And my parents probably remember how much I loved cash as a kid - more than actually buying things - I just loved having the money.
So believe me when I tell you I can relate to picking a job for the money, over the love of the job.
But I've always believed there is a way to have both - fulfillment in your job (aka - doing what you love) and having that same job pay you the exact amount of money you want. There are many ways of getting there, and in this video, I begin to talk about the things that are important to me about my job, more so than the money it provides.
As a 15-year old, I realized my passion for DJing, specifically, being a turntablist. You know, with real turntables and vinyl. I would spend hours in record stores scouring for my favorite old school Hip-Hop, and spending time finding "the next big hit."
My true love for this craft caused me to practice relentlessly and actually become pretty good at matching beats and entertaining people who stopped by the house.
That turned into offers to DJ parties, which I could pretty much set the price on. In high school I was making a few hundred dollars per event, whether they be official school dances, graduation parties of fellow classmates, even weddings and sometimes just small gatherings in friends basements.
In college, this parlayed into a full blown weekly schedule of Thursday, Friday and Saturday night frat parties, at $150 per pop (plus free alcohol).
I never outgrew the love for this craft, but I got too tired of schlepping my DJ stuff around at 4 a.m. and missing classic moments with friends just socializing.
I retired DJ'ing parties at age 21, but by then I had been moonlighting as a public relations intern with the Detroit Pistons of the NBA and the Detroit Shock of the WNBA and had fallen in love with that job.
It literally paid nothing, but I loved being around basketball (that is another story that starts at age 5, which I'll tell in another post someday).
From age 20-25, I made about a quarter as much as my friends made at their jobs, and worked about three times as much as they did. But I freaking LOVED my job so much that sometimes I'd be pleasantly surprised to actually see money in the bank for working there. I'd pinch myself and be like "wow, I actually make a few hundred bucks a week for doing this! Cool!"
Maybe that's part of the reason that, at age 33, where this blog post began, I was pounding my new kitchen table in my brand new house yelling to my beautiful wife "we have negative $5k and I just want more money!"
I've spent my entire career just doing what I love. This post didn't even mention my fantasy football obsession-turned-semi-successful-business-venture, nor what I'm really doing now, but it doesn't matter.
The point is, when you start from a place of "I want to get really good at something that I love," I mean like REALLY good at it, the money is sure to follow. I'm living proof, because the moments in my life when I really wanted more money are so few that I can count them on one hand. In fact, I've mentioned the only one in this post. 🙂
