Post by oldman on Oct 19, 2013 9:08:04 GMT 7
When we were in secondary school, half of my classmates knew what they wanted to do in life. Sure enough, 35 years later, they continued in their professions as doctors, lawyers, architects, accountants & engineers and they are all doing well in their respective careers.
Then, there were the rest of us, myself included, who really were clueless. We heard so many good things about each profession and also heard the not-so-good things. At the end of the day, we were more confused than ever. Guess we were all trying to find an occupation that could make us money quickly without too much effort but could not find such a profession!
But eventually, we knew we had to make a decision as the current education system is such that we have to choose a profession before we enrol into a university. For me, I took on the profession of my father and became a medical doctor.
The sad truth about our current education system is that we are taught to study but we are not exposed enough to the various occupations and what each professional really does for a living. We don't know enough about the intricacies of each of these professions and frankly, one cannot know enough about each profession without having spent quality time in that profession.
Of course, if our parents were from that profession, it will be much easier to know more about the job as we can see our parents working at it and see the good and bad points of that profession. Otherwise, all we can gather are the overviews that we get from friends of our parents in other professions.
With such limited information, it is not surprising that many of us remain clueless as to what we want to do in life. We then choose a safe profession.... which is usually the profession of our parents. After we have qualified and have spent a few years working in that profession, we will know for certain whether this is the right profession for us.
It is very important at this stage to be true to ourselves and decide whether we want to be in this profession for the rest of our lives. If the answer is yes, this will be easy. If the answer is no, then we have to look out for what we like to do with the rest of our lives.
While I was working as a medical doctor in Belfast, I learnt more about the various other professions by talking to patients and learning from them. I had friends in other professionals as well and they too shared with me the ups and downs of their professions. But more importantly, while I was working, I earned my own salary and was then able to try my hand in different things. I went to auction houses to buy and sell cars. I placed advertisements in the local papers and bought and sold antiques. I even tried creating postcards of local buildings in Belfast and commissioning China based artists to paint local landmarks.
This is why I always encourage those who are unsure about what they like to do in life, to proceed to university and get a general degree first. If you are unsure after spending years thinking, it is highly likely that you will still be unsure if you spend even more time thinking. It is better to spend the time getting a basic degree first and then joining the workforce as early as you can.
Studying is like living in an ivory tower. You will not know what the real world has to offer because the academic environment is very different from the real world. I too was frightened of the real world when I first started working but as the years went by, I realised that the real world has a lot more to offer me.
When one starts working, he will see life in a totally different manner. Life is colourful and there is so much that one can do. My horizons opened up when I started working. I met up with lots of different people with lots of different experiences. Earning my own money allowed me to explore more avenues of interests and soon enough, I knew what I wanted to do in life. I wanted to be a businessman and so I decided to follow my heart and took the plunge into the business world. In essence, I gave up 5 years of medical training and another 5 years of practicing as a doctor to set on another adventure in my life.
Yes, I knew then that I had only one life and I did not want to have any regrets. I knew that I loved business more than medicine. Initially, I tried to combine my love for business with medicine and I joined a private medical aesthetic company based in the UK. But I could not bear charging patients the thousands of pounds that the business required. Till today, I feel strongly that medicine is a calling and money & medicine should not mix.
This was why I decided to leave medicine to pursue my interest in business. When I joined IBM, I joined near the bottom and worked my way up. IBM taught me a lot about technology and management. It also taught me about the various jobs within a company. I learnt that business and marketing managers are paid much more than support managers. Support divisions within an organisation are usually seen as cost centres as these divisions add to the cost of doing business, even though these are necessary business costs. On the other hand, marketing divisions bring in revenues and potential profits to the company. It is therefore not surprising that the brightest stars in any company are usually those from the marketing divisions.
From a career perspective, it is usually better to be in a marketing division than a support division. Yes, there will be more headaches working in a marketing division as one has to face the customers. Some customers are easy to deal with while others can be very difficult. This is just part and parcel of marketing. Marketing is really a people skill rather than a content skill. Those who are good with people and have a sweet mouth will certainly excel in marketing.
Those who prefer content rather than soft skills like talking and entertaining clients, are usually better at supportive functions. For me, I was more a content person but I switched over to marketing when I realised that my career prospects will be much brighter in marketing. I had to learn presentation skills and spent a lot of time in front of the mirror. But, in the end, I did manage the transition from support to marketing. I think all of us can master the skills of marketing if we really push ourselves in that direction.
On top of the soft skills, one has also to master numbers as the other aspect of marketing is giving quotations. To do this effectively, one has to understand the relationship between expenses, revenues and profits. As well as that, one has to master the art of maximising the resources within an organisation to win a contract. For me, the fun has always been in the winning of the contract. Of course, one hopes to win and make decent profits from the contract.
For those who are keen to go into business, I think it is critical that they spend quality time working in a marketing division. Even better if they are work for a marketing organisation as they will learn a lot quicker if the entire company was marketing oriented.
To be successful in business, one has to learn to make money. Making money is never easy. It is a skill by itself that can only be acquired through experience because making money is more an art than a science. Anyone can start a business and lose money. There is no pride in starting a business and losing money in the process.
Also, one must be able to differentiate making money from spending money. The housewife may be good at managing money but she may not be good at managing a company because at home, she is managing the spending of money where else in a company, the key ingredient to success is actually the making of money. In the same light, the role of government is usually geared towards the wise spending of money rather than the creation of money.
While working in IBM, I was headhunted to run a regional IT company. I pounced on the opportunity to take yet another adventure but this time, in a small and medium-sized enterprise (SME). The owners of this business were all well respected business leaders in Australia. They taught me how SMEs think and operate. And yes, even with smaller companies, there was still quite a bit of office politics.
As I am not the kind of person who enjoys politics, I moved again but this time, to start up my own business..... yes, I embarked on yet another adventure. After 9 years of building up my own business, I then sold it. Today, my spirit for adventure is still alive and strong. Right now, I am resting and plotting my next move and my next adventure.
You see, life is a whole series of adventures. Each adventure should be more exciting than the last. Put another way, for business people like me, the next adventure must be financially more rewarding than the last. This is how business people grow our wealth. If we continue to do the same thing all the time, our wealth will only increase by incremental amounts (do note that I equate the accumulation of wealth with fun as money by itself means little to me).
If we were immortals, this strategy of incremental growth is OK. But, we are mortals. Our clock is ticking all the time. Hence, if we still have the strength to go on yet another adventure, it has to be a much more exciting adventure than the last. Life is truly a series of adventures or nothing.
Give life time and you too will find your passion. When you find your passion, be brave and follow your heart. Remember that you have only one life and you might as well live it the way you want to live it.... not the way others want you to live it. Write your own history and be proud of it.
Then, there were the rest of us, myself included, who really were clueless. We heard so many good things about each profession and also heard the not-so-good things. At the end of the day, we were more confused than ever. Guess we were all trying to find an occupation that could make us money quickly without too much effort but could not find such a profession!
But eventually, we knew we had to make a decision as the current education system is such that we have to choose a profession before we enrol into a university. For me, I took on the profession of my father and became a medical doctor.
The sad truth about our current education system is that we are taught to study but we are not exposed enough to the various occupations and what each professional really does for a living. We don't know enough about the intricacies of each of these professions and frankly, one cannot know enough about each profession without having spent quality time in that profession.
Of course, if our parents were from that profession, it will be much easier to know more about the job as we can see our parents working at it and see the good and bad points of that profession. Otherwise, all we can gather are the overviews that we get from friends of our parents in other professions.
With such limited information, it is not surprising that many of us remain clueless as to what we want to do in life. We then choose a safe profession.... which is usually the profession of our parents. After we have qualified and have spent a few years working in that profession, we will know for certain whether this is the right profession for us.
It is very important at this stage to be true to ourselves and decide whether we want to be in this profession for the rest of our lives. If the answer is yes, this will be easy. If the answer is no, then we have to look out for what we like to do with the rest of our lives.
While I was working as a medical doctor in Belfast, I learnt more about the various other professions by talking to patients and learning from them. I had friends in other professionals as well and they too shared with me the ups and downs of their professions. But more importantly, while I was working, I earned my own salary and was then able to try my hand in different things. I went to auction houses to buy and sell cars. I placed advertisements in the local papers and bought and sold antiques. I even tried creating postcards of local buildings in Belfast and commissioning China based artists to paint local landmarks.
This is why I always encourage those who are unsure about what they like to do in life, to proceed to university and get a general degree first. If you are unsure after spending years thinking, it is highly likely that you will still be unsure if you spend even more time thinking. It is better to spend the time getting a basic degree first and then joining the workforce as early as you can.
Studying is like living in an ivory tower. You will not know what the real world has to offer because the academic environment is very different from the real world. I too was frightened of the real world when I first started working but as the years went by, I realised that the real world has a lot more to offer me.
When one starts working, he will see life in a totally different manner. Life is colourful and there is so much that one can do. My horizons opened up when I started working. I met up with lots of different people with lots of different experiences. Earning my own money allowed me to explore more avenues of interests and soon enough, I knew what I wanted to do in life. I wanted to be a businessman and so I decided to follow my heart and took the plunge into the business world. In essence, I gave up 5 years of medical training and another 5 years of practicing as a doctor to set on another adventure in my life.
Yes, I knew then that I had only one life and I did not want to have any regrets. I knew that I loved business more than medicine. Initially, I tried to combine my love for business with medicine and I joined a private medical aesthetic company based in the UK. But I could not bear charging patients the thousands of pounds that the business required. Till today, I feel strongly that medicine is a calling and money & medicine should not mix.
This was why I decided to leave medicine to pursue my interest in business. When I joined IBM, I joined near the bottom and worked my way up. IBM taught me a lot about technology and management. It also taught me about the various jobs within a company. I learnt that business and marketing managers are paid much more than support managers. Support divisions within an organisation are usually seen as cost centres as these divisions add to the cost of doing business, even though these are necessary business costs. On the other hand, marketing divisions bring in revenues and potential profits to the company. It is therefore not surprising that the brightest stars in any company are usually those from the marketing divisions.
From a career perspective, it is usually better to be in a marketing division than a support division. Yes, there will be more headaches working in a marketing division as one has to face the customers. Some customers are easy to deal with while others can be very difficult. This is just part and parcel of marketing. Marketing is really a people skill rather than a content skill. Those who are good with people and have a sweet mouth will certainly excel in marketing.
Those who prefer content rather than soft skills like talking and entertaining clients, are usually better at supportive functions. For me, I was more a content person but I switched over to marketing when I realised that my career prospects will be much brighter in marketing. I had to learn presentation skills and spent a lot of time in front of the mirror. But, in the end, I did manage the transition from support to marketing. I think all of us can master the skills of marketing if we really push ourselves in that direction.
On top of the soft skills, one has also to master numbers as the other aspect of marketing is giving quotations. To do this effectively, one has to understand the relationship between expenses, revenues and profits. As well as that, one has to master the art of maximising the resources within an organisation to win a contract. For me, the fun has always been in the winning of the contract. Of course, one hopes to win and make decent profits from the contract.
For those who are keen to go into business, I think it is critical that they spend quality time working in a marketing division. Even better if they are work for a marketing organisation as they will learn a lot quicker if the entire company was marketing oriented.
To be successful in business, one has to learn to make money. Making money is never easy. It is a skill by itself that can only be acquired through experience because making money is more an art than a science. Anyone can start a business and lose money. There is no pride in starting a business and losing money in the process.
Also, one must be able to differentiate making money from spending money. The housewife may be good at managing money but she may not be good at managing a company because at home, she is managing the spending of money where else in a company, the key ingredient to success is actually the making of money. In the same light, the role of government is usually geared towards the wise spending of money rather than the creation of money.
While working in IBM, I was headhunted to run a regional IT company. I pounced on the opportunity to take yet another adventure but this time, in a small and medium-sized enterprise (SME). The owners of this business were all well respected business leaders in Australia. They taught me how SMEs think and operate. And yes, even with smaller companies, there was still quite a bit of office politics.
As I am not the kind of person who enjoys politics, I moved again but this time, to start up my own business..... yes, I embarked on yet another adventure. After 9 years of building up my own business, I then sold it. Today, my spirit for adventure is still alive and strong. Right now, I am resting and plotting my next move and my next adventure.
You see, life is a whole series of adventures. Each adventure should be more exciting than the last. Put another way, for business people like me, the next adventure must be financially more rewarding than the last. This is how business people grow our wealth. If we continue to do the same thing all the time, our wealth will only increase by incremental amounts (do note that I equate the accumulation of wealth with fun as money by itself means little to me).
If we were immortals, this strategy of incremental growth is OK. But, we are mortals. Our clock is ticking all the time. Hence, if we still have the strength to go on yet another adventure, it has to be a much more exciting adventure than the last. Life is truly a series of adventures or nothing.
Give life time and you too will find your passion. When you find your passion, be brave and follow your heart. Remember that you have only one life and you might as well live it the way you want to live it.... not the way others want you to live it. Write your own history and be proud of it.