Moving to Your Dream Job
By Jeremy C. Wright | Related entries in Job & Work12 months ago I was stuck in something which was decidedly not my dream job. It wasn’t a bad job, so much as not the one I wanted. At all. Even a little bit.
So, 10 months ago I decided to change some things. My first step was to set a goal in terms of when I could quit my current job. My first goal was, quite literally, to do whatever it took to leave the position I was in. In order to make that decision, I had to figure out what my family required to live. For us, that was 2500$/month. I figured that if I could probably pull in 1000$/month doing odd jobs and whatnot, so what I needed to do was to consistently earn at least 1500$/month for 3 months in order to plug the gap between what we needed and what I felt I could do in odd jobs.
My first step, then, was to start earning 1500$/month.
K. W. Musante asked, on our “Ask the Wealthy Bloggers” post:
What are some simple ways of leveraging your existing skills to generate at least subsistence income when you’re… how shall I say it… between jobs?
This is basically what I had to figure out how to do… While working a full-time job.
My talents lie in a large number of areas, but I felt the following ones could be monetized most quickly:
- Writing
- Programming
- Graphic & Web Design
- Blogging
- Selling Advertising
Each of these is an area that I not only have experience in, but they are also activities I could do around my existing job, and areas where I felt I could earn money.
I began to look for writing and blogging jobs immediately. Within a month, I had signed contracts that’d provide me with 1500$/month in income. The catch was that it would require me to do 4-6 hours a day of writing and blogging. But, I figured I had to do what I had to do. I also figured that I was basically at the bottom of the writing totem pole, and it could only go up from there.
A month later, I dumped some of the higher-volume contracts for lower-volume ones with other companies, but which paid more. Now I was doing 3-4 hours of writing and blogging a day, so I began to take on some odd jobs. My income quickly approached 2000$/month.
At this point, though, I decided to stop and take stock of where I was at. Was I going to quit my job? When was I going to do that? How much money should we have saved up so that it was safe to quit my job (ie: if things didn’t work out, I wanted a cushion)?
We decided that I needed at least 3 months worth of expenses in the bank in order to actually quit my job. At the current income levels that looked doable.
Thanks to a great marketing move (archived here), I was able to not only plug the income gap, but also to create a new business. The business didn’t last forever, but it got me to the point where I’m at now: balancing book and article writing, blogging, speaking at conferences and doing seminars and consulting work.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing more details about exactly how I went from my worst job to my dream job in less than 6 months. Some of this will be tips and tricks types of things, some will be job search, some will be personal fulfillment.
Being rich isn’t about money, but having a job you like certainly helps you see the important things in life, because having a job you hate consumes you and makes it nearly impossible to see what’s actually important.
This won’t be a normal series of Wealthy Blogger posts, but it will look at one of the questions I’m sure most people have: “how do I find my dream job?”
This entry was posted on Monday, July 4th, 2005 and is filed under Job & Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
July 4th, 2005 at 7:57 am
[...] began documenting my change from my old dead end job to my current dream job today over at The Wealthy Blogger. This is something I’ve been meaning to do for a while [...]
July 4th, 2005 at 8:47 am
Jeremy, great post! I’ll enjoy reading your story.
July 4th, 2005 at 1:27 pm
You have my attention, I love these how I done it posts. I have subscribed to the RSS feed, doesn’t RSS make it so easy.
July 4th, 2005 at 4:03 pm
I would like to reccomend that you incorporate your blog posts into a marketable eBook or published manual. I currently operate over 15 websites that sell similar products. I would be more then happy to purchase the rights to your blogging success story. Please let me know and email me at sales@onlinebizplans.com. I look forward to hearing from you. By the way, I found your site through Business Week magazine. - John
July 5th, 2005 at 11:43 am
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July 7th, 2005 at 12:26 pm
Funny that you are talking about getting paid gigs for writing. I was just planning to look into that the next few weeks. I have done a lot of pro bono writing but would love to get paid for it. May I ask your methods for securing these writing deals that can provide you with $1500/month income. It would definitely help me in my goal.
susan
July 10th, 2005 at 12:52 pm
Thanks for responding to my question. Just so you know, I currently have a part-time job at an advertising newsletter, but I’m still in the job-hunting state-of-mind. One of my goals is to eventually support myself, at least partially, by my own ventures. Luckily I don’t have a family to worry about right now, and I have a ton of commercial ideas. But since I’m recently out of college and new to the whole “making money” thing, I just wish I could go to the supermarket and buy a cup of gumption.
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