Posted on 07/20/2025 9:31:37 AM PDT by aquila48
Billionaires tend to give one bad piece of career advice, according to self-made millionaire and bestselling author Scott Galloway: Follow your passion.
"The worst advice the billionaires give is 'follow your passion,'" Galloway, a serial entrepreneur and New York University marketing professor, told LinkedIn's "The Path" video series in an episode that published on June 3. "Anyone who tells you to follow your passion is already rich."
Born in Los Angeles to a single mother, Galloway said that his family's income never exceeded $40,000 during his childhood, and that he thought his passion for athletics would bring him financial freedom. After discovering that professional sports weren't in his future, he graduated from UCLA and got an analyst job at Morgan Stanley.
He quickly realized, 'I don't have the skills for this," he said. He started to workshop different ideas and decided that he'd be better suited for entrepreneurship than as an employee at a big company. In 1992, he co-founded marketing firm Prophet, ultimately selling it in 2002 for $33 million, according to LinkedIn.
Galloway later co-founded a research firm called L2 in 2010, which was acquired in 2017 for a reported sum of more than $130 million. His career journey indicates that success isn't about blindly following passion or going into a field that's stereotypically lucrative. Instead, combine what you're good at with what can make you money, and embrace opportunities to pivot.
"I applied for 29 jobs [after graduation]. I got one offer," said Galloway. "The key to my success is rejection, or specifically my ability to endure it. Because if you don't get to 'no' a lot of times, you're never going to get to wonderful 'yeses.'"
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
Not entirely like a big lottery winner recommending you buy tickets.
Career advice - bump for later....
LOL. My Dad was a laborer at a steel mill, a job he took after getting out of the Navy - which he joined at 17 so he could get 3 meals a day and take some burden off his mother. When the mill closed in 1980, he took a job as a 50+ year-old stocking grocery shelves. I don't think he ever made more than 20K a year
Hearing him say "Follow your passion" to us kids would have been even stranger than if he had suddenly started speaking Swahili to us.
I like Mike Rowe’s advice: Don’t follow your passion, follow your opportunities.
Mike Rowe, on Prageru, five minutes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVEuPmVAb8o
If you do not have basic business acumen and skills, following your passion will likely bankrupt yourself.
I agree that following your passion is OK advice. But your “passion” can become a nightmare if spend 80 hours a week doing it.
Billionaires that are self made are usually a lot smarter than the average bear. They have an unnatural drive for success. And they see opportunities where others don’t.
Having built my own business from the ground up, I have to laugh at all of the people that “wanted to do it”, but when they discovered how much actual work it was…they fell by the wayside.
What drove me away from it was the changing technology and the lack of business acumen of my clients. They wanted stuff right now, and did not want to pay the price to get that. I called it a day and never looked back.
Is it the passion of any of the ultra-rich to advance the Gospel of Christ?
I guess the OTHER OPTION is to do something that you hate.
Not sure if that’s such a good idea either.
That’s like the rich twits who say, “Money isn’t important to me”.
So he tried to follow his passion, and it didn’t work out for him.
Now he says that ‘Follow your passion’ is advice that only works for people who are already rich.
He doesn’t reflect that his own advice is something that people who tried to ‘follow their passion’ and failed give.
I could make more $$$ - but then I’d have to work harder, sure don’t want to do that... 🏄 ⛳ ...
Follow your passions works if you are independently wealthy to start with. Most of us have to take jobs they don’t like to keep the lights on and food on the table.
Most options are between those two extremes.
‘That’s like the rich twits who say, “Money isn’t important to me”.’
Chelsea Clinton is notorious for such utterances.
Unless you are really hungry, passion does not get you far.
You don’t know if they do or not. God says not to publicly boast about what you do.
“decided that he’d be better suited for entrepreneurship than as an employee at a big company. In 1992, he co-founded …”
So he followed his passion, became an entrepreneur rather than keeping the secure pay check.
“I have to laugh at all of the people that “wanted to do it”, but when they discovered how much actual work it was…they fell by the wayside.”
Yes.
Thing is, if it’s your passion, it’s not work per se, although there is a lot of work involved.
Most people aren’t that passionate about anything.
That’s where follow your opportunities comes in.
“I could make more $$$ - but then I’d have to work harder, sure don’t want to do that...”
***********
LOL. But seriously, you do have to ask yourself if its worth it because you’re effectively paying a price (wear and tear on yourself) to get something. If you have to work twice as hard to make a little more money its not a good tradeoff IMO.
Working is a long term thing and you need to conserve energy for the long haul. Some jobs can drain you. I’ve watched many people burn out slaving away for a modest gain. Then they have nothing left when a really good opportunity comes along that might produce life changing results.
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