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A lot of us have probably been in a position where we don't love our work.
Last year, about a third of American workers aged 25 to 54 were not satisfied with their jobs.
That's according to a survey by the conference board.
Often, we work for a paycheck, not passion.
Yeah, a lot of people have a career they hate, because for them it was the safe option, the sure thing.
Bill Gurley is a renowned former venture capitalist who sees this and thinks we've got to stop pressuring young people into chasing predictable, high paying jobs like you know, lawyers or management consultants, just because they seem secure.
It is both possible and can be probable to take.
Whatever it is you love to do in your life and turn it into a career.
This is The Indicator from Planet Money.
I'm Adrian Ma.
And I'm Darian Woods.
Today on the show, can everybody do what they love?
We learn about the ingredients needed to make passion pay.
And we ask whether it's truly possible for everybody.
Bill Gurley loved computers as a kid.
He had a Commodore VIC-20, which he plugged into his TV.
He then went to work as a computer scientist, onto Wall Street later, analyzing tech companies.
And finally, he did what he really loved working as a venture capitalist, investing early in companies like Zillow, OpenTable and Uber.
There were two stops before I made it to the place that was my dream job.
And in 2018, Bill was asked to give a speech at the University of Texas at Austin.
So if you only got one shot and then it's all over, why not do what makes you most happy?
In this speech, Bill told stories of how people like Bob Dylan and Shake Shack, founder Danny Meyer, made it.
And he pulled out some common threads, which he put in his book, Running Down a Dream.
Chase your curiosity.
So find this thing that you love and then become a continuous learner.
Danny Meyer had a very well-paying job in sales and he was preparing to become a lawyer, even though he didn't like law.
And the night before his LSAT his uncle asked him why he didn't just do what he'd been thinking about doing his whole life opening a restaurant.
In his world, doing what he loved was totally foreign.
Bill says Danny's peers at the private Trinity College were all going into insurance banking, medicine or law.
Predictable high-paying careers.
If you're going to go study this thing and just love it forever, that can't feel tedious.
That has to feel free almost.
Danny Meyer quit his job and took an eight-week course in restaurant management, which brings us to Bill's second piece of advice finding mentors.
In Danny's case, he worked under experienced chefs.
And Bill's third principle is embracing your peers.
I think a lot of people, when they're climbing the career ladder, they feel like they're just competing with every single person that's around them.
And I think if you can let go of that mentality of competition, you will find that having a group of people that all share the same goal constantly sharing ideas, constantly sharing their network and providing emotional support for one another in a way a mentor couldn't, because you can be a lot more vulnerable with peers
Yeah, like I went to a monthly podcast meetup group early on in my podcasting career and that was pretty helpful.
But to find that peer group, to get exposure to opportunities, often you have to move, which is Bill's fourth point.
If you can go to one of these places that is the epicenter of that field.
You know songwriters in Nashville film.
You know business in Hollywood like it's remarkable the number of chance meetings you can have and where those chance meetings can lead.
Bill's final piece of advice is to give back, like mentoring others.
So let's recap.
Bill's career advice is to find what you're really curious about and then continuously learn.
That means going to where the action is and finding mentors and finding peers and giving back.
I got to admit that I wasn't convinced by Danny Meyer's story about becoming a restaurateur.
Because here's an important thing.
Danny went to prep school and a private college.
He had a high-paying job and could borrow from his wealthy family.
Yeah, I asked Bill about this.
What about people who don't have the luxury to be able to fail?
Yeah.
If you simply can't move, if you can't leave your job because you're living right on the edge of that paycheck.
I mean, that's a scenario where I'm not sure I can be helpful.
But if you have a little bit of flexibility, I think you may find that you have a passion for something else and you may be able to slowly work your way towards it.
Now, these ideas like moving to the epicenter are common themes in a lot of successful people's lives, but many people might have worked just as hard and failed.
Not everyone can be, say, a successful movie script writer.
Robert Frank is an economist who co-wrote The Winner.
Take All Society.
Why the few at the top get so much more than the rest of us?
More and more, technology enables people to extend their reach.
So if you were a good storyteller, maybe you had a group of friends that liked to listen to you.
Now though, if you're a good storyteller, you might have to be among the very top script writers for anyone to watch your movies.
There really is...
No need to watch second-rate films.
Once the film's in the can, it doesn't cost any more to show a good film than to show a bad film.
The best films get screened all over the world, but movies that are just so-so barely get watched.
Robert says, if you choose to work in a winner-take-all industry like entertainment or as a software entrepreneur, then just being average won't have much of a payoff.
So is it just a matter of working harder than everyone else to succeed?
The answer is no, but it's even more extreme than the question implies.
Let's suppose you're the very best among all the world's population at what you do.
And you work harder than anyone else.
Will you succeed?
And the answer there is not necessarily.
Robert has modeled simulations where someone is at the top 999th percentile of talent and effort, but only at the 50th percentile of luck.
He's not going to win that contest because there'll be somebody else who's almost as talented, almost as hardworking and is luckier than he was.
So we pose this to Bill Gurley.
Do you think luck might play a role in people's careers that maybe should be added as an extra principle?
Well, there's a famous phrase that luck is when preparation meets opportunity.
I think you maximize this luck.
So the broader your network, the more peers you have, the more you've read.
If you're in the epicenter, all those things tend to increase the probability of a chance meeting that you might not have if you weren't doing all those things right.
And I think you can put yourself in a position to be more exposed to luck.
Now, there is something we should talk about here called survivorship bias.
You know, the people who give commencement speeches are people like Bill Gurley, the ones who've succeeded at doing what they love.
But the ones who didn't succeed, the ones who failed, they aren't being asked to give speeches.
What do you have to say about survivorship bias and whether we should temper people's expectations that they may be able to succeed in doing something they love?
Yeah.
The area that I'd say...
I think I have confidence has broad applicability is that if you can get in the lane you love, you're going to be more fulfilled in your life.
So should you choose a career you love?
Economist Robert Frank actually agrees with Bill on this.
I think choosing the task that you like makes it more likely that you'll get to be the best at what you do.
It doesn't guarantee it, obviously.
But if you're doing it because you like it, then have you really lost?
So Adrian, where do you sit on this?
I mean, I guess that's a pretty glass half full way of looking at it.
Yeah.
I think what Bill says is totally necessary, but it may not be sufficient for everybody.
I think I'm with Robert Frank, where I feel like luck has a lot more to do with success than just choosing your passion.
Yeah, totally.
But we've got to have agency.
We've got to start trying to make our luck.
You know what?
I thought of four-leaf clover earlier this year.
And then we won Best Business Podcast.
Coincidence?
Causation?
Correlation?
This episode was produced by Julia Ritchie and engineered by Kwesi Lee.
It was fact-checked by Vito Emanuel.
Kickin' Cannon edits the show and the indicators are production of NPR.
