Making the Right Choice for your Second Career – Mastering the Second Innings – Part 3

Calling right and then taking the right decision

The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why – Mark Twain

The Second Innings gives us a chance to lead a more purposeful existence. Purposeful does not refer to only altruistic and missionary goals . It would certainly include ‘providing healthcare for children from marginalised sections of society’ (if that is what you really want to do) but  also apply for ‘teaching life skills to children and young adults from affluent families’ (if making sure children from elite schools have a more balanced upbringing is what gets you). This is not about judging your purpose but about really identifying it, evaluating it for yourself and pursuing it. It is about being the best version of you. It is the opportunity to lead a Great life and not just a Good life.

Making the right choice about the thing to do for your Second Innings needs a balance of dreaming, pragmatism and self awareness.

Key Questions to Ask Yourself

1. What are you really Passionate about?

Write down what you believe you are really passionate about. Be honest with yourself. What really excites you? What motivates you to get up in the morning?

It could well be ‘running’, ’exploring new places’, ‘making people happy’, ’seeing children enjoy themselves’, ‘augmented reality’ ‘cooking different kinds of food’ or ‘playing the blues’ or ‘making a difference to people’s lives’.

Also understand that passions may develop and evolve over time. It is quite possible that what you were passionate about a few years ago no longer excites you. The opposite may also be true, that your passion for something has only grown over time.

If you come up with more than one thing then eliminate until you have only one.

2. What are you very good at?

The key concept here is skill. What set of skills can you offer? What are you good at? What do you know a lot about?

Don’t confuse this with natural talent or ability. Yes, it would be nice if you were as good at dribbling a ball as your parent. But skills can be learnt and developed as well. You have probably acquired a number of skills through life that come in very handy.

Sharp and clear articulation is important. ‘Sales’ is too general. ’Selling to high net worth individuals’ is  more specific and likely to yield better answers.

3. What will drive your economic engine?

The key idea here is marketability. What will other people pay you for? What skill could earn you a sustainable income? Point to note here – the important criteria for sustainable income is in how you define it at that time. In my research I have seen that successful second innings players say that  earning more and more is not how they defined success and sustainability often got defined very differently from the first innings paradigms (more on that in future articles). Marketability, remains the important point.

Many of the skills you have, like “‘touching the tip of your nose with your tongue” or ‘playing the nose trumpet” are entertaining but not very marketable.

Look to see if your skill enriches people’s lives or addresses a pain point in any way.

The Sweet Spot

To be able to pursue your passion and find the match with your abilities is the ‘dream’ thing to do (refer to figure below). You can wake up every morning, do what you are doing and never feel as though you are ‘working’!

If you do not have any concerns about money over the long term, this could be the thing for you to do.

If your passion is to ’make children happy’, and you are a great sales person to high net worth individuals (HNIs), go ahead and raise funds to get parks built.

If you had to earn from this, then you would have to take into consideration #3 as well.

When you have a skill for which people are willing to pay, you have a ‘job’ (refer to figure below). Selling to HNIs will get you a job with a bank, a real estate company, an insurance company and many others. Most people find themselves in this space. This is very often what our First Innings is about. Sometimes it may even be something that we were ‘passionate’ about at one point in time and then things changed.

There is another very seductive choice that can be confusing at times. Consider this example – you love music and many friends tell you that you should start of something on your own. You certainly enjoy it much more than the CEO job in a media company you hold right now.  You do gigs in pubs whenever time permits and there is a loyal fan following that comes to listen to you sing. You dream of starting a nightclub with great music, food and conversation. Will it work? Do you have the skillets required to run a nightclub? Do you understand hospitality and the food business? Of course you can acquire these skills. Until you do, your passion, that people pay money for, is best pursued as a hobby (refer to figure below).

The banker who had great experience of taking things to scale and was passionate about helping children and young adults learn life skills found it. He is a founder of a company that runs children’s camps. His partners had deep experience of running these camps. He had the experience of making it into a big business. From a one camp operation it is now 6 camps and probably the No 1 brand in ‘adventure based experiential learning’ for children. It is a meld of the passion, skills and economics and for him it represents a ‘Purposeful Career’(refer to figure below).

Then there is the ex marketing head of a sports good MNC who loved running. He started a business that uses running events as part of a company’s CSR/marketing/employee engagement activities.

Yet another person I know, who is now in her Third innings, is a fantastic cook and accomplished researcher/writer. She segued from a pure research/writing career into doing special ‘heritage’ and ‘ethnic’ food experiences. She partners with people who have hospitality and business risk taking abilities and is the celebrity chef who sets the menu, does special events around the history of the food and so on. She is also running a weekend restaurant to gain experience of the business end.

Here are a few caveats:

1. You may have a really clear idea of what you want to do. You are very sure about it. It may not fit in with everything on this graph. Go ahead and give it a shot. There are many things that can be learnt as you go along. Start ups are finding that out all the time.

2. There may be more than one thing that you want to do. If you have put it through all the tests and still can’t decide, be practical, do the easier one.

3. Be brutally honest about your skills. A good measure of a skill is when you have had repeated feedback from different sources acknowledging that skill.

4. Sometimes you may not know what you want to do but are clear on what you do not want to do. That is also fine, it helps eliminate options.

“For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change some thing.” Steve Jobs