Most beginners think career looks like this:

  • First, find your passion (or your superpowers)
  • Second, find a way to do what you love

Yet 10,000 high school basketball players are NBA hopefuls. 3 of them make it.

Those that don’t? Many still had the height, the athleticism, and the practice routine to get there.

To the recruiters, it just didn’t manifest as good enough skills.

Finding what your good at is still important. It’s just not the start of the career. It’s the zeroeth step, the thing that happens before a career. In other words, talent is assumed. The real process looks something like this:

First, consistent skills. Second, consistent business (including choosing the right projects). Third, consistent people. Fourth, consistent life.

For the NBA hopeful, first you have to be good enough to make it in, then you have to learn the business of the NBA and adjust to that life, then you need to find the team that’s the best fit for you and your goals (both personal trainer, but also which team in the NBA), and then you have to maintain consistency while making sure your life outside of your work doesn’t break down.

That is the full arc of the career, in four stages. Which means three career turning points.

There comes a point in your career where you have complete confidence in your skills. You’re just not sure the market wants to pay for them consistently (a business).

There comes a point in your career where you have complete confidence in your business. You’re just not sure you can get the right people, clients and employees, to collaborate consistently (a team).

There comes a point in your career where you have complete confidence in your team. You’re just not sure if it will all come crashing down, or if you get too old to do it, or if you waited too long for everything else (a life).

The hard turnings are from skills -> business, from business -> people, and from people -> life.

For example:

  • In working with beginners (n > 10,000), they don’t get out of stage even understanding what they’re good at. If you’re naturally 1 in 1000 (top 0.1%) without trying, then you’ve found something you’re good at.
  • In working with talented people (n > 100), they can’t build consistent skills. You know you are consistently skilled when you feel like your skills match your talent: you’re not limited in executing what your mind and body are capable of.
  • In working with consistently skilled people (n > 30), they can’t build consistent businesses. A business (including a day job) is where you are not limited by how much money you want to make executing your skill. You make as much money as you want with your skill.
  • In working with consistent business people (n is approx. 10), they can’t build consistent teams of people. A consistent team of people are those that increase your success, and aren’t a hindrance to it. This includes in your personal life (think Will Smith and Jada).
  • A consistent life means you’re not the 50 year-old CEO who gets divorced and his kids hate him. I’ve worked with n = 3 people that get there, and they have all built billion-dollar empires.

Notice that these turnings flip back and forth from micro to macro.

Stage 1 is micro, your ability to focus within yourself to develop skills.

Stage 2 is macro, building a career/business that can house the ability for you to execute on your skills.

Stage 3 is micro, your ability to focus within people what actually matters, and build an internal (within your business) support system.

Stage 4 is macro, building a life that can house your business.

We all stumble because we’re naturally inclined towards one of these, and not the other.

The key to a great career life is being able to navigate all of them.