Dr. Abraham George
speaker
275 appearances
5 recordings
2 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Jan 2025
Dr. Abraham George’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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So the five meta paths. The meta path defines a relationship between your work and your passion. So we've got five different paths that govern that relationship. The passion path is make your passion and your work the same thing now. The independent path is the opposite. It's that your passion and your work don't have anything to do with each other.
The experiment path is mostly for people who don't know what their passion is. And so the experiment path is try things. And you can try things in different organizations, different geographies, different parts of one company. And I've got some rules in the book around how to experiment in a way that makes your resume look good. But you're trying things out to look for that spark, right?
You're looking for that passion. Then there's the money path. And the money path is passion smashing. I've got to be rich or I've got to be rich. And then maybe I'll worry about passion later, but I got to make money. That's for our Goldman Sachs friends. And then the balance path, which is the one that I did, which is I know I want to have my work and my passion be the same thing.
But I'm going to do a regular career first to build the financial security and the capability set that maximizes my probability of success 10, 15 years down the road when I switch over. And so the framework leads you to pick one of those five pathways. And then I've got a chapter in the book on each one, and it lays out a game plan. So I really wanted the book to be tactical.
You pick your path, and then here are the five next steps and pitfalls to avoid. And it's a work plan for success. pushing that path forward.
What I'm finding is college students, even the early ones, so freshmen and sophomores, freshmen, you don't put an S on that word, freshmen and sophomores, 18, 19, 20 year olds, they're absolutely wrestling a lot with what am I going to do with my life? Am I going to not enjoy what I'm doing? How can I find something that I love? How do I figure out what I love?
They're wrestling with this topic a lot. And so my talk, which I just did an hour ago, is I summarize the book in 35 minutes. And then everybody does my little pick your path tool online. It takes five minutes and they pick their path and we talk about the next steps. And so it's really resonating because they are wrestling with this topic and they're wrestling with it a lot.
I gave the talk at Texas A&M University a couple of weeks ago. And there's about 100 kids, I shouldn't say kids, young people in the room. And the professor started with, how many of you are worried about your career? 100% of the hands. How many of you are worried that you're going to find yourself five or 10 years from now at a job thinking, oh, God, I really don't like what I'm doing?
100% of them, right? So they're absolutely worried about this stuff. That's why the book and the talk are resonating so much.
I would say, one, get real clear on how much money you need to give the passion project to go. And two, I very strongly believe that you can start building out a passion business while working in the real world at the same time. That's what I did. And so I would keep working. I would dabble in the passion business, write the business plan, take the steps that you can take.
get to the number you need to give it a go and then even if you can direct your real world career in a way that enables you to learn capabilities that are going to help you on the passion project it's a standard balance path it's just it's slower because you lost half your money
I think it's a great scenario. It's a terrible scenario, but it's a great question. First, I would say to the parents, you're making a terrible mistake in pressuring your kids or grandkids into a career. That's awful. You really shouldn't do that. And it's not only these being a doctor. We've got a lot in small family businesses where the parents expect the children to work in the business.
I think it's a tragic mistake. And if you just... Read some business history. You're going to learn pretty quickly that it's far more likely that you're going to frustrate your kids than it is that they're going to flourish in the parent's path. So one, to the parent, don't do that, right? That's awful. I've got this beautiful business that I'm completely in love with, Sherwood Forest Fair.
And my kids do work there. They work for other people, not me. But there's no pressure or expectation whatsoever that they're going to work there as a career. That's point one. Point two is I would go into the matrix. And it sounded like a Keanu Reeves thing.
and see what your path is right it the answer varies based on your need for financial security and do you know how to monetize a passion can you do it now or do you want to do it later so let's say in my toolkit you land on the balance path and the balance path is you're going to do a career for 10 15 20 years and then you're going to switch over if you know what your passion is
and being a doctor will certainly build the wealth to maximize a probability of success, then I would say, will it build the skill set? And it may or may not. And if it doesn't, I'd probably go try something else. But if it does, if you're on the balance path and being a doctor, which is what your family's pressuring you to do, builds capabilities and wealth, that might be just fine.
If you're on the passion now path, so let's say you want to be a musician, your need for financial security is very low, and you're talented enough to get paid. Paid enough, you know, enough by your definition. My friend would say, go be a musician. And I think at that point, you know, once you're an adult and you're 18, I think you have to be brave enough to say, I'm not going to be a doctor.
I'm going to be a musician. And I'm doing that knowing I will probably be low income, but I'm okay with that. I know how to manage that. And that's what I'm gonna do.
There are lots of stories of, especially like actors and musicians who got their big break right after they decided to give up. There's a lot of stories about that. Yeah. So I would say you probably shouldn't follow it. So this is really an interesting thing. You should not follow your passion when you're
21 years old, if you're not confident that you can make the financial living that you need, right?
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