Placing My Career Path on a Road to Financial Freedom

For the past few weeks, I have been job hunting.  And recently, I applied for a job in the Washington Post.  The position is for “Youth Development Specialist”.  As I read through the responsibilities, I had a true future in focus moment.  The past four years of my life as an entrepreneur made more sense.

When I started Teaiiano Music, I saw so much more than music.  And it was funny because I could explain none of what I saw (…ask my advisors).  As my business purpose, I listed “Music Facilitation”.  You should see the myriad of ideas that I presented to the bookkeeper that incorporated me.  That’s the challenge of seeing the finished product of a business before starting it.  In my case, I…

• Did not understand the big picture – I had no idea what I was looking at
• Wrote down the details of my business as a final product while…
• Being responsibile for what my business was in the present

I have often felt like I was working backwards through time, starting with the big picture and zooming in on each area to fill in the details.  And when it comes to timing, my wires have gotten crossed more often than not.  But even timing is starting to make a lot more sense to me.

The vision I have for Teaiiano is for it to make me, my wife and our team members financially free.  Not that we will not have debt, but that we will leverage good debt and know how to manage the penalties to generate passive income.  Then we will hedge our passive income with portfolio income, continually minimizing the money that we have to work for.  In essence, Teaiiano is our road to financial freedom. 

I spent 12 weeks in 2006 designing this road from start to finish.  So, I know what the road will look like.  Now my job is to make sure that my career path aligns with that road.  It’s like a set of transparencies.  The bottom layer is the road to financial freedom.  I had to design that first and place it on the projector.  Then I designed my business strategy and placed it on the projector.  Finally, I designed my career path and placed it on top of the other two layers.  Not only does each path line up with the previous path, but each layer is transparent.  That allows me to see my ultimate goal of financial freedom and business ownership supporting or undergirding my career path.  And just like a teacher turns on a slide projector, I project my vision onto new horizons so that my wife and team members can get a glimpse of the big picture.  If ever my career or business path meanders outside the lines of my road to financial freedom, I can see it immediately and make corrections.

Think about this:

1. Have you chosen a career and business path?
2. Are those paths parallel (or do they keep intersecting)?  Are they aligned with your road to financial freedom?
3. Can you see your road to financial freedom even through your current career path or business plan?  

If you can answer yes to all of those questions, you have a pretty solid and transparent plan. 

All posts on “My Future In Focus” Weblog are the intellectual property of T.A. and are licensed under a

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No derivative Works 3.0 United States License