{"id":1435,"date":"2017-10-12T06:00:04","date_gmt":"2017-10-12T11:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.harveker.com\/?p=1435"},"modified":"2017-10-12T06:00:04","modified_gmt":"2017-10-12T11:00:04","slug":"focus-career-paths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.harveker.com\/blog\/focus-career-paths\/","title":{"rendered":"Choosing Between Career Paths: How to Focus on One"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many of my students just can’t make up their mind about what to focus on for their career. Between so many career paths, they can’t decide. They want to do a bit of everything that they have an interest in. Then, they wonder why they aren\u2019t successful yet.<\/p>\n

How Too Many Career Paths Can Leave You Broke<\/h2>\n

There are two reasons why most businesses don’t ‘make it,’ and they both have to do with attempting too many career paths. Even I have made this mistake, so before I go into the two reasons, let me tell you a little story about my own life and see if you can relate to it.<\/p>\n

My Story of Too Many Career Paths<\/h3>\n

I was living in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I was broke until I started doing pretty well selling pen watches. Then, I made $4,000 a month working only two hours a day in the flea market! Not bad, yes?<\/p>\n

I worked for an extra hour going back to the shipping yard to pick up another couple of boxes of pen watches. I was happy with that, except for one thing.<\/p>\n

A friend of mine at the yard asked me, \u201cDo you know what just came in? These watches look like really high-end watches, but they\u2019re not. You can buy them for $40 and sell them for $100 or more.\u201d<\/p>\n

My first hunch was that it wasn’t a big market, but the watches were legal, and even I wanted one. He was convincing, saying how he made $1,000 a week hardly doing anything. So I bought and sold a few here and there, doing okay with that.<\/p>\n

Next time I hit the shipyard, the same guy said to me, \u201cI have a shipment of T-shirts coming in. You should see these T-shirts. You\u2019re already going around to the jewelry stores to show them the watches. You should sell these T-shirts.\u201d Then it was hats.<\/p>\n

About a month later, I noticed I was selling all this other stuff, but my pen watches weren\u2019t doing as well. I ended up running four businesses at a single time, and none of them fully took off yet.<\/p>\n

Within six months, I went from making $4,000 a month for two hours a day to making literally no money for 15 hours a day.<\/p>\n

How does that happen? The answer is actually twofold.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Why Having Too Many Career Paths Will Sink You<\/h3>\n

I was clueless in business and personal development at the time \u2014 I didn\u2019t know what I was doing to myself. I was chasing after every opportunity because of two reasons that end up being huge pitfalls to a lot of would-be entrepreneurs:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Wanting to make money faster \u2014\u00a0<\/strong><\/strong>In terms of making money faster, let’s just put this reality check into perspective: It takes every bit of energy and focus you have for you to succeed in any one thing<\/a>. Your first million dollars ain’t happening overnight. That might work for a lucky few, but not for most. That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with wanting to achieve maximum results with as little effort as possible.<\/li>\n
  2. Wanting a backup \u2014\u00a0<\/strong><\/strong>I wanted a \u201cbackup\u201d in case what I was doing didn\u2019t work. In my mind, I thought that if I had more than one business, it would be \u201csafer\u201d \u2014 it would assure me of some kind of success because I\u2019d always have some sort of backup. What if my pen watches didn\u2019t work so well? I should get into this and this in case that doesn\u2019t work so that, well, I\u2019ll have a fallback position.<\/em> But I went from doing decent, to being completely broke again! How can having more be less?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The fact of the matter is, when you overextend yourself by trying to follow a number of career paths, you end up not being able to succeed in any of them.<\/p>\n

    Having Too Many Career Paths Will Drain You<\/h3>\n

    Here\u2019s the deal:<\/p>\n

    At the time I didn\u2019t understand something called energy.<\/p>\n

    It takes an enormous amount of energy to get something going, especially at the beginning.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    If you don\u2019t use 100% of your energy to get something off the ground, you\u2019re not going to make it over the chasm. You\u2019re going to fall into it.<\/p>\n

    Let me give you an example that I mention in this\u00a0video.<\/p>\n