“Do what you love and the money will follow.”

How many times have good-natured and helpful people provided this sage bit of advice to those in the job market? Tens of millions. It’s one of the most common pieces of job search commentary, and we’ve all heard it before. Perhaps it was when you were getting out of school, and a relative or Pastor wanted to give you a bit of inspiration. You know, to help you get over your worries about a life filled with monetary obligations. Perhaps like me, it came to you at a time when you were unemployed, bouncing about and trying to figure out what would come next.

Yes, it would be great to be able to do what you love and not have to worry about making a living. To be able let a “good living” come to you, now that is something to aspire to, for sure. The problem is that in reality it doesn’t work this way. For me, there’s nothing I would love more than to write on a full-time basis. Maybe for you it is to pick up a guitar and become a songwriter. For someone else, it may be going to Africa and fighting Ebola. While I would cheer any of those ideas, I think it is much more difficult to pull this off than this simple bit of “wisdom” implies. Yes, you could sacrifice everything and take on one of these ideas, but most of us wouldn’t last long using that approach.

I spoke recently to two people who really love what they do, and I wanted to know more about how they happened to find themselves in that enviable position. Let me preface by saying that I am one of those who loves his work; my thought is that it isn’t by targeting your hobby that you find your passion and a good life to go with it. Instead, it seems to happen by digging into a job, even one that may not seem like what you love, at least initially. It is surprising how often that job later proves to have given you the keys to your dream of job satisfaction!

“I went through my PhD program because I wanted to cure cancer. Someone very close to me in my younger life had passed on due to that terrible disease, and my desire to drive that cancer off the face of the planet drove me to get my education as a cell biologist,” Nancy told me. She’s a director of cell culture process development for one of my client companies. When I heard how passionate she was about her original goal, I asked her if she had been terribly disappointed to have moved quite far from her original goal of discovery science.

“It was disappointing to find that my skills were more useful in other areas, and in particular, to go to work for a company that had no commercial interests in cancer research. My first job came from a company pursuing a cure for an STD. But what happened was that I found something I love anyway, even in that environment. A year into my job, I moved into the pilot plant to help develop an assay that was critical to scale-up, and then I added leadership experience in something that I found interesting. There’s a certain magic to cells in culture in a bioprocess, and I didn’t realize this early, but being in the industry it began to fascinate me. My career began to revolve more and more around an area of expertise that I developed because of that newfound love for making cells happy in bioreactors.”

Nancy’s career blossomed naturally into a new area and she initially just went along for the ride. But it’s also possible that you could find yourself suddenly thrust into a change—a dramatic one, perhaps. That doesn’t necessarily need to be a bad thing. Take the case of Ray, a very successful director of business development for one of the leading microbials companies selling biostimulants to farmers and large growers:
“I had gone back to graduate school after enjoying my initial work in microbiology. Initially, I thought I’d end up with a PhD, but I had a real conflict with my Professor. Graduate training wasn’t what I thought it was going to be, and I left the program with a Masters degree,” Ray told me as he described his transition into a business career. “I was really broken up, because I loved the science so much, and while I knew that I could work in science with a Masters, I found after a time in my first job that I would never be calling the shots without the PhD.”

Ray found himself suddenly in the job market after a company reorganization, and it was then that he decided to skip out on his initial passion for bench science. Yes, it was what he loved, but he became a realist in the hard months of looking for another position.

“I became much more flexible after looking for a few months. An opportunity came about through a networking contact of mine to talk to the director of sales for a major reagent supplier about a position supporting the sales force. It was called “Applications Support” and it got me back my employed status.

“Something happened, and rather quickly,” Ray reported. “I started working with the company’s customers, solving their issues with our product, and I realized how much I enjoyed helping others with their research. In fact, I was better at that than I was while doing my own science. Within six months, I had moved into the sales force, and then later into business development, which was essentially my employer’s business-to-business arm, where we use our technologies to build joint ventures or new concepts with other suppliers. I love what I do. I still get the same thrill out of this work as I did when I worked with my first customer twelve years ago.”

Based on the informal study I’ve made of job satisfaction over the years, I believe that this job advice about doing what you love can be restated into a new version of that sage career wisdom: “Go to work, find something you like and become great at it. The money will follow.” You can find what you love in your job. You don’t have to drop out and move to Alaska to become a fishing guide.

Take what you enjoy the most in your present job and explore how you can get even better at it. Focus on making this special area more and more what you do. Believe me, the money will follow. As a headhunter working for companies all over the world who are looking to hire specialists in some area of expertise or another, I can tell you that every employer wants to find someone like Nancy or Ray—a new hire full of passion and enthusiasm for their subject matter. People who carry this love of their career choice with them will always be in demand.