career

Guest Post by Levi Heiple:

Your friends and family do not always know what’s best for you.

Before I went to college, all my family thought that I should be a music teacher. I was on the church worship team. I enjoyed music. I had a good knack for it (at least relative to my friends and family’s abilities).

However, after going through an intense music program for a couple of years, I realized that these “gifts” were not so extraordinary. I was consistently the “slow” one in my percussion studio. I never made any auditioned ensembles.

I spent more time practicing than most of the others, but I still just didn’t have the “chops” to keep up.

I should of realized that having a good knack for playing along with a band or picking up on some guitar strumming patterns is really not enough to warrant a lifelong pursuit of that skill.

There are millions of people who have a “good knack” for a lot of different things. That’s not the same as being prepared for success.

In retrospect, I should of realized that my greatest ability was in optimizing systems and breaking down complex information. Oddly, nobody noticed this ability. Nor was I told that I could make a living with these skills.

Nobody I knew personally was an entrepreneur or had any knowledge about the technical communication field.

Family and friends have a limited perspective of the world, namely the world that is their work and their leisure.

The real insight that family and friends can bring is what someone is not good at. I failed biology class in high school. If I told my parents I wanted to be a biologist, they would have laughed at me.

There are many paths to success. There are universal ways to fail. Steer your child clear of failure, but don’t let your limited perspective of the world dictate the supposed path of success. The world is too complex and changes far too rapidly for anyone to know the right path for someone else’s success.

About Levi Heiple

Levi Heiple is a writer/entrepreneur who specializes in electronic training and support systems. He connected with Jonathan Harris after being asked tutor his son, Caleb. You can sign up for Levi’s free weekly tip on “reading for innovation” at BookBlitzMethod.com. You can find his professional website at LeviHeiple.com. You can find his web design service at WebPromoPackage.com.

Updated: May 2014

1 + 1 = 3: How to Compound Your Child’s Talents for Maximum Benefit

flying a paraglider tandem with the Synergy pa... — In a talent-led life, your child will combine his skills for maximum leverage.(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Guest Post by Levi Heiple:

Most people do not just have one talent.

For the person who has only one talent, life is simple; it’s obvious what he should do.

Most people, however, have to prioritize. Which talent can your child make a living with? Or better yet, how can your child combine their talents to make a living?

You don’t want your child to have an uphill battle his whole life. Help him find the ones that will be the most lucrative, and ones that comes most easily. This does not mean he won’t have to work hard at it, but it does mean that as he works hard at it, his success will grow exponentially.

You will not know which talent is the most lucrative until you help your child make a complete inventory of his abilities.

The ideal career would be one where all or most of his talents can reinforce each other. This is a concept known as “synergy”–the whole will be greater than the sum of its parts.

Here’s an example inventory I did for myself. These were either skills or areas of interest that made a lot of intuitive sense to me and that I greatly enjoyed studying.

Instructional design
Technical writing
E-learning
Practical applications of information technology
Copywriting
Marketing
Business start-ups

I realized that I could get the more leverage out of each of these skills by combining them. It would make more sense for me to start a lot of “mini-businesses” based around my specialized technical knowledge and skills rather than to pursue a traditional career path in just one skill. I could use my technical writing skills to document the work processes and outsource the work.

I knew that probably half-of my business ideas would fail, but I didn’t mind because I love starting new businesses and improving my marketing skills. I just need two or three of them to work to make a living and I can keep building on the successes.

The point is that you have to take an inventory of all your child’s talents and figure out how you can combine them in a lucrative way. Some talents might not earn them a living. I still enjoy playing music, but I do it as a leisurely evening activity to unwind. I have no desire to try to make a living at it.

Tag: career

Does Mother Always Know Best?

About Levi Heiple

1 + 1 = 3: How to Compound Your Child’s Talents for Maximum Benefit

About Levi Heiple