Have you been struggling with finding your niche in your career?

Have you been floating from job to job, career to career, and not quite sure if you’ve found your “calling”? It’s fine to find yourself in a few different careers over the course of your life because now it’s encouraged to try more roles to see what really speaks to you. However, this does not mean you should job hop every 6 months, employers still want to see some stability in a potential new hire, plus, if you think you’ve learned everything about a role or career path in the first 6 months you haven’t looked very hard into the industry.

To give you some context of my career, I invested 4 years into finance, 2 years into fashion, and now I’m close to 10 years in marketing. I picked up quite a bit of my marketing skills (socializing, sales, social media content creation, and more) in the first 2 industries because I was the founder of the companies and had to do pretty much everything, and then someone saw the marketing potential in me and asked if I wanted to start their company’s social company presence, and the rest is history.

You can see how for me, finding my way into my strengths was a bit of luck; I ran into the right person who saw the potential in me and decided to foster it by giving me an opportunity to shine.

Now, how did I manage to awaken to my potential and believe in it? Over the course of my career, I observed myself, what I stand for, when I am most “in flow” with my work, and saw that I am really passionate about marketing. Passion is a word that is thrown around a lot, so let me give you a few signs to look for when you’re trying to figure out whether you’re passionate about something.

1. Your eyes literally light up when someone broaches “your subject” in a conversation. I’ve been told when someone asks me about marketing, sparks start flying out from my eyes.

2. You look forward to rolling out of bed and going to work every day, even when it’s a challenging day ahead. Not every day is fun even when you’re doing something you’re passionate about. I have to think of new ideas and campaigns every day and sometimes meet insane deadlines, but I still wouldn’t trade it for another career because I love the opportunity to add colour to a blank canvas with my ideas.

3. Over time, as you observe and get to know your skillset,  you understand that investing your time in this passion is the best way for you to contribute to society. Let’s put it this way, can I go back to finance or fashion and build a career there? Sure. Is that the best way for me to create amazing things for the world? In other words, you could do things well, probably in multiple industries in order to earn a living, but is it something you’re passionate about and the best in the world at?

This brings us to a very simple venn diagram I used to evaluate whether I wanted to stay in the marketing industry. For the first few years of my marketing career, I was doing it as a solo consultant; this meant switching costs were low if I wanted to “career-hop”. Here’s why I didn’t do it. As my roles, responsibilities and experiences accumulated, I had more data to evaluate my situation using the Hedgehog Concept presented in Jim Collin’s classic book Good to Great.

The takeaway is to find a place in the market where the following 3 points converge in the middle of the venn diagram:

1. What drives your economic engine

2. What are you passionate about

3. What you can be best in the world at

What drives your economic engine

At the most basic level, you want to find a career where you can make a living. While it might sound romantic to live as a starving artist pursuing your dream, it’s more realistic to be able to feed yourself and have a stable roof over your head to allow you to refine your art and/or skills.

What are you passionate about?

What gets you out of bed every morning even when work for the day ahead, or even the weeks and months ahead, are certain to be gruelling? What will you enjoy working on even when it’s not high-paying and won’t get you famous?

An artisan working on glassware may enjoy hand-finishing one piece each day and watching it shine exactly the way they want it under the sunlight. Whether or not that piece sells for tens, hundreds, or thousands, while still an important factor, isn’t the reason why they are creating.

What can you be the best in the world at?

Now, this one is more of what you observe and believe to be true, because not every passionate individual starts out as the best in the world at their craft. Take actors, for instance, it may take years for them to fine-tune and home their craft.

If you have the basics, a career that will feed you, one that you are deeply passionate about, then at this third point and final point, you will need some time and experience in the industry to have the proper data points to figure out whether you could be the best in the world at it. Don’t just take your own word for it (we all think we are above-average drivers), but do a 360-degree review with your peers, direct reports, superiors, and clients.

Being the best in the world at something doesn’t mean you have to land on the cover of Forbes or Wallpaper Magazine. We’re all thinking that fame and recognition are what would tell us we are good at something, but finding something you can be the best in the world at doesn’t mean it has to make you famous (looking at you, Content Creators who all seek to be insta- or tiktok-famous).

For example, if you are an author, you might have a niche skill of writing empowering children’s stories; if you are a photographer, maybe your niche is capturing the best mountain range landscape photos around the world; if you are a cook, maybe you run the most coveted traditional Italian restaurant in the world; if you are a nurse, you might be reputed as the best nurse to accompany and lift the spirits of ailing souls.

It might sound boastful to want to be the best in the world at something, but as they say, if you reach for the stars, even if you don’t get there, at least you’ll land somewhere close.

I encourage you to do this exercise if you are evaluating your career path. It’s simple, but the work that goes into the evaluation definitely isn’t. I hope this helps you find your way.