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In the book SuperFreakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner delve into the mysterious economics of prostitution.  They explain how demand for prostitution overall has plummeted over the last fifty years, driven out by the sexual revolution of the Sixties and the advent of serious competition in the form of casual sex, delivered for free by consenting, newly “liberated” women.  Prices for street sex have accordingly crashed over the decades, with street hookers now finding it hard to scrape together a hard, dangerous and sad living. 

The economics is very different at the top end.  Levitt and Dubner showed how a savvy, self-employed, home-based, web-marketing call girl can not only make very good money, but can actually increase her earnings by pushing prices up and working less.  Yes, read it again! – atypical economics indeed. 

Some might say that whether a girl is working the street or from a fancy apartment, the ultimate mechanics are the same and a hooker is a hooker.  Morally perhaps, economically not so.  A high class call girl operates a different business model altogether. 

For over seven years, one of the most widely clicked blogs in Britain has been Belle de Jour, the “intimate adventures of a London call girl”.  The diaries are witty, quirky and, most strikingly, literate.  They were also anonymous, and for years had press pundits vying to guess the identity of the scribe.  Most opined that the adventures were the work of a reputable author with an over-active imagination, possibly a man. 

Then in November last year the author revealed herself.  She is Dr Brooke Magnanti, a research physicist in her mid-thirties, specialising in developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology.  For 14 months in 2003-04, she worked as a prostitute to support herself during her PhD studies.  She found her situation not without humour, so started blogging under the name Belle de Jour, the nom-de-guerre of a bored housewife turned call girl played by Catherine Deneuve in the brilliant movie by Luis Bunuel in the 1960s. 

Magnanti  earnt very good money in her surprising, enjoyable (says she) but temporary  career, but that was just the start.  The blog turned into a best-selling book, and the book into a TV series, starring Billie Piper, former teen pop singer and later co-lead of the highly rated UK children’s TV series, Dr Who.  Again, the role of hooker was played by a celebrity known more to children than adults. 

Magnanti has been condemned by many in women’s groups, politicians and the media for glamorising prostitution.  But she frankly retorts that she was lucky.  She was at the top end of the trade, she never had to face a troublesome or dangerous client and she wasn’t in it for long. 

She recognises that things are very different at the street end of the trade and she in no way wishes to glamorise that, especially where trafficking is involved.  All are agreed that any element of coercion in the trade, from over-assertive pimping to outright abduction, is abhorrent.  But where there is free will, and that is the case in the vast majority of cases, according to recent research by London Metropolitan University, which challenges the over-inflated numbers on trafficked sex workers in the UK touted by some in the media, the ethics vs economics argument is more open to debate – and is indeed regularly debated in parliament and beyond. 

What then does this have to do with a blog on backing your passion and achieving career success, you may well ask? 

Well, aside from the obvious retort that if the practitioner doesn’t display some element of passion at the delivery end of the trade, quite a lot.  It is an activity that we all come across in an amateur capacity and regard the professional side of things with at least curiosity.  And it has some strange economics, as discussed above. 

But, above all, it produces quite a surprising result to the question we ask of most jobs: what do you need to have, or do, to be good at it, to succeed in the trade? 

Is it the technical skills?  The attitude?  The passion? 

Have a think about what drives success on at the top end of the game.  How come the high class hooker in SuperFreakonomics was able to raise her prices?  How come the real Belle de Jour was so successful?

Any tips for the rest of us?  All will revealed in a later post. Hint: think marketing…

That list should hopefully have reached two, three or more dozen. Now it needs to be set out in a more manageable way.

Rearrange the full list (easier if you’ve typed it out on your word processor) by grouping the jobs by the number of ticks received. At the very top, group together all those jobs that gained five or more ticks. Then those with four, three, and so on. Last, and least, should be those with crosses.

Now you weed out those with the fewest ticks. Obviously, you’ll start with all the crosses. Then you’ll move up to the single ticks. Carry on this process until you have only a dozen or so jobs left. Hopefully these final dozen will each have received at least three ticks. 

No more than a dozen jobs are needed at this stage. You can always return to the list if you have to. A dozen is a reasonably sized list to be taking into the next chapter on screening. This is your long list of jobs with passion. 

To reiterate: At this stage, it doesn’t matter whether you could do these jobs well, or if you even qualify to do them. The important thing is to derive a manageable long list of jobs that inspire you, ranked purely by the extent to which they will fill you with passion.

They could well be an odd assortment of jobs or businesses. You may have given five ticks to becoming a pro tennis player, a lawyer, a hotelier, a health guru, a landscape gardener, whatever. The more diverse the range of five-ticked jobs, the broader your range of interests and passions, which is no bad thing.

It doesn’t matter whether there is no chance whatsoever of you becoming, say, a lawyer. What matters is that you believe you’d love to do that job, that being a lawyer would consume your days with passion. As would others with five ticks, each of which are in good company.

The trick now is to screen this long list of jobs into a short list of two or three where market conditions will be favorable and you will be well placed to land the jobs–and succeed once in.

In short, you need to convert the long list into a short list of jobs where you’ll be backable.

We’ll start that process in the next post on career tools…

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One or two interesting things have happened since my last post.  Sarah Palin’s book tour was a stellar success, she has landed a new role with Fox News and her limelight in the Republican party has been dimmed somewhat by the stunning victory of Scott “Centerfold” Brown to the Senate.

But none of this changes the analysis. 

Firstly, what capabilities are required to do the job of President of the United States of America?  This is not straightforward, since there is no clear stereotype for success.  Recent presidents have been notable for their differences rather than their commonalities. 

But let’s have a go.  How about this?  A president should be able to master a tricky brief, to manage several briefs at a time and to lead the Government team, ruthlessly when appropriate.  To get there, he/she should be able to communicate well, preferably inspirationally and generating mass appeal. 

For the sake of simplicity, we’ll restrict the required capabilities to the four above.  So how does Sarah stack up?

Her ability to master a brief appears poor.  If one compares her to the supreme master/mistress of the brief, Margaret Thatcher, who was notoriously able to read briefing papers in the ministerial limo on the way to a meeting and then argue ferociously at the meeting, in total control of the issues and facts involved, Sarah is in the wrong league.  Her showing in the Katie Couric interview was cringe-worthy.  She gets a rating of 1 out of 5, and that may be generous.  In comparison, Barack Obama gets a 4, maybe 4.5.  Even George Bush gets a 2.

 The same applies to her ability to manage several briefs at the same time.  To do that, you need both intellectual depth and breadth.  And, preferably, again like the redoubtable Margaret Thatcher, a phenomenal memory.  Sarah gets a 1 again, but there is no need to despair just yet.  After all, it would be hard to have rated Ronald Reagan with anything above a 1, yet he has gone down in history as a successful president.

 Next comes leadership, and here Sarah looks on firmer ground.  She gained her managerial spurs as Mayor of Wasilla for two terms, before moving on to the Governorship of Alaska.  In both positions, she took on vested interests zealously and, at times, ruthlessly.  Controversies abound, but one thing is not in question.  She is unafraid to lead.  She gets a 4 – where Obama, incidentally, would have scored a 1 or 2 pre-election, since he had never presided over an organisation before.

 It was, of course, in leadership where Reagan made amends.  He was able to assemble a strong team around him, which he managed deftly and led ideologically.  Could Sarah do the same?

 Sarah looks best when it comes to communication.  Her performance at the Republican convention in Fall 2008 was nothing short of sensational.  She had been squirreled away in her hotel suite for three days, hidden from the world’s media, still reeling from Senator McCain’s announcement of his running mate.  The pressure on her was overwhelming.  She was immense.

 Her speech was targeted bang on middle America’s key concerns over Obama:

• She portrayed herself as the average American, a world apart from the Harvard-educated and sometimes aloof Obama.  She even cracked that infamous gag at her expense: “What’s the difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull?  Lipstick”
• She stressed her managerial experience.  She was someone who got on with the job, who ran a governor’s office and a family of five at the same time, unlike Obama, “a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform”. Ouch!
•  She laid into Obama’s messianic aura: “But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed … when the stadium lights go out, and those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to the studio lot — what exactly is our opponent’s plan —after he’s done turning back the waters and healing the planet?  He plans to make government bigger … take more of your money”.  Prophetic words, think many, when it comes to healthcare reform.

 But even more importantly was how she said it.  She used every trick in the public speaking book.  The prolonged, confident eye contact.  The pauses, the variety in pitch, pace and volume.  The talking over the applause.  But she went beyond the book.  This, after all, was Miss Congeniality in the Miss Alaska pageant of 1984.  She seduced America.  With her librarian spectacles, the Dusty Springfield hairdo, the crinkling of the nose, the sideways glances, the winking.  She even blew the country an outrageous kiss at the end of the speech.  One commentator described the performance as “political Viagra”.

 The speech transformed the Republicans’ poll ratings.  McCain went from dead cert loser to a hopeful.  History will never know what could have happened if they had kept Sarah away from Couric.  Sarah gets a 5 for communication and mass appeal.

 So, does Sarah seem to have the capabilities required for the job of president?  Here are her scores, with Obama’s in brackets: Brief mastery 1 (4); Brief multiplicity 1 (4); Leadership 4 (2); Communication 5 (5). 

 If each capability is given an equal weighting, the total of her capability scores comes to 11 out of 20, compared with Obama’s 15.  That averages out at almost 3 out of 5, which is relatively high for any new job.  If communication were to be given a higher weighting, since that is what is needed to get into the White House, as opposed to how the job is done once in, her overall score would rise further.  So too would Obama’s, since he is also an excellent communicator, but it would raise her credentials against other Republican candidates with lesser communication skills.

 Capability is one of two criteria to be taken into account in assessing potential competitive standing in a new job.  The other is experience.  Here Sarah’s three years as Governor give her some credibility, but will be overshadowed next time by Obama’s four years as a senator and four as president.  While a Governor’s responsibilities count for much in terms of domestic politics and managerial experience, the business attended to can often be parochial, as distinct from the world affairs debated and legislated upon in Washington.  Furthermore, Sarah’s abrupt , premature departure from her gubernatorial role may not help her cause.  In terms of experience, she rates no more than a 2, compared to Obama’s former 3 and, by the time of the next election, 5.

 Sarah is currently out of a job.  Let’s assume she is looking, like millions of other Americans out of work, at a range of potential new jobs, of which one is President.  She follows the Backing U! process and identifies a whole range of jobs she is passionate about.  She does a screening exercise on the dozen or so jobs with most passion.  On the top job, the one she desires most of all, the presidency, the screening shows a tentative 3 out of 5 for capability and 2 out of 5 for experience. 

 That is pretty high.  Many other new jobs – eg current affairs TV commentator, sports journalist (her original goal) – may well yield screening ratings for Sarah lower than that.  The president job looks like a starter.

 And what does she have to lose?  If she doesn’t make it, she will go on to make a fortune from the next book, the speeches, the movie script, the endorsements, the TV show…

 Let there be no doubt.  Sarah will run for President.

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So Sarah Palin is back on the campaign trail, well, a national tour to promote her book, Going Rogue, she says, but we all know better. We missed her. Love her or loathe her, and she does seem to invite extreme reactions in people, she sure livens up the news. Last year’s presidential contest looked like being a procession until she showed up. 

She soon got hammered by the liberal media, brutally. But she still gamely showed up to joust with Tina Fey on the Saturday Night Live show. 

She’s a glutton for punishment. Her book has again set her up as a prime target. Take this blistering prose from the Sunday Times (UK) columnist, Andrew Sullivan: “The lies and truths and half-truths and the facts and non-facts are all blurred together in a pious purée of such ghastly self-serving prose that, in the end, the book can really be read only as some kind of chapter in a cheap 19th-century edition of Lives of the Saints.” 

Does Palin really believe she can make the White House? Cynics might say that she is sure to have a go, if only for the inevitable, eventual riches from Going Rogue, Volume II. 

The sad trait of many in politics is that they listen all too closely to their advisers, their followers, their sycophants, each of whom has a vested interest in their patron fighting on with maximum effort, enthusiasm and expense. 

Do any in Palin’s team actually sit her down and give her a realistic assessment of her prospects for becoming President of the United States of America? More importantly, do they advise her on whether she could make a good president, a good ruler of the free world? 

Palin is backing her passion. She is passionate about power. She craves it. She is not in politics to drive forward change, to make a difference. She is in it for the passion of power. 

So it might do her no harm to follow this blog. She has resigned her Governorship, so is jobless. Sure, she is still a mother of five, the youngest of whom has very special needs. Sure, she is an author who is very actively plugging her book. 

But she’s still a young, healthy, vibrant woman. And very ambitious. She will not settle for being a stay-at-home author mom. 

This blog will show her how to back her passion and succeed at her new job. But is that job the President of the USA? 

We’re going to be skipping ahead of the blog here – inevitable, since at the pace I’ve been writing these posts we won’t cover the main how-tos of the Backing U! books for a couple of years! But bear with me… 

Evidently, doing the job of President gets maximum ticks on the Palin passionometer. So it is certainly worthy of proceeding to the screening process. For those who haven’t read the books, jobs which you feel passionate about need to be screened for two criteria – job market attractiveness and your likely competitive standing. 

How attractive is the market for the job of US president? It is about as unattractive a market as can be imagined:
· There’s only one post available – great job if you can get it, but there’s no getting round the fact that there’s only one position up for grabs. Having said that, there was only one Governor of Alaska post and Palin landed that. Likewise with Mayor of Wasilla, the launchpad for what could still be one of the most extraordinary careers in US political history
· The market isn’t growing – in three years’ time, there will still only be one job available
· It’s highly competitive – the incumbent himself is a formidable adversary, but to even get to face him you’ve got to beat off ruthlessly an array of tough contenders from your own side
· It’s high risk – even if you land the job, the chances of you being booted out after four years are somewhere around 50% 

So it’s not an attractive market. But that doesn’t mean the job should be screened out. There’s the other criterion to be looked at. In order to pass through the screening process, Palin is going to have to rate highly on the potential competitive standing criterion. Based on her capabilities and her experience to date, how well placed is Palin to land the job and do it well? 

Have a think about that – we’ll return to it in a later post…!

So far you have only looked at your family, friends, and colleagues – and at their friends, family, and colleagues. How about your fellow interest sharers? Do you belong to any clubs, societies, voluntary groups, political groups? Are you a golfer? A member of Toastmasters? A chorister? Do you help out at your kid’s school? At the club? At church?

Whichever group you are involved with, think on this: what else do you have in common with your fellow group members, other than the one common interest through which you know each other? Might you have work interests in common? What is their line of business? Are any of them in a job that would inspire you?

What about their family, friends, and colleagues?

Take out your sheet of paper and add to it some jobs of your fellow interest-sharers and their contacts.

So far you’ve looked to people you know for inspiration. Now take a look at people you don’t know but you know of. Think of people you’ve read about in books who have inspired you. Poeple you’ve looked at or read about in newspapers, in the supplements, in magazines. What about people you’ve seen on TV? In documentaries, in reality shows, in sports, on the news. People who’ve inspired you in some way.

Think too of fictitious people. People in novels, in movies, in the theater, in dramas, or soaps on TV. People whose imaginary lives have come alive for you through fiction or drama. Try broadening your reading to gain further inspiration.

How’s your list coming along? If it hasn’t reached 30 or 40 by now, you may need to try some further sources – please take a look at my book, Backing U!, for more detailed info.

Next we need to review your list – this is the fun part, and it’s for the next post…!

They have a point! This will be so in some cases. In which case, please, please revert to the standard approach used in most career guides. You could try Richard Bolles’ perennial best-selling What Color is Your Parachute and fill in his flower diagram. Geography: North America. Interests: beekeeping and honey. People environment: people who help others. Values: mutual support. Working conditions: outdoors. Salary: at least average earnings. Transferable skills: accounting and (favorite) beekeeping.

Then, after a prolonged and painstaking job search, Eureka!, you find it: a vacancy for a new commune member of the Honey Cooperative in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan—a job of your dreams and one you previously didn’t know existed!

These cases I suspect may be uncommon. In the majority of cases, the approach recommended here works too because you already know of, or you can get to know of, the kind of work you would like to do. That’s not to decry the standard, bottom-up approach, of course. It’s proven. It works.

How to find the ideal job for you? How to discover where the passion lies? If you don’t already know, and many of you do, here are some tips.

Think of jobs you admire of those you know. Think of your family. Your friends. Your old school friends. Your colleagues. Your former colleagues. Your kids’ friends’ parents.

Are any of them in a job or running a business that would inspire you? Have they been in the past? Are they thinking of switching to one?

Take one further degree of separation: What about the family, friends, and colleagues of your family, friends, and colleagues? Do they have jobs that would inspire you?

Take a piece of paper and make three columns. In the left-hand column, write down all the names you’ve just thought of. In the middle column, write down the kind of work these people do, or did. Then in the right-hand column, indicate to what extent the work would inspire you. Try ticks. Or a cross for a job that does nothing for you. One tick for an okay job. Two ticks for a good job. Three ticks for a great job.

Then give four, five, or however many ticks you can fit across the column for the jobs that would truly inspire you—the jobs where the real passion lies.

That’s a start. You already have a list of 20, 30, 40 jobs, each of which you have rated according to the degree of passion you would feel if you were to do that work.

We’ll now build up that list by drawing from other sources – but that’s for the next post…!

It’ll fill you with drive. To do something about it. To pick up the phone, knock on a door.

Above all, you’ll know you’ve found the passion when you speak about the job! When people talk about something they’re passionate about, the voice changes. The pace quickens. The pitch rises. The volume gets turned up a notch or two.

As an extreme example, take a teenage girl in two situations. Imagine her mother or father asking her how school went that day. The answer comes back monosyllabically, monotonously, ponderously. Then the telephone goes and her best buddy’s on the line. The voice undergoes a metamorphosis. Suddenly it’s animated, rapid, rich in variety of tone, pitch, and volume. Punctuated throughout with laughter. Whatever the two teenagers are talking about, it’s surely something that fires them. And it’s reflected in the voice.

It’s the same in public speaking. I’ve belonged to a public speaking and communications club, part of Toastmasters International, for many years. At every meeting four or five people stand up and deliver a prepared speech for five to seven minutes on a topic of their choosing. All speakers are advised to choose a topic that they are interested in, preferably one they are passionate about. As a result, and this is extraordinary given the range of backgrounds and talents of all these amateur speakers, it’s very seldom that we hear a dud speech. Whatever the topic, the speaker’s enthusiasm for the topic will be conveyed to the audience through above all her voice. No matter how inexperienced the speaker, no matter whether she has learned any of the tricks of vocal variety, the speech will be a winner if the topic brings out the passion in her.

If you want to know whether the passion lies for you in a particular job, try talking about it to a friend. Talk about its daily routines, the kind of people who work there, their ambitions, their achievements. Talk about the pros and cons. Talk about it in relation to other jobs where the hwyl may also lie. Talk about it in relation to ordinary jobs. Talk about it in relation to your current job. Ask your friend to observe how you talk about these jobs. When you speak of this particular job, does your voice become faster, more animated, more impassioned?

Or join Toastmasters! Speak about the job to a small audience. Ask your evaluator beforehand if he’ll note any difference in your vocal variety on this speech, compared with previous speeches. Will the speech convince him too that the job is fascinating?

The passion will be reflected in the voice. If you speak about a job where the passion lies, your voice will confirm it.

But how to find such a job…?

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A row has broken out in Britain over the axing of one of the judges from a highly popular talent show on the BBC, Strictly Come Dancing. A highly experienced choreographer, Arlene Phillips, has been replaced as a judge by a previous contest winner and R&B singer, Alesha Dixon.

That sounds innocuous enough. But less so when expressed in tabloidese: Nation’s favorite judge, 66, ousted by hot babe, 30! BBC viewers, average age 52, splutter into their cups of tea…

Respected broadcasters chip in. BBC Newsnight political editor Michael Crick condemns his peers as having “contempt for its viewers”.

Even Government weighs in. Culture Minister Ben Bradshaw warns the BBC not to succumb to “the cult of youth”. Equalities Minister, Harriet Harman, accuses the BBC in Parliament of ageism.

The general public has a whinge. First Sharon Osborne gets booted out as a judge of The X Factor, replaced by a young, cutesy (and, incidentally, much better) girl-bander, Cheryl Cole, now the same is to happen in Strictly Come Dancing!

What a load of hot air. As the BBC rightly says, Strictly Come Dancing is an entertainment show. Entertainment shows need continual refreshing. End of story.

Let’s revisit the concept of Key Kapabilities, or K2s. As introduced in the Backing U! books (Chapter 5), they are what employees need to do to succeed in their job. Or, for the self-employed, they’re what they need to get right to be able to meet customer needs and run a sound business.

What were the K2s for the job of judge on Strictly Come Dancing? I don’t know – I used to dance a bit of rock, soul, calypso and reggae in my time, and I would love one day to dance salsa and tango, but I can only imagine. How about if the most important K2s were: proven dancing knowledge; experience; screen presence; blend with other judges; and communication skills?

Phillips had all of that – a choreographer for Broadway and West End shows and Hot Gossip; years of experience; authoritative, pleasing presence; reasonable blend with other judges; and excellent communication of her points.

But after five hugely successful years, the show needed refreshing. And that introduced a new K2 into the mix: freshness.

Enter Dixon. Not a professional dancer, but pretty good and a proven winner on the very show. Good experience of showbusiness, having fronted a successful all-girl R&B band, Miss-Teeq, for 6 years before going solo. Stunning screen presence. Potentially electric blend with other judges. Good communication skills.

And, above all, fresh.

So: not only does Dixon rate highly against the formerly important K2s, but she has no contest against the new K2 of freshness.

It’s a no brainer. Sure, there will be people who see undercurrents of ageism, sexism, looksism, maybe even reverse-racism in the decision, but they are oblivious to the hard, commercial reality of the labor market.

The rules of the game had changed. The contract was up for renewal. Dixon was best placed for the job. Someone wins, someone loses. That’s the labor market. That’s life.

Sure it’s tough on Phillips. But she has been fortunate to have had such an amazing employment experience in her 60s, when so many are cast out of the workforce in the private, non-taxpayer funded world in their 50s.

Noone, Mr Crick, Mr Bradshaw, Ms Harman, and other hot air blowers, owes any of us a job.

This blog is going to help you find a job or business that consumes you with passion and where you’ll be backable. Take Katherine’s word for it:

“Life is to be lived. If you have to support yourself, you had bloody well better find some way that is going to be interesting.”—Katherine Hepburn

First a word on the approach we’ll be taking. There are loads of books, e-books, and blogs about changing career. Many of them are excellent and if you want a steer, just ask me!

But they nearly all use the same approach. It’s a bottom-up approach, starting from identifying who you are – your skills, interests, values etc – and then finding a job to match.

I have nothing against this approach. It’s structured, and sound. And it works. But changing career is a big, big step. And you deserve to be introduced to more than one basic approach. You need an alternative – one which may work better for you.

This blog’s approach starts from the other end. It’s a top-down approach. You’ll find a job that you love and then work out whether it’s right for you. As distinct from the other way round.

In business-speak, it’s a demand-driven, not a supply-pushed approach.

In most cases it should get you to same end-point. But I hope you’ll find this approach simpler and more inspirational. You’ll find out why later…

In this top-down, demand-driven, passion-driven approach, you’ll start with where you’d like to end up. What job would you love to have? In which job would you be happy? It could, according to Abraham, be yours!

“You can have anything you want, if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, do anything you set out to accomplish, if you hold to that desire with singleness of purpose.”—Abraham Lincoln

Which job can you think of where work would no longer be “work”? You would be so fired up that it wouldn’t seem like work at all. You would rush to work in the morning and you wouldn’t want to leave in the evening.

Who would you most like to be? Whose job, or business, do you most covet? If you were in his or her job, would you consider that you had the dream job?

In which job would you be consumed with passion? You would feel such emotion, such fervor, such spirit about the job that you would be uplifted to extremes of success.

This is the top-down approach. It’s demand driven, in that it seeks to pinpoint those jobs that attract you to them, that draw you toward them. Rather than supply pushed, where you steer yourself toward a job that suits your skills, interests, and values.

And it’s driven by passion. The job will entice you with its promise of passion.

Are you fed up at work?

If so, you’re not alone. You could be one of the 50% of US employees who are “dissatisfied” with their job, up from 40% a decade ago. Or one of the 50% of UK employees who feel they are “stuck in the wrong job”. Or one of a similarly high proportion somewhere else on the globe.

If you’re not fed up, or if you are fed up but determined to stay and perform better in your current job, good on you. This blog isn’t for you, but you might want to take a look at Becoming More Backable, which forms Part II of the Backing U! books*.

But if you’re thinking of career change, read on. That’s the focus of this blog. Let it be your guide. Use it to look for a job or business where your passion lies… and where you’ll have a good chance of succeeding!

Look for a job where you’ll be backable. Where you’ll be backing the passion!

There’s no point in shifting to a job you know you’ll be good at, but you only feel so-so about it. You’ll soon become dissatisfied in your new job, like you are where you are now.

Likewise, there’s no point in shifting to a job you’re passionate about but no good at! You may be hopelessly under-qualified or inexperienced for that job. You won’t get far.

Your new job or business should fulfil both conditions. It’ll fill with you with passion. And it’s one where you can do at least reasonably well.

That’s what this blog is about. Over the weeks and months it’s going to help you find a job you love and which you can do successfully.

The blog will borrow freely from Backing U!, especially Part III on Backing the Hwyl – the Celtic concept of passion, fervor, spirit. But you won’t need to buy the book to follow the blog. It will be self-contained. A coherent story will appear in these posts, with handy references from one post to another. Nothing relevant will be held back. Its over-riding aim will be to help you, not me.

We’ll meet a number of exemplars in the blog. They won’t be the same folk as in Backing U!. They’ll be new – some imaginary, some real, some celebs. Some, I hope, will be you, as the site becomes interactive and readers begin to offer their own experiences.

Along the way, we may look at other blogs, newspaper or magazine articles, books, audio or video clips.

And, now and again, we’ll have some light relief…

Here we go!

* Backing U! A Business-Oriented Guide to Backing Your Passion and Achieving Career Success, or Backing U! LITE: A Quick-Read Guide to Backing Your Passion and Achieving Career Success