I’ve endeavored recently to change my writing to more “practical” subjects in addition to some of the most philosophical type stuff, though overall I feel both are important. One of the most practical matters is that of finding a job. Or not just finding a job which anyone can do with enough effort, but rather finding a good job, or even more a career. Whereas a job, even a good job, maybe help you pay your bills and not be too miserable while at it.
A job is by its nature a temporary thing. And with corporations and even small businesses ready to toss their employees to the sharks to save a nickel it’s becoming more and more important to find a career over having a job. A career will feed you for life, it’ll provide you the thing that you need for life. In a career you may work many different “jobs” but the career will remain the same. This doesn’t mean you won’t have ups and downs, everyone does and will.
Rather it means you’ll have stability of sorts, so long as you use your money wisely. But if you’re not going to wise about money than being a multi-millionaire won’t save you from going hungry, figuratively speaking. But with all that being said let’s look at career options for men. What works, what doesn’t, and most important of all why. After all “why” is the most important single thing you can ask yourself at any given time.
A “WARNING”: I want to point out that I want this to be useable to everyone. Including fathers. Because of that I’ve listed two categories here that are going to be very hard (one essentially impossible) to get into later in life. So with those warnings out of the way let’s get started.
Viable Career Path For Men #1 – The “Trades”
So let me talk a little bit about what I mean by trades. By trades I mean what’s commonly thought of as trades like plumber, electrician, and so on and so forth. But for the sake of this discussion I’m including the following as “trade” jobs as well. Firefighter, police officer, and soldier. Essentially jobs where you don’t need a college degree to perform. Jobs that require specialized training that generally isn’t expensive, especially when compared to a college education, even two degree.
So teachers and nurses are excluded for this. neither a job I’d necessarily recommend for men. Now this may change in the future but right now these are all decent options for men. After high school I think a trade school/the police academy/bootcamp/firefighting school is a much better option for the average guy than getting a college education for employment.
With fire fighting/policing/soldiering you’ll likely never be rich, at least not for your job. But you will have decent employment and you won’t be living in the poor house. You’ll have a job, a decent job. Which anyone is big deal. Now with the traditional trades you can become rich, especially if after a learning period you go out on your own and learn some basics of marketing and such. Anyways overall a good fit and certainly something to consider.
Viable Career Path For Men #2 – Sales
So sales is a wide topic so I’ll break it down a little more. We’ll start with what I’m NOT talking about. I’m NOT talking about working a salary job as a sales/marketing guy for another company. That’s an office job not that different from say HR or Accounts Receivable or whatever. You don’t want that. By sales I’m referring to some specific things. One of those is freelance copywriting. Granted this field is becoming more and more crowded but still a viable option for those with the dedication to stick with it.
The other, even better option, is going into high end item sales. Essentially anything that pays on commission and has a high ticket price. So the classic examples are cars, boats, and RVs any of those are great options and in my opinion even better than freelance copywriting. You’ll have to learn sales, duh, and that takes time. But you can learn on the job. And no, you do not have to have the “personality” for it. What you do have to have is the sales skills.
It’s not a personality it’s a skillset. Please understand that. If you like staying indoors, not talking to people, and hate playing BS games, guess what? You can still be a great salesman. You just have to learn the skills. Don’t limit yourself, please. But anyways high ticket item sales is great. Really anything that works on comission (within reason) can be a great career option. And I know this.
You will never, ever, regret learning sales.
Viable Career Path For Men #3 – The Arts
WARNING: Remember I said that this was designed for a father to look at for his sons, essentially, though it’s useful for all men. This is one of those sections where the earlier start you get, the better.
Let’s say you have an artistic bent. You were born to a great artist and you know that making your art is one of, if not the, most important thing in your life. Let me start out by saying depending on what that art is, it’s probably better as a hobby with something like sales as your main career path. But say you don’t want to do that. Alright let’s talk about making it in the art world and how some art is “easier” than others.
So when its comes to commercial viability nothing in the art world beats novels, though graphic design if a viable option as well. But let’s say you make something concrete like paintings, jewelry, or some other item you can hold in your hands. An option for you may be a boutique shop. Understand this to make this viable you’ll have to know just as much about sales/marketing/copywriting as you do about your art. Also you’ll have to live in the right area for it or have a way to reach customers who want your stuff and a way to market it. This is the hardest path but viable if you start early and know what you’re getting into.
Now let’s talk about more commercially viable art like novels or graphic design. For graphic design again you’re going to have to learn basic of sales and marketing and start freelancing. You’ll have to learn to sell yourself in addition to being killer at your craft as well. With novels you’ll have to learn all of that as well as specific novel selling advice and markets. Being a self-published author has the most money to offer of all these options but also the steepest learning curve.
There are tons of specialized and specific skills to succeed as a self-published author, but it also has the most reward if you do it right. I’m talking fiction here of course as we’re discussing art. This is another field like freelance copywriting that is becoming more and more saturated. Don’t get me wrong with hard work and dedication you can make it but give yourself at least five years of being able to make income in other ways before hoping to make this work for you.
And if your passion is writing poetry, plays, or other written but barely consumed art then stick to it as a hobby and do something like sales for your main job. Just being honest. Maybe you could make a living with such things, I just wouldn’t put the house on it.
Viable Career Path For Men #4 – Professional Athletics.
WARNING WARNING: This is one that you have to be groomed for from a very young age, if not before you’re even conceived. But let’s take a look at this realistically.
So at first glance professional athletics may seem like a ridiculous thing to include in “viable” career options but I want to give this a fair shake, and remember this was designed for fathers looking to guide their sons in the right direction. Though again anyone can use it and get benefit from the majority of information in it. Though maybe not this section, but anyways let’s get into this.
All sports are going to require at least decent genetics but some are going to require certain types of genetics as well. Also the more money in a sport the more competitive that sport is going to be. But back to genetics if you’re 5’5 150 lbs and you’re wife is 5’0 and 105 lbs then you’re son is not going to be playing basketball or football at a professional level. So understand that genetics playa role and if you’re not a big person then look to sports that reward your genetics types.
Gymnastics rewards smaller bodies. Also you can look to sports with weight classes where there’s much more variety. You should also look for sports that have money with them. For example an amazing wrestler after getting a scholarship to college is going to have trouble making money from those skills. Why you see so many go to MMA after. However an amazing college football or baseball player is naturally going to go pro because there are pro leagues for such things.
Also you’ll want to look for natural talent at an early age. But this is where many go wrong. If you see natural talent at a young age I don’t recommend forcing the kid to do the sport year around. They need variety both physically and mentally. They’ll be better athletes for it. Americans are especially bad for over focusing the kids and hampering their growth as athletes by having them obsessively focus on that one sport form an early age.
Have them practice that sport but give them other influences as well, it’ll play into their other sport. When they get middle, especially high school, is when they should focus and even then doing other sports through the season will be helpful. That’s what I like about something like MMA. You can give yourself different feels. Full MMA one day, wrestling the next, boxing the day after, and so on and so forth.
Regardless they’ll have to be groomed, funneled, and guided through the process. Not just physically but mentally. Too much to discuss here. Just understand that professional athletics doesn’t happen by chance, or it rarely does, or put another way don’t count on it happening by chance. Don’t over obsess and focus like many Americans but do guide and lead I guess it what it comes down too.
Non-Viable Path That’s Often Recommend #1 – STEM
Now I’m going about the paths that are often recommend to men as being viable and good but that in my opinion aren’t. We’ll start with STEM, STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Now why wouldn’t I recommend these things to males? After all some are going to have a predisposition for these things and they’re certainly high paying?
Well a couple of reasons. First off these fields are deep in the current politically correct crusades going on, which is never a good atmosphere for me, God forbid actually competent and masculine ones. Sneeze in the wrong direction and you could lose you entire career in a moment. Going into these fields can be going into a minefield in many if not most companies in the Western world. And this is only going to get worse.
So don’t get me wrong a career in a STEM field could certainly be viable, it’s just you might have a target on your back every day of your working life. Say the wrong thing, hell any more think the wrong thought and you’ll have all those years of college, of application, of study go right down the drain. Outside the Western world these might be great choices for men but my experience with that is limited. So enter at your own risk.
Non-Viable Path That’s Often Recommend #2 – Doctor Or Lawyer
We’ve all heard it. Mothers want to their sons to grow up to be doctors or lawyers (of course never cowboys). Why? Because being a doctor or lawyer is seen as having made it. You’re in the big leagues now. You’ll be rolling in the dough, the esteem, and all the things the good life has to offer. Except none of that is true. Here’s the reality of med and law school. Long hours, TONS of debt, and at the end little to show for it.
Sure you can come out with the potential to be a doctor or lawyer but those professions aren’t nearly as successful as they’re commonly held to be. First off competition can be fierce but even beyond that you’re likely not going to come out the gate and make six figures. You’ll be working for, considering the work you put in, a sub par pay. And if you’re lucky that goes up, but it may very well not and never will get as high as you thought it would or nearly as fast as you thought it would.
Often you’re left with a giant mound of debt, a hellish experience you’d never want to relive, and a crappy paying job for it. To succeed you often have to learn sales and marketing anyways in the long run in addition to having you law or med degree. Not that this isn’t the right option for some but unless you have some political connections that can get into politics I’d stay away from law school and med school. But again that’s just me.
The Career Paths Of Men
We’ve come a long way from the hunter/warrior thing haven’t we? Or have we? Regardless there are paths that are going to make more sense for me and paths that are going to make less sense. And this changes with time. So always keep your ear to the ground and be up to date on changes in what’s going on around you. I don’t know how much of it is myth but once upon a time getting a college degree was a great idea if you could do it.
Not so much anymore. Again times change. Avoid the office if you can, unless you’re the boss the soul, mind, and body all die there. As do the balls. Look at the paths above see what works for you or your sons and what doesn’t. Think about what is viable and make sure that you have a backup plan just in case the first one doesn’t work out for whatever reason. Careers are important so I hope this helped sort things out and point the right away ahead.
Thanks for reading.
If you have any questions you would like to see answered in a future post send them to me at charlessledge001 (at) gmail (dot) com. If you found value in this post then I would encourage you to share this site with someone who may need it as well as check out my books here. I appreciate it. You can follow me on Twitter here.
-Charles Sledge
One Comment
Comments are closed.