By the time I reached my thirty years old, I, all of a sudden, realize that “Live your passion” is the most important thing missing in my entire career journey. It was not easy to face this truth, not at all.
In this episode, I talked about how I started my working career without any plan, how I continued blindly for ten years, and how I finally climbed out the hole and started to live my very own passion.
The message and the only message I want to beat into your mind in this entire article is, to find your passion and live it.
It includes exactly two steps. Step 1, find your career passion, and step 2, live your career passion.
Video Teaser
How to Find Your Career Passion
Many people, including me, couldn’t easily figure out what our passions are. My experience and my suggestion are — try multiple things until you found it. It is as simple as this, yet difficult to execute.
Many people wish to sit, ponder, and come up with an ultimate passion, a passion that they can stick to in the entire life. Because they are so afraid that if they pick up one passion from their list, they might realize later this isn’t what they want to do, and all contributed time is lost.
I totally agree that our life is priceless and we should never ever waste time on purpose. However, we also need to be 100% crystally clear that, there is no short cut at all to know in prior which is the true answer among those options. As an analogy, a salesperson needs to knock 100 doors to find out who behind those 100 doors will buy his product. Before the action, he simply doesn’t know.
The same story applies to find our passion. As I mentioned in this solo episode, I have tried many different things, non-stop, until I realize that being a programmer, being a podcast host, and being a YouTuber is what I am happy with. So you will need to spend time and seek yours.
How to Live your Career Passion
If you have found your passion and started working on it, congratulations! Now, you probably work harder and longer more sustainably and you are less likely to give up when times get tough. This is because it is your passion, it is something you are truly happy to do. Because of these, you are also much more likely to succeed in your career.
In a previous Salesforce IDE podcast episode, the guest Scott Wells sets a concise example for us. He had a decent job, titled as CTO. He could have carried on his career in this company. But he started his side project and gradually realized that this is the passion he wanted to live. So he is on his grind for 4 years, spent numerous hours in the evening and weekends, and finally, he reached the stage that he can quit the job to full-time work on his own business.
What If It Is NOT My Passion?
It is very common that after attempting for some time, we realize that the thing we thought was the passion, turns out NOT.
No panic, this is how it is. We are now knocking those “100 doors”, we are spending time to talk to people behind the doors. We keep hustling. Hustling is the most important thing in this context, there is no short cut. Keeping it up and be patient is the advice I can give to you.
Questions of today
Have you found your career passion?
If yes, would you mind to share with me?
If no, are you on the journey? Can I be any help?
Contact Me
If you enjoy this podcast, please reach me out to let me know your thoughts or simply say Hello. My (Xi’s) contact info:
Take care, until next time :)!
Transcript
AI-generated, unedited.
[00:17] Hey everybody! This is Xi Xiao. This is yet another episode of Salesforce Way podcast. This is a solo episode, which means I do not have any guests sitting with me to share the technology. So what actually I want to use this chance to really talk about something around the passion topic because I think this topic is super important to everybody for all of our developers for you as well who are listening to this episode. I don't want to say that you're listening to all these experts talking about the technology, but still, different people have different passion, different background, different skills. So, in this episode, I want to share my story and also want to help you to think about your career passion. So, I want to start with my own story, my miserable career path story. So, about thirteen years ago, I started to work. I immediately got a offer from a big corporation to work as a kind of a Application support, so they have Microsoft technology solutions. I'm there to help to maintain the solution. So I was really lucky. I got a permanent contract in the company. It was two thousand eight. After immediately after two thousand eight, when we have this
[01:47] global recession. If you don't know what permanent contract is in in European country, it means you are not allowed to be fired in the company unless they fire the whole department. So they cannot fire you individually unless you did something really bad, like you stole the company's confidential information. So, and also even worse to me was that the company did a really good business along the time. The company, the management, lead the team successfully. The company's stock price just go up, up all the time. And that was of course good for the company, but they never fire people. They all the time grow the population. You know, for me, it's a really secure job. It was really a comfort zone for me. I just sit there every day, maybe working two or three hours maximum, and the rest of the time I can do whatever I want to do. Some most of the time I don't even need to go to the company. So I was super lost. I don't know what I want to do. I never thought about my career path. I never thought about what am I doing here in this company. What is my passion? So I sit in that position in that company for almost eight years. Of course, I changed a little bit of the title, but most
[03:17] of the time I'm doing the similar stuff. Let me share you a sad story. Is that after four or five years working in that company, I think I should be promoted and I should get the better salary. So I talked multiple times with my manager and urged him to talk with the HR, and finally. After a year or two, HR gave me the answer that the they will give me eighteen euro salary promotion, one eight euro per month salary promotion. At the time, I was like 2k something or 3k around. So 18 after taxation, it means a cup of coffee. That's the answer I get from the HR. I think it's quite hilarious nowadays when I still think back on that story. But you know, it was too comfortable for me, and I stayed in that company for 10 years. So my career was kind of screwed. But at the end of the ten years, I just thought my life cannot be just like this. I cannot be end up retiring on this position. Get this eighteen euro promotion. I just started to pay more attention and listen to my. Own voice deep in my heart. What do I really want to do?
[04:47] I had a computer science background in a university, but I never thought I could be a good programmer. But I spent really a long time just sit with myself, think about it, and explore a little bit what I really want to do. Try different things, you know, in my spare time. I have a lot of spare time, you know. So I realized I still want to be a programmer. Then I start to get account in the pro side, and I look at a lot of those JavaScript programming things. By the time I only know know some basic HTML, XML, you know, that's all. But I started to pick up the JavaScript. And this and that, and luckily I had the computer science background, so those kind of solid foundation really helped me to speed up the learning curve. But anyway, it was a kind of miserable story. And one day I said, I want to be a Salesforce developer. I don't know much about Salesforce, but I just think I can be one. Then I start applying for Salesforce-related job. I got the chance to go to a Salesforce consulting company in Finland, and they gave me a trainee assignment. So they assign that a trainee to me, and they say two weeks after, come back and show me your demo. So I I spend a lot of times to polish my solution. It
[06:17] was about some I don't remember exactly. Continuity integration using DX, using Lightning Web Components to build certain solutions. So, long story short, after two weeks, I I went back. I, crashed. You know that demo. I demonstrated all the stuff from end to end, and I know every single details when they ask me questions, and at the end. We had three interviewers. All of them say that this is something they have never seen before, because you know they always use the old, like a change set, whatever, to deploy the solutions. They never used the Confluence integration, so I brought the modern, cutting-edge technology to them and opened their eyes. That was the chance I start to say, "Okay, I might have some confidence to say I can be a good programmer." Then I joined Salesforce ecosystem, and I thought about what I wanted to. In addition to the programming, I also started this podcast. You know, as a side hustle. Now, I finished my miserable career story. the The time span is ten years. Now I'm 36 years old. I still consider myself young. You know,
[07:48] I think a lot of listeners are younger than me. Could be some older than me. But if you are younger than me, like 22, 23, you are. You're freaking young, you can sleep on you know on the couch without doing anything for ten years, and you're still younger than me. So what I want to deliver the message to you is, find your passion, find what you really want to do. My passion is to be a programmer. I maybe I cannot be a superstar in the programming world, but anyway, one bit programmer. And let's define the passion now. I think the passion is what you will do without salary. And the passion is what you will do it over and over and over and over and over again. Think about it. If you don't get salary, are you still a programmer? Are you still Salesforce programmer?
[08:55] If I think about myself. I still want to be a programmer. I don't necessarily be a Salesforce programmer, you know. And I will definitely still hosting podcast. I love it. I spend a lot of time on doing this. I still enjoy it. I enjoy talk to people. If you don't know yet what is your passion, spend time with yourself and look yourself in the mirror. And especially try different things, you know. You just sit there and try to figure out what you do want. Some people can do that, but most of the people, majority of the people, including me, cannot figure anything out. You have to try. You have to practice. Put your hands on. You know, I have spent many times to do different things. I have hosted local meetups. I've maintained and updated a lot different blogs on the internet. And have learned different programming languages, Python, JavaScript, closure. You know those functional programming languages, and the C sharp, of course. Those things. In the end. I think I want to be a Salesforce developer. In the end, I think I want to be a podcast host, and in the end, I want to be a YouTuber. These things are deep
[10:25] in my heart. I care a lot. I want to hustle on these stuff. For example. This podcast at the beginning, I don't exactly know what is the theme. You know what's what's the topic. Who should listen to this podcast? I started with some local guests. You know, we talk about the Trailblazer ecosystem, or talk about the admin instructors. But after a couple of episodes, I start to shift to the Salesforce developers. You know, I dropped out those admin-related or business consulting-related topics or sales-related topics. I love Salesforce developers more than those roles.
[11:16] So, and as a person, I think you need to find your unique niche.
[11:24] Me as example, I love to listen to stories. I sincerely care about people, because when I care about people, I pay attention to your story. I help you without asking for returns. I have a really good mood. I'm happy. So I also enjoy arrange events. I enjoy connect with people, you know, talking with people. The social skills, those things I enjoy. So that's why I arrange the local meetups. You know. These things I do have, but you may you might not have. So, try to think about your own personality, and combine. Your personality, your passion, and the profession together, and think about you know that's a dynamic angles you know with three or four parameters together, then the end result is you as one individual person. There's no other person in the world exactly the same as you. So find your passion. Find the thing that you want to do even without salary. Find the passion you want to do over and over and over again, even during the weekends, even after working hours. Because when you do the thing you are truly happy about, a
[12:55] hundred percent happy about, then you are really happy. We got only one life.
[13:04] Okay. After that, I want to share a little bit about my own goal. I won't be the coolest guy in the programming world. You know, I cannot be those superstars. I cannot be those guests in my show, but I can arrange these events. You know, I can host the podcast. I can, you know, bring these coolest guys into the party, and ask them to share their knowledge. I think that's what I'm passionate about. So I will keep doing that, and in addition, I realized that I also want to put myself in front of a camera. I'm still really bad at it, and my English is really bad. I can't even sometimes put my sentence correct, but I want to practice that. You know. Now my thing is, I'm maintaining this SalesforceWay.com website, which contains this podcast that you are listening to, that contains a YouTube channel for the podcast. At least I will release one episode every two weeks, so it's a bi-week schedule for the podcast. And at least I will release one video, maybe shorter, maybe longer, in the YouTube channel. So YouTube channel is also called Salesforce Way. You can go there to check. So these are my goal, these are my passion. Of course, a person could have multiple passions. I had many other passions. I want to, you know, host the meetup.
[14:35] I want to learn other programming language. I still want to tweak with the different configurations, continuous integrations. I have a Raspberry Pi at home, so all these things I do want to do. But I want hustle on this. Most important passion I want to do, so I decided to drop the meetup. So the meetup was like a half a year or at maximum one year. I've gained like a four hundred attendees there. But I decided that's something I cannot do anymore. I want to focus laser focus on this SalesforceWay.com content. So I drop out that. So this is the end of this session. I hope. What I shared, especially the the bad story, you know, I'm not a perfect guy. I'm not those superstars in in my show. So I'm more like you. Even I think most of audience are better than me. So. Have you found your passion? That's the question I want to ask you at the end. If yes, would you mind to share your passion with me? So write me a email or connect with me in the Twitter, in the Facebook. I don't know the Instagram, all those social medias and the LinkedIn as well. You know my ID is always. Xi Xiao Finland. So X I is my first name, X I A O last name. So first
[16:05] name, last name, and the country I'm living. So Xi Xiao Finland. You can find me in LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and my Gmail is Xi Xiao Finland at Gmail dot com. Okay, I really would love to hear your story. Please let me know what do you think about. What is your passion? And if I can help you on anything. So that's it for this episode. I hope you really enjoyed it. I hope you get something out of it. You know, this is the first time I really do a solo session. I don't know if I did a good job or not. If I talk too slow. But at least this is my true story. I hope you enjoyed it. Let's keep in touch. Bye bye.
