Try Everything, My Son

Insects specialise, humans do not – Naval Ravikant

The secret benefit of having a sales job is the variety of people you meet.

During the late stages of my car sales job, I had a gentleman in the car during a test drive give advice after I told him I was thinking about doing Engineering.

He was from Palestine who studied in Australia. A radiation physicist.

"Try everything."

I believe that is the advice I am living out in my 20s.

Looking back at my short life, I have done a lot. And it was from the encouragement of my family and my natural ability to follow my curiosity.

If you don't know, for the past 6 months I was working for a Toyota Dealership in car sales.

I got jaded about the long working hours, and the prospect of no commission for every sale I made.

During my search for another job, I landed a role as a banking consultant.

Funnily enough, the thought of working for a bank was somewhere in the back of my mind. Never in the forefront of what I wanted pursue.

From Grade 6, I wanted to be a stock broker, or an investment banker. This shifted towards being a cartoonist in Grade 8. Then, shifting towards sales, and now university study in Engineering.

I believe it's okay to make change in directions.

I think the whole point of your 20's is to explore what you like, what you don't like and what you're good at.

From my experience in retail and sales, it's quite easy for myself to have a genuine interest in people. And that genuineness carries across to the sales interaction and makes it easier to sell.

But, also when I worked as a car salesman, I was getting a little bit tired of it. Maybe I'm tired of selling cars because I see it as using my sales skills not for good.

Or, I'm quite analytical as a person. Even during my day off, I must have spent three hours looking at what are the best PC parts for a budget engineering student. Only to realise the university probably has computer labs to fulfill this need considering the price of RAM nowadays.

(I ended up building the PC anyways)

The thing is, you will not know what you should pursue if you do not pursue anything at all.

The one thing I didn't want to happen is to keep working that job for another year and resent it. The banking job is meant to free up another 17 hours of my life, get my weekend back, spend more time getting better at video editing, content creation, communication, and doing my Diploma of Project Management.

Perhaps you are in the same situation.

That you are working some job that does not provide the right opportunity to grow into being a highly skilled individual.

What advice I would give is go into jobs that helps with getting the next job.

What I mean by this is the focus on SKILLS.

You can transfer them into another role, and make yourself valuable to an employer as they do not necessarily have to invest large amounts of resources to train you up.

I largely thank my ability to sell for allowing me to have bigger and better opportunities.

And now, I'm thanking for it to create an income for myself and give me the choice to go study at university in 2027.

To share a fear, while I was working my car sales job I feared that there wasn't another employer who would take me on.

But, I thought about it.

You want to put yourself in position of security.

Because I don't blow my cash on stupid stuff and still live with my parents, I have a nice cushion to soften the landing of quitting my job.

Also, it's the security of knowing you have highly sought after skills such as sales.

And for that,

Those who are prepared will stand to face the raging seas of life's uncertainties.