Do What You Love, and What You're Good At

I still believe it.

But over the years I've come to think the advice is only half complete. Passion alone won't carry you. The fuller version, the one that actually shaped my career, is this: do what you love, and do what you're good at. When those two things overlap, work stops feeling like something you have to push through. You want to do it, and you want to do it better than everyone else.

This guide is about how to find that overlap, and how to act on it, especially early in your career when the choices you make compound the most.

Start with what you love, not what pays

Most people start career planning from the wrong end. They ask how much a role pays, or whether the company name will impress people, and they work backward from there. I understand the instinct. But in my experience, it leads you somewhere you don't actually want to be.

I didn't make a comfortable living until I was 30. Before that, it was ramen and PB&J. I survived, but I wasn't chasing the paycheck. I was chasing the work I loved, and I trusted that if I did it well, the money would follow.

It did.

Here's why that order matters. When you love what you do, you don't resent the effort it takes. You're not thinking, "I have to check these emails." You're thinking, "Great, I get to do this, and I get to do it well." That caring is the engine behind everything else. It's what earns the promotion, moves you up the ranks, and eventually leads to the income you were tempted to chase directly.

So if you're at the start of something, resist the urge to lead with money. Ask instead what work you would be genuinely excited to get up and do.

Combine passion with your actual strengths

Loving something is not the same as being good at it, and that distinction saved me a lot of frustration.

I loved advertising and creativity. But I knew early on that I wasn't the one who would write the witty headline or design the beautiful graphic. That simply wasn't my skill set. What I was good at was the business side: to-do lists, checklists, getting things done, being the reliable link between people. So instead of forcing myself into a creative role I'd struggle in, I found the seat that fit me: account management, the liaison between the client and the creative team.

That way I got to live inside the industry I was passionate about while doing the part I was actually strong at.

You do not have to be the star of the thing you love. You just have to find your role inside it.

• What am I drawn to, even when no one is paying me to pay attention to it?
• Where do my natural strengths sit? Am I the creator, the organizer, the connector, the analyst?
• Which role inside the field I love actually matches those strengths?

Pay attention to your own signals

I figured out my direction earlier than most, and it wasn't luck. It was noticing things about myself and taking them seriously.

In high school, I realized I was intensely brand conscious. I wanted the J.Crew peacoat, not the one from Macy's, and I kept asking myself why I believed one was cooler than the other. The honest answer was marketing. Around the same time, I was tearing ads out of magazines and taping them to my wall, simply because something in them spoke to me. TV commercials did the same thing. I'd watch one land and think, how did they do that?

Those were small signals, but together they pointed clearly at the work I would spend my career in.

The lesson I'd pass on is to watch what naturally pulls your attention. The things you notice when no one is asking you to are often quietly telling you what you're built for.

Your strength can travel to any environment

One of the most freeing realizations is that a skill and the setting you use it in are two separate choices.

I met someone recently at an aerospace company, and I assumed he was an engineer. He was actually a cybersecurity expert. Same skill, but he'd placed it somewhere that excited him. He could have done that identical job at the most boring company on earth. He chose an environment he was passionate about instead.

So if you know what you're good at but haven't landed on a field, remember you get to pick where that strength lives. Take the thing you do well and put it somewhere that energizes you.

Be willing to work hard, and start at the bottom

None of this works without effort, and this is where ego gets in the way.

When I was breaking in, I was the first one in the office and the last to leave. I checked emails on weekends. I asked how I could help and cleared my inbox instead of letting it pile up. That kind of effort is increasingly rare, and that's exactly why it stands out.

Starting at the bottom is not a failure. It's the plan. You figure out what you want, then you work your entire plan toward that goal without letting pride tell you the entry-level version of the work is beneath you.

Caring about the work makes you better at it, and being better at it is what carries you upward. There's no shortcut around the effort, but the effort feels very different when you actually love what you're doing.

Step by Step: How to Put This Into Practice

When I decided I wanted to work in advertising, I had a problem. I didn't know a single person in the industry and had no connections at all.

So I made my own way in. Here is roughly what I did, and it's a process you can copy:

1. Build a big list: I searched for ad agencies in New York and DC and came up with a list of about 150. I pulled whatever phone number or email was on each website.
2. Reach out to all of them: I started cold calling and emailing every single one. It becomes a numbers game. Plenty never responded, and that's fine.
3. Ask for an informational interview, not a job: This was the key move. Asking to interview for a job puts up a wall. Asking to simply come in and learn about someone's company opens far more doors, because it lowers the pressure on both sides.
4. Let it become a real connection: Those low stakes meetings often turned into something more. They'd remember me when a role opened, or reach out later. Companies are always looking for good people, so getting in the room early gave me a foot in the door.

My list of 150 narrowed to maybe 15 to 20 informational interviews, which led to five to seven real interviews, which led to an unpaid internship at a top agency, which led to my first job out of college. It laddered from there.

The effort itself impressed people as much as anything on my resume. When someone sees that you genuinely want to be there, they want you there too. Passion is contagious.

Take your risks early

There is a window for this kind of hard work and risk taking, and it's earlier than you might think.

The roughly ten years before you have a family are your time to work long hours, take the unpaid internship, move to a new city, and climb. When you're older and have people depending on you, you'll have more considerations. You may not be able to be the first one in and the last one out anymore, and that's as it should be.

Which brings me to the most important part.

Family first

For all the talk about working hard, I believe there is nothing in this world more important than family, and work life balance genuinely matters.

The reason to build hard early is so you earn the ability later to say, sorry, I have to go take care of my family, and mean it. If you've climbed to a solid level in those early years, you get to be present when it counts most. Building the career and protecting the life are not in conflict. Done in the right order, one makes the other possible.

Do what you love, and do what you're good at. When those two things overlap, work stops feeling like something you have to push through.

Pitfalls to avoid

• Leading with money: Chasing the paycheck first tends to land you in work you don't love, which quietly undermines the effort that would have earned the paycheck anyway.
• Letting ego pick your starting point: Refusing to start at the bottom, or needing the big name job immediately, closes doors that patience would open.
• Confusing what you love with what you're good at: Forcing yourself into a role that doesn't match your strengths leads to frustration. Find your seat inside the field you love.
• Waiting to be handed an opportunity: If you don't know anyone, that's not a dead end. Build the list and reach out.
• Asking for a job when you could ask to learn: The direct "are you hiring" often hits a wall. The informational interview gets you in the room.
• Putting off the hard work: The early years are the time for it. It's much harder to make those sacrifices once you have a family at home.