Born For This

Born For This shows you how to find the work you were meant to do, which actually might consist of many different forms of work over the course of your life, by showing you the power of a side hustle, proper risk-assessment, creating your own job and pursuing all of your passions – one at a time.

A popular technique in books that encourage you to start your own business is visualizing your worst-case scenario. Imagining your world when everything that could possibly go wrong would often makes you realize that it wouldn’t be so bad and that you’d likely be able to recover. This feels reassuring and makes it easier to take the next step.

In Born For This, Chris takes it a step further by suggesting that you make so-called if-then sketches. These are specific backup plans for what exact action you’ll take if you run into a problem.

For example, your first step might be to send a pitch for your social media managing service to 50 prospects. You could then make a sketch that says “if I don’t hear back from someone within five days, I’ll send them a follow-up containing a coupon.” What’s more, you can keep playing this game for a while, for example with a second and third follow-up.

This will make you feel very safe and confident about moving ahead, and even if things don’t work out right away you always know exactly what to do next.

Some of the tips Chris gives in this book about finding the right work for yourself include making a list of all the skills you’re good at (and not just the ones you learned about in college), the things you hate doing and paying attention to what other people ask you for help with.

It’ll take some time to figure out what kind of business you want to start, but once you do, this is how you can get it off the ground fast. Chris calls this your 100 People Project.

Let’s say you’ve decided to offer customized meal plans to help people gain muscle because your friends keep asking you for fitness advice.

Now you can assemble a list of 100 people from your contacts, social media networks and other sources where potential customers hang around. If all you do is send a short message to everyone on the list, offering a free, 15-minute Skype consultation, this will greatly improve your marketing skills, show you how you can be most helpful, start building your customer base and maybe even get you your first paying clients!

Pretty neat, huh?