How Much of A Risk Are You Willing To Take?

http://ben.casnocha.com/2009/03/scalable-vs-non-scalable-careers.html
Scalable vs. non scalable careers

This is a phenomenal article that articulates a point that holds true across a lot of domains, careers included. The main point is this, in careers where you have a fixed reward per hour, you can only make so much money per hour, but you know you will be making that much. In careers where the sky is the limit, very few people actually make it that far. This is something that all of us need to consider when deciding what it is we want to extract out of careers and what risks we are willing to take to get there.

If you work as a retail salesperson in a field where the prevailing wage is $10 per hour, you can only work the max number of hours in a day, and if you never, eat, sleep, rest or relax, that would be 24 hours. That’s it, you are capped there. If you write a book and it becomes a blockbuster however, you now get a royalty on every single sale of this book, regardless of whether you are currently reviewing another edition or laying on a beach in the Bahamas. The catch of course is that in the US alone, 172,000 books will be published as of the latest figures from UNESCO in 2005. Only a handful can be best sellers and the rest of the authors will likely earn a very modest pay or go hungry.

It becomes a question of where our passions and ambitions lie, and more so, how much risk are we willing to take? Because movie stars live like, well, movie stars, but there are significantly fewer struggling dentists.

"Bottom Line: If you swing for the fences, you'll either hit a home run or strike out. If you swing for a single or double, you'll probably get there, but no farther."