Mike Abasov

My story

I was 17, studying in my first year at a university in Ukraine, when I almost failed every course in that year. I was bored with school. I felt like every piece of information thrown at me in class could not be more useless.

I had no idea whatsoever about what I wanted to do with my life. For a while, before applying to study economics, I wanted to become a programmer and make video games or websites. Before that, I was fascinated with the idea of becoming a professional actor.

My parents thought differently of my future, not wanting me to turn out to be one of the many poor actors or computer nerds (in Ukraine, both of these professions usually pay badly). So I went into economics.

It was not until a year and a half into college until my life changed. I found my passion. It was marketing.

The next 3 and a half years I remember as a line of never-stopping events that have shaped and keep shaping my future, my present and myself.

Your story

Hopefully, you know by now what you want to do in your life. But there is a chance that you don’t.

Trust me that finding your passion might be one of the most important and life-changing events that you will ever experience.

You will become more productive. You will see the path clearly. You will be able to plan your life and make decisions. There will be less hesitation. You will be proud of yourself, and you’ll start to grow.

As you are still studying and figuring out your future, I advise you to think seriously about how you want to spend you life. It will be harder to do so later, having a full-time job and other commitments.

If you already know your passion, share how you have found it in the comments section. I think that other students will find it helpful.

If you are still wondering around, here are a few tips that helped me and might be useful to you too.

Action plan

1. Try
Try anything you find interesting. Join student clubs, register for interesting electives, cooking classes, anything at all. Try as much as you possibly can.

In my story, I got into a student club and started working on their marketing strategy, although I’ve never had any interest in this aspect of business before. On the other hand, I liked creating things, and this looked like a good thing to try. 3 months later my life changed forever.

2. Switch
If you don’t find something exciting or useful anymore, drop it. If you don’t like your major, change it. If you don’t see new opportunities in your Toastmasters club, try AIESEC.

It may sound radical at first, but there is nothing more time-wasting than an activity you no longer enjoy.

3. Analyze
Sit down with a piece of paper and write down answers to the following questions:

• What do you like?
• What makes you happy?
• What career paths are possible for every thing you have listed?
• Which of the paths include many of your interests compared to only one or two?

The career that gets the most points might as well be the one for you. Now find a way to try doing the job on a small scale and switch, if you change your mind.

After a few cycles, you will find what you were looking for. I strongly believe that you will find it, as long as you are actually interested in finding it.

And when you do, let me know!

You can make money on your passion, because I can.

I want to share a little example from my life about how being passionate, knowing everything about your passion and creating a community around it made me able to start making money on it. This is not a story of a 20-years-old CEO (not that impressive at all :-), but I find this example very motivating for myself.

4 years ago I got into making websites. I wanted to create a browser-based MMORPG. Well, that never happened. But I found a free web builder called uCoz. I started creating websites there, made one for my school, one for my gaming clan, later one for my university program. Fact is, I’ve created many. During all this, I’d been actively talking on different forums about uCoz, writing some scripts, and participating to the maximum. I was gaining expertise and building my brand, although at that time, I had no idea I was doing it.

In 2007 I got into blogging. I started writing about my life and about uCoz. Step by step, I started gaining some influence. I would express my thoughts on an update, share opinions and discuss them in the comments. I was building a community of great, interesting people who were making cool websites in this CMS.

The first bits of money came from freelancing. Being an expert in this system, I was able to get some cool contracts. My personal “Mona Lisa” was the new identity and web design for one of the largest recycling companies in Ukraine.

But then the real game-changer showed up when I started a project called U.Blogs (in Russian). Its goal was to unite all bloggers in uCoz and create an awesome community. During the next year, I took my passion to a completely new level, even did some interviews and podcasts on the topic. It felt great and I was proud of what I was doing.

Today I don’t manage U.Blogs and don’t blog about uCoz anymore. And I haven’t been an active member of the community either until April, when the company whose client I have been for 4 years proposed me a job. Today I’m a member of a great team, and I manage all types of uCoz’s social presence in the English part of the Internet. It’s not my dream job, but its an amazing experience and good money for something I love doing.

The main point of this post is that I wasn’t looking for this job; it found me. All because of my passion, my expertise and personal branding. I had no idea when I started 4 years ago that my hobby can take me to the point of making money. I didn’t know that I could cash in on my passion, but it happened. And I believe that it will happen again and again. And I believe that it can happen to you too! So get out and do something!