High Income Careers: An Unorthodox Approach

While high income careers can be attained by developing in-demand skills and increasing the value delivered to your company over time, a more unorthodox approach to finding a high-income job and building a high-income career is by focusing on an industry and or a dominant company in an industry and seeking the pain points of that industry and creating solutions for the same.

The Un-Orthodox Approach to High Income Jobs

The world values expertise, and values it more than the ability to simply work hard. It is better to be a specialist than a generalist. And even within specialties, targeting your focus on the problems of a common group as opposed to building a particular skill set is more highly valued. The common group sees your focus as a show of commitment to their group and will frequently turn to you first for solutions to their problems.

Thus it is better to understand the financing problems of the Hospitality industry than to become a general purpose bookkeeper. Better to understand the pain points of the Retail industry than to be a Java programmer who happens to work for a Retailer.

Establishing yourself as an industry expert however is a multi-year effort and may come to fruition in the form of:

or other related roles serving the industry.

But once you establish yourself as an Industry partner and expert, high income opportunities will naturally flow your way.

Multi-Step Process to High Income Jobs through this Unorthodox Approach

Typically, the process of learning as much as you can about a particular industry begins by focusing on a single, dominant company. In Retail that is Wal-Mart, in automotive, it is Toyota and so on. Most of these companies tend to be public companies with plenty of information available about their operations. It will immediately give you knowledge about the different pieces of the puzzle that drives a particular industry. Moreover, you will learn how a dominant company operates and this will arm you with valuable industry information.

Expanding that research to the top 3-4 companies will also give you the competitive landscape of the industry and how different companies approach and solve common problems.

Beyond this stage, it is important to look at companies at the other extreme of the spectrum - start up companies, companies focused on a niche area and so on to give an end to end feel for the industry.

Subscribing to trade journals and attending conferences is the next step in the process to hear about current problems and solutions in the marketplace. This will bring your knowledge up to date, and also help you understand who the key companies in this space are.

Having identified the key pain points and areas in which the industry could use your services, seek out companies that are working to fill those gaps or create your own company to fill those gaps. In either situation, do not lose touch with your overall industry and its continually changing characteristics. This will continue to propel you towards higher achievements and significant value and income!