We have a question to conclude every interview. It goes a little something like this…

“If you could go back to when you were 22 years old, and give yourself just ONE piece of advice, what would you tell your 22 year old self?”

I’m interested to hear what you would say. Comment below.

If I could give myself one piece of advice it would be “to enjoy it.”

It would have been nice to have been writing this blog post from the picturesque Thousand Islands in Central New York, camping next to Jay’s uncle with full hookups and showers.

Instead, we are sleeping in the parking lot of an auto repair shop in between the cities of Hastings and Cicero, waiting for the shop to open so we can get the A/C compressor fixed.

You see, the A/C compressor snapped the serpentine belt, which then caused us to lose our power steering and severely affected our brakes. We essentially became a moving, six ton, 30 foot danger to all motorists and pedestrians around us.

So that’s why we are in this parking lot, waiting for this shop to open so we might have an outside chance at still having a campus day at Syracuse University.

Wish us luck.

For the second year in a row, a Pursue the Passion team member has been diagnosed with an infection not typically found in young adults.

You may remember Case 1. Kristy Sather came along for a week on the 2006 Pursue the Passion Tour, riding from Tucson, Arizona to Santa Rosa, California. Upon arrival in her hometown, she checked into a hospital after feeling something was wrong. She would spend a week in the ICU after finding she had Septicemia, a rare, serious life-threatening infection in her kidney. Needless to say, it was a very scary week.

Case 2 is Noah Pollock, who has been our journalist for the last month. A few days ago Noah found out that he has Shingles, which typically targets adults 50 years and older. Shingles is an infection caused by the varicella zoster virus, the same infection that causes chicken pox. Causes of Shingles include a stressful environment, depression of the immune system from sunburn, and multiple changes in climate…all things we’ve experienced in our life on the road.

So we have two rare cases, both coming on back to back years of living in a RV for extended periods of time. Is this just some coincidence, or do working in cramped quarters and living in dorm-like conditions have something to do with it?

Weird.

Yesterday I came across Whitney Johnson’s “Dare to Dream” blog. She had an interesting point on one of her posts that said, “for all your readers know, you may be daring them to dream, without having dreamt yourself.”

This quote frightened me. I’m scared that you, the reader, think that I, the author, am just some 22 year old kid telling you to follow your dreams. I am going to share with you how, and why, I am pursuing the passion so you do not get the wrong impression of this site.

My Story:

I chose accounting when I was deciding what my major should be in college. My step dad told me that accountants made the most money and had the most opportunity out of school, and since I was insecure and money driven at that point, I chose accounting.

I never planned on being accountant, but that was the path I was led down by default. All of my classmates either were continuing their accounting education by obtaining their masters degree, or were accepting offers at Big 4 firms for fifty thousand dollar salaries in the fall semester of 2005. I was stuck in the middle. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life.

I had twenty interviews with potential employers that fall semester, and one thing became apparent. Not everyone had it figured out.

But that damn question of “what should I do with my life” lingered over the heads of everyone I talked to in the interview waiting rooms. Even after I accepted an offer with an accounting firm that fall, that question still remained on my mind.

In my very last interview, I got this funny feeling. I was overcome with fear that this would be my last interview. As I watched my interviewer ramble on and on about how much she loved her job, I realized that I liked interviews. I discovered that I liked interviews because I liked people. And what I enjoyed most about people was talking with them about their passion.

I went home that night and thought about what I would do during the summer between graduation day and my official start date in Corporate America. I got out a pen and paper and jotted down the things I wanted to do. I wanted to travel. I wanted to be close to sports. I wanted to better myself. Most of all, I wanted to continue having the feeling I had when I talked with people about their passion.

These desires that I wrote down is what you now see with Pursue the Passion. The RV came as a necessity because we had nowhere to stay, and I actually thought that when I bought Maggie Miracles (the first RV), that I was making a sound investment. Three hours into the first trip, broken down with green liquid spewing from the engine, I quickly realized that it had not been such a financial savvy decision.

That summer I interviewed 75 amazing people. I traveled 10,000 miles by RV, my mom’s 4Runner, plane, and train for 2 months. I went to places like Nike, Microsoft, Playboy, many sports stadiums, the homes of welcoming strangers, and cities I had only read about. It was the time of my life.

The summer also had an inadvertent effect on my Corporate America experience. It completely soured it before I even stepped in the door. I knew, that after being exposed to all different occupations and possibilities, that I had made the wrong choice to go into accounting. I was selling out by going into a secure, stable, well-paid position because it just wasn’t me. But because I was contractually obligated to show up on September 4th, I was going to show up on September 4th.

On August 23rd, two weeks before my anticipated start date, I reported to a “real job.” The corporate lifestyle benefits came throughout the week, ranging from extravagant lunches to all types of corporate goodies. I temporarily forgot about all that I had gained and gleaned during the summer.

But as the months passed, I began to revisit the advice that was given to me. I began to write a book about the pursuit of a passion, despite not working with a passion myself. This was troublesome to me, and even more so as I continued to receive emails from people around the world who were inspired by this site.

I felt not only like a corporate sellout, but also a hypocrite. I thought to myself, “how can I have a site that says to pursue your passion when I’m not pursuing it myself?”

I guess that was my “aha” moment where I said to hell with this. I started to get by on a PB & J diet, sacrificed Saturday nights, and saved up so I could go on a second PTP tour. I sent out over twenty carefully crafted sponsorship proposals to corporations, schools, and small businesses to see if they’d be interested in sponsoring the tour. No luck.

One day I received an email from the boss saying that she wanted to see me. I made the decision that it was now or never for me. It was time to quit the job I despised.

I walked into the office belonging to my boss at the scheduled time on the scheduled date with my heart pounding and my roommate’s co-worker’s resume. My boss was seated on the other side of the desk with two envelopes. Much like a classic western gunfight, I drew first. I quit. BAM!

I left the two envelopes on the table, one containing a raise, the other a bonus, and said goodbye to steady paychecks and corporate security.

With no paycheck, I scrambled to get by. I hired my friend Jay, who graduated in December with a college degree and is now on the tour, and paid him minimum wage to help me get things in line with the Pursue the Passion tour. He crashed on my couch, and we ate free Hot Pockets and Stouffer’s products, given to us by Nestle, until we couldn’t take the taste anymore.

Every day I would rise at 5am, wake Jay up at 8am, and we’d work until 9pm or 10pm. Then we’d bounce back the next day, looking for sponsors, passionate people to interview, and couches to crash on.

It wasn’t until I focused all my time on Pursue the Passion did I start to see results. After all those hours of writing sponsorship proposals, we found a sponsor in Jobing.com right in our own backyard. We went from having four people visit the site a day to an average of two hundred people per day. We made a pact not to eat Hot Pockets again.

Things started to click and hit full stride come July 1st, the official start of the second Pursue the Passion tour.

We’ve been on the road for over a month now, pursuing our passion, and the question that I frequently receive is “so, are you any closer to finding out what you want to do yet? What you going to do after this?”

People don’t realize that I am a passion pursuer and a crazy entrepreneur that will not stop until the bank account says zero. My goal is to turn this website into a resource that will help people who are in the same situations I found myself in as a student, and in the working world.

I am whole heartedly and no longer hypocritically pursuing my passion, and I invite you to join the journey as well.

People want to know how we are finding passionate people to interview. They want to know how we judge passion in people. That is a million dollar question I’m hoping to answer with your help.

I think passion is something that is so ingrained inside us that there is no difference between where work life ends, and where real life begins. I’ve been told passion is like the Supreme Court…you know it when you see it. I know from experience that passion breeds productivity. Passion is infectious, and people recognize passion within others.

I have booked interviews based on the following criteria for the first few weeks on the 2007 Pursue the Passion tour.

1) They must be referred by someone that knows the local community very well (i.e. a reporter, president of an outside organization, family, friends, etc.).

2) When I talk to prospective interviewees on the phone, via email, or read their story submittal, they must be positive, because passion is typically synonymous with “positivity.”

3) Lastly, I look to see what a person has done that exemplifies their passion. The phrase “passion breeds productivity” is the truth, because passion overflows into other things like getting involved in organizations and creating programs around that passion. Extracurricular activities and achievements are an excellent judgment of passion.

Now that I’ve given you the keys to the kingdom to tell you how I “judge” the passion of a peer, it’s time to ask for your help.

What am I missing?

How do you judge passion? How would you go about finding passionate people?

Let me know.

What we are doing with Pursue the Passion is special, but it has been going on since the beginning of time. People in search of advice have always sought out others to provide them with advice.

Napolean Hill did it with Think and Grow Rich.

Po Bronson did it with What Should I Do With My Life.

That one seventeen year old did it with Wisdom For a Young CEO.

Do you know of any other examples? I’m genuinely interested…

I love to do guest posts for other blogs because it allows you to reach an audience you normally wouldn’t reach. I don’t like to repost them to my blog unless I am proud of them.

This is a post that may be repetitive for the people that read this blog on a daily basis, but you know what, it’s good writing that I’m proud of. It’s about how I plan to change the world.

Read the full interview »

As you know, this summer we are traveling 14,000 miles in 90 days to interview 200 professionals about their career path that led them to fulfilling and meaningful work.

I’m writing because we need people to interview. We are looking for people that have an undeniable love for their work, that get paid for something they would do for free, and that have an infectious enthusiasm for what they do.

If you know of anyone that would be a great interview, PLEASE help us out by referring some people our way!

You can either comment below with your story or the person you are referring. Or if you don’t want to publicly tell your story on a comment page, submit a story by clicking on the link at left. Thanks!