Book a Paid Adventure
Peter Leshak
is a writer and handyman who spends part of his time fighting forest fires.
When a television reporter asked him about this dangerous and difficult
occupation, Leshak shrugged off his concerns by saying, "I think
of it as a paid adventure."
Without doing
anything nearly so treacherous, many entrepreneurs are drawn to their
work by a desire to live an adventurous life. While we often think of
travel as being an intrinsic component of adventure, that's not always
so. My favorite definition says an adventure is any undertaking the outcome
of which cannot be known at the outset. We don't embark on an adventure
so we can have our preconceived notions verified; we do it to be exposed
to something new or challenging.
How can you
bring more adventure into what you're doing? One way is by creating a
profit center that meets your definition of adventure. For many people
that means finding a way to get paid to do things that most people pay
to do. When some friends and I were traveling through the mountains of
Colorado, we saw a man in a truck that was mysteriously covered in canvas.
Being curious, we asked him about the strange vehicle. He said he was
on a highly secret mission testing a new truck's performance in the high
altitude. Testing new products has the potential for paid adventure. Patagonia,
the maker of travel clothing, does testing both inside the company and
in the rugged outdoors. Manufacturers of everything from sporting goods
to household appliances use independent testers to try out new things.
A woman who
loved to stay in elegant hotels started a business to evaluate the service
in such places. Now she poses as an ordinary guest while rating everything
from room service to the hotel spa. Her opinions help hotels improve their
services while she enjoys staying in opulent surroundings.
If you'd like
to get some experience in evaluating services, locate a mystery shopping
service in your area (or online at one of the sites such as
www.MysteryShop.org
that operates internationally) and sign up. You may be given some less-than-adventurous
assignments, but you'll get a sense of what goes into evaluations and
gain experience to help launch your own specialized service.
Maybe your
idea of adventure is to spend time in another country. The adventurous
entrepreneur realizes that there are unlimited ways to get paid to go
places. The founders of the Italian Pottery Outlet in Santa Barbara began
their business as a wholesale operation, selling the items they imported
to retail shops. After they held a well-attended parking lot sale to get
rid of their surplus, they decided to open their own retail operation.
Today, their business stretches even further via a website. Like other
importers, they've created a business that has a built-in adventure component.
Research can
be a passport to adventure, too. Writers delving deeply into a subject
often find themselves chasing information in diverse locations. Dava Sobel's
Galileo's
Daughter includes letters exchanged between the scientist and
his convent-bound daughter. The book required massive research and a bit
of detective work in both the U.S. and Italy.
Real adventure
comes from our personal passions, of course. LaMar Hanson is a high school
counselor who organized a student trip to Ghana. This wasn't just a travel
experience, however. After gathering dozens of used computers, he and
his students delivered them to a Ghanian village and installed them in
a school, beginning a relationship that continues long after the trip.
It wasn't
only the trip that provided adventure, however. Hanson and his students
had to find creative ways to finance the project. "We tried everything
from car washes to a silent auction," he says. It was a learning
adventure from conception to conclusion. He could turn that experience
into another adventure by starting a business to advise other student/teacher
groups.
Collectors
claim to be on a perpetual adventure since they're always on the lookout
for the next addition to their collection. Although most collectors acquire
things for themselves, some entrepreneurial treasure hunters enjoy building
collections that they resell for a profit — after having all the
fun of the search. When Southwestern decor was all the rage, for instance,
one clever woman became a traveling shopper, going to New Mexico and buying
objects for restaurants cashing in on the craze.
Challenge
yourself to create a paid adventure that's just right for you. You could
plan a different project every year. Take your cue from John Goddard,
whose entire life has been a paid adventure: "If you really know
what things you want out of life, it's amazing how opportunities will
come to enable you to carry them out." It just takes a bit of imagination
and a spirit of adventure to claim it.
There's
more where this came from.
Order Winning Ways now!
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