Pursue the Passion
May 3, 2007 | by brett | Permalink
“Pursue the Passion”
by Bryan Van Scoyk
Inside of a personal cubicle, the incessant sounds of clicking keyboards and calculators fill up the small space. A young accountant looks upwards towards the wall a few feet away. The hands of the mounted clock taunt him with their slow, monotonous movement. Everything is slow here. Everything is monotonous. Brett Farmiloe, the young accountant, steps away from his desk and walks slowly to the coffee machine across the huge room. The twenty two year old passes many people. Some of them are older than him and some of them are about his age. As he sizes up his co-workers, he knows that he will not be relegated to the life that they now share. He thinks back to last year when, as a college senior, his opportunities were supposed to be limitless. He slowly pours his coffee and gazes out the window as he daydreams about what better things are out there for him.
Half of the work force in the United States is unhappy with their jobs, according to a recent study conducted by Time magazine. Half. One out of two. That means that if you are happy at work than the person next to you is not.
College kids have a lot of different areas that they have to concentrate on in order to graduate. Often times, life after graduation can get lost in between things such as schoolwork, social activities, and simple college jobs. Everyone knows that collegians tend to procrastinate. Without a helping hand, many of these collegians might be putting off perhaps their most important life decision: what happens when they get to the real world?
Before his graduation from the University of Arizona last May, this question burned at Bret Farmiloe. As he applied for jobs and interviewed with potential employers, the Business major wondered if accounting was really for him. He finally accepted what he describes as “the most passionless job in America.” He took a position doing corporate accounting in Phoenix.
Even though he was ahead of many college seniors since he had already landed a job, Farmiloe was becoming increasingly worried as to whether his new career would offer him any fulfillment. With little guidance on campus around him he spent his last few months as a college student developing a plan of his own. His plan was to travel around the country between graduation and the beginning of his new job in Phoenix. While traveling, he would interview people who had achieved some sort of success or people that he particularly admired. “I didn’t know what the hell I wanted to do with my life after graduation and no one really told me what to do, and I thought that the people who seem to have it all figured out could give me the best advice,” said Farmiloe.
So he began to set his plan into motion. For months he was consumed with preparations. He made phone calls, wrote emails, and sent faxes as he set up interviews everywhere from Tucson to Vancouver, from Los Angeles to New York City. He rang phones off the hook in the offices of small businesses around the country as he looked for sponsorships that would help finance his trip. He purchased an RV, which he named Maggie and assembled a team of workers to help shoulder the load. By graduation he had set up 75 interviews. He was given gas cards by Shell gasoline and cases of energy drinks courtesy of Red Bull. He made T-shirts and launched a website to help publicize the tour. He called the journey Pursue the Passion.
For eight weeks Farmiloe, and up to three other people, traveled from city to city just as fast as Bessie could get them there. They started in Tucson with interviews of notable town figures such as Jim Click and Lute Olson. They interviewed during the day and drove during the night. Farmiloe pounded Red Bulls as others slept on the cramped beds in the rear of the RV. “It was exhausting, but the interviews made it all worth it,” said Farmiloe.
The interviews were the basis of the tour. The group got to go to many places that they had never been to before and see the country in a new and exciting way. However, the life lessons learned from sitting down with their interviewees were by far the best part. The group would ask the interviewees to start out by basically detailing how they got to where they are today. Farmiloe and his group wanted to learn where the people were as a young adult and what path they took to obtain a job that satisfied them. “It was comforting to here that not a lot of people had it figured out at our age,” said Farmiloe.
The group focused their interviews on people that interested them or had jobs in fields that interested them. As a sports fanatic, Farmiloe made sure to schedule an interview at Nike Headquarters outside of Beaverton, Oregon and EA Sports Headquarters in Redwood Shores, California. He set an interview with Billy Beane, the General Manager of the Oakland Athletics, a professional baseball team from near Farmiloe’s home town of Santa Rosa, California.
When asked what his favorite interview was or the interview that he found most interesting, Farmiloe struggles to answer. “You ask a mother who their favorite child is or a reader what their favorite book is and that is the same as me picking my favorite interview,” said Farmiloe who noted “my goal was to take something away from every interview.” He was quick to add however, that as one of the first interviews, Lute Olson really got everyone excited about the tour. “You walk in and he has his National Championship ball on the middle of his desk and it’s really intimidating,” said Farmiloe. The current University of Arizona men’s basketball coach spoke nostalgically of his early years with his interviewers. “At my age he was married with two kids and working a gas station from 11 at night to six in the morning,” said Farmiloe and added “he said he never thought in a million years that he would be where he is today.”
Though the tour was mentally and physically exhausting and it was relieving to finish, thinking of interviews such as the one with Lute Olson made the transition into the daily grind of corporate accounting all the more difficult for Farmiloe. As a way to maintain his sanity, he stayed very active with Pursue the Passion work even after he returned. He posted all of the interviews to his website and began to prepare for a second tour this summer. Farmiloe plans to quit his job and take on an ambitious 125 interview tour that will cover more places and more people.
He thinks that the upcoming tour will be better because he is experienced. The tour will span from July 1st to October 13, and he believes that it will be more efficient and better planned. He also has a better idea of who he wants to speak with and what he plans to ask them. With a year to plan, he has been able to set up interviews with many prominent people and is still in the process of arranging more. He is thrilled to be able to interview a firefighter at the New York Fire Department on September 11th. Farmiloe also just read a book on the founder of Nike, Phil Knight, and is in the process of arranging an interview with him, which he says would probably be one of his most exciting interviews.
His goal is to educate people on opportunities. He wants people to know that they do not have to be unhappy with their jobs. The objective is to inform graduating students as well as other people that are out in the workforce that they can be happy and prosperous. “If half of the people in America are unhappy with what they do for a living, then half of the people in America are probably unhappy with life,” said Farmiloe. He wants to show people that they don’t just have to follow a path because it seems right or it seems like the right opportunity. Rather, he wants people to know that their decisions are right for themselves. “My advice to the people that are coming out of school and lack direction and to the people that are unhappy in their career is to start thinking about what really stimulates you and start a journey toward those passions.”
In the process of this ambitious endeavor, Farmiloe is pursuing his own passion. He has turned a RV tour into his own small business. He works his day job and then comes home to his real interest. He still works the phones, writes emails, and sends faxes. As a result, corporations, small businesses, and even individuals have sponsored the tour or made contributions to it. Farmiloe plans to eventually write a book to help get information out there that will give people the initiative to go after something that makes them happy. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I graduated college and I still don’t know what to do with my life,” said Farmiloe who went on to say “this journey is showing me what is possible.”
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managing your money budgeting Says:
June 3rd, 2007
managing your money budgeting…
I do think your right on the spot here, i am going to bookmark your site to see if other people have different views…
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