It’s not that often that I buy books printed on that ancient material known as paper, but I made an exception for this new book on career planning by recovering lawyer/serial entrepreneur Jonathan Fields.

This is a guy who knows that the conventional way of career building just isn’t working anymore–he got his wake up call when job stress put him in the emergency room with a softball-sized abscess in his intestine. And the conventional way certainly isn’t working for people whose passion happens to be in something like art, music, cooking, or teaching.

What option is there, other than being a career renegade?

This book is called Career Renegade: How to Make a Great Living Doing What You Love. And what it’s all about can be summed up with a few lines from Jonathan’s own site:

“Do What You Love And The Money Will Follow” Is A Lie. More Often Than Not, You Need To Make The Money Follow. This Book Shows You How…

Doing what you love is pretty easy. I mean, just do it. You don’t need a book to tell you how to do that. But to actually make a living from it, that’s the hard part. And that’s exactly what Career Renegade is about.

The back cover caught my eye when it said that you can turn nearly any passion into a better payday, even video games. I was like, “Oh, come on Jonathan! Fine, I’ll read it, but you’d better be able to back up that claim!”

And yes, he did. But there’s a catch. Jonathan’s right, you can’t just “do what you love and the money will follow.” But, what most people don’t realize is that with creativity and hard work, you can figure out how to express your passion in a way that people will pay you for it. Like the guy who played video games.

Jonathan has run a lot of different businesses personally, as well as studied many other entrepreneurs. By doing this, he’s observed what successful businesses have in common, and learned the different ways of finding opportunities where most people wouldn’t see any. He has case studies of people who are making a living from things you wouldn’t think you can get paid for, and he explains how you can apply these lessons to your own passion.

A big part of what makes this possible is recent changes in the internet, such as blogging, social media, keyword research tools, self publication tools, PR sites, freelance sites, etc. This really does make things a lot easier, and he goes into a lot of detail about how this all works.

But while he includes a lot of detailed information, this is not a book purely focused on the internet. It takes a very broad perspective, starting with “I have a passion. Now what?” and helping you figure out ways to turn it into a career. It deals with issues like cultivating the right mindset, and getting your family on board. It presents a lot of practical information, plus tons of resources for learning a lot more.

Considering the glut of career books we see these days, I was pleasantly surprised by Career Renegade. I’d suggest following Seth Godin’s advice: “Go, read it, get started, hurry.” Be a Career Renegade.

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