What Career Change Lessons can we learn from Huggy Bear?
Depending on your age you may or may not remember a character called Huggy Bear from the 70s cop show Starsky and Hutch. The character was later played by Snoop Dogg in the 2004 film version. Huggy was a flash dressing, streetwise, jive-talking dude who ran a bar in LA. Whenever Starsky and Hutch needed to find some bad guys or someone who knew bad guys, they'd turn to Huggy Bear. Huggy was well connected and knew, it seemed, everyone.
When it comes to finding work we love (work with me, there is a connection), it's important that we become well connected. We may not know everyone but with the help of other people we know, we can usually get to speak to relevant people who can help us find stuff out about particular sectors and jobs.
You've heard of '6 degrees of separation' – the idea that we are only a maximum of 6 connections away from the person we need to speak to. So if you're interested in, say, in becoming a journalist and you don't know any journalists, someone that you know probably does. And if they don't know, someone they know may do. And so on.
With social media, networking has become even easier. So my question to you is, 'Who is your Huggy Bear?' In other words, who is the person you need to speak to that can help you research your ideas further. Are you using LinkedIn or even Twitter to speak to people who can help you?
If you have vague ideas of your ideal career path, it's vital that you research first before you commit to anything.
Becoming well connected will help you to do this successfully.