On my book site I am slowly churning out 366 thought starters on reinventing your career. Today’s idea came from a reader who posted this on my Facebook:

Click on the photo and you’ll access the great article.

I’ll use the university model as an example. This will work in your industry as well.

You have a class you want to teach. You’re qualified to teach it. You have experience teaching it.

You can find an opportunity one of two ways:

1) Submit your syllabus and presentation to a school and hope against hope, or:

2) Find a school that needs your class but has nothing like it currently available, and (this is really important) no creaky tenured professor who will do everything in his/her power to stop this class in its tracks. Bypass the stop signs. Submit, pitch, and win!

The path less traveled solution means no friction, no special interest slowdowns, no red lights.

Many of these start-up companies have 6 employees, coding their brains out. They’re formulating their business model and creating a viable product. Imagine the time you can save them by SWOOPING in with a brilliant idea for marketing, launch, data…

Perhaps 2014 is the year you get off the jammed expressway, hit the off ramp and drive that gravel road by yourself. Your chances of stumbling into something awesome just went up, big time.

John Scott is a media studies instructor and the career services manager at the School of Multimedia Communications, Academy of Art University San Francisco. John’s book “Destination: Reinvention” is on sale in the Amazon bookstore. The hardcover edition is at Lulu. Audiobook available on Audible and iTunes. Follow John on Twitter @ johnscottsf.