People see that title, right? “How to find a successful career for pisces woman 2017? (Make the most money this year!)” and they immediately think I went deep into some crystal ball nonsense or maybe crunched numbers on which zodiac sign is making bank.
Let me tell you, I did the exact opposite.
I started this project in late 2016, and it wasn’t some casual blog idea. The whole damn thing kicked off because my cousin, let’s call her Cee, who is a Pisces, got absolutely railroaded by her old company. She was in a sales admin role, barely scraping by, and then they restructured. Just like that, boom, severance package that was basically bus fare and a handshake. This was maybe November, and the holidays were coming up. She had two kids and rent that wasn’t going to pay itself. The panic was real. The desperation was heavy.
She was deep into that astrology crap, typing “best jobs for sensitive pisces” into Google, and coming up with things like “Artist” or “Nurse” or “Veterinarian.” Jobs that either pay minimum wage while you wait for a break or require three years of night school. We needed cash, and we needed it yesterday.
I told her to cut the cosmic garbage. I vowed right then and there I was going to find the highest-paying, most accessible career path for her to pivot into for 2017. It wasn’t about the stars; it was about the market and the hustle.
The Practical Grinding Process: Rejecting the Zodiac
My first step? I threw out every single article that mentioned “Pisces.” I didn’t care about water signs. I cared about dollars. I went to the Bureau of Labor Statistics data—this was late 2016, so I was looking at 2015/2016 closing data to project 2017 growth.
I downloaded massive, ugly spreadsheets. This wasn’t sleek data visualization; this was raw, government-issued junk. I opened it up in Excel, and I started filtering.
- Filter One: Reject everything with a median annual salary under $65,000. That’s the baseline for “make the most money” that year.
- Filter Two: Reject everything that required more than 12 months of certification or retraining. We didn’t have time for a full degree.
- Filter Three: I had to brutally look at the gender data. I was specifically looking for roles where women were already successful and represented, not fields where she’d fight an uphill battle against a 95% male industry right out of the gate.
I slashed and burned through the list. “Financial Manager” was out—too much initial certification. “Software Developer” was out—too much training needed. The list kept getting shorter. I was staring at a few niche categories that made zero sense to a casual observer.
The Deep Dive and The Pivot
The remaining sweet spot, the one that kept popping up with high pay and only a few months of intense training, was Niche Tech Sales/SaaS Implementation and Specialized Medical Billing/Coding. Both needed sharp organizational skills (which she had) and a short path to certification.
I didn’t stop at the data. I leveraged every single contact I had. I spent two weeks cold-calling and emailing people on LinkedIn in those specialized fields—not for a job, but for an “informational interview.” I had maybe ten people who actually responded. I scheduled those calls. I took notes like crazy. I listened to their struggles, what they loved, and most importantly, how they actually got started. One guy in SaaS implementation told me he got his start just by doing a few online courses and lying about his prior experience a little to get an initial interview. Not lying about skills, just about where he learned them.
It was a lightbulb moment. The system wasn’t about degrees; it was about focused, demonstrable skill and confidence.
I presented the two options to Cee. I didn’t mention the zodiac once. I just showed her the median salaries, the training costs, and the projected time to placement. She freaked out a little. It was so far from “Artist.”
But desperation is a great motivator. She chose Specialized Medical Billing/Coding. Why? It was remote, the certification was a brutal 4-month online grind, but the starting pay, even for a junior, was $70k in our area. She could be working by April 2017.
Realization and Outcome
Cee signed up for the course immediately. She spent the next four months locked in her room, living off instant ramen. The kids were confused, but she powered through. When she finished, she applied to twenty jobs and landed her first remote gig by May 2017. She started at $72,000. She made the money that year, moving her family out of the financial hole.
The whole experience cemented one thing for me: that astrology and vague self-help career tips are total bunk. We wasted zero time trying to figure out if being a “feeler” Pisces meant she had to be a counselor. I just ran the numbers, saw the market need, and figured out the shortest, most efficient path to maximum income.
The reason I even know all this detail? After that, I realized how many people are sold a line of absolute garbage by career “gurus.” I quit my own boring 9-to-5 that summer. I started helping other people with similar emergency pivots, taking the same data-driven, cynical approach. It wasn’t about finding the perfect job; it was about solving an immediate cash flow problem with extreme prejudice. That’s how this whole blogging thing you’re reading now actually came to be. It was built out of desperation and ugly spreadsheets, not stardust. Forget the Pisces; focus on the profit.
