Making Your Passion Pay

Making Your Passion Pay

This is part 2 of my thoughts on the importance of pursuing your passion.

In Part 1 I talked about why it is important and how to discover your passion.  Now, I want to get very practical and talk about how to make your passion pay.

For many years now I have heard some very successful people tell me that I should forget about earning a living and pursue my passion.  "The money will follow," they would tell me.

It seemed to me that was easy for them to say since they didn't have to feed and house me and my family while I pursued my passion long enough for the money to catch up to me.

So, I came up with a practical guide to following your passion until the money catches up.

1. Identify your passion - we covered this is Part 1, so I won't go over it again here.
2. Start pursuing your passion as a hobby
3. Convert your hobby into a small business
4. Build your small business over time
5. Quit Your Job and Pursue Your Passion 

The idea behind these five steps is simple, but not easy. 

#1 - see part 1 of this article
#2 Pursuing Your Passion as a Hobby: By first pursuing your passion as a hobby, you are investing a bit of time and money in learning and doing and acquiring some of the skills, knowledge, tools, and network needed to turn your passion into your life.

You show up as an enthusiast.  You go to trade conventions.  You buy the books and videos of the guiding lights in the area of your passion.  You experiment and hone your skills while keeping your investment of time and money appropriate for a hobby.  You continue to pay proper attention to your job so that your bills get paid.

Maybe you do some things in your hobby well enough that other people want to buy them.  From the trade shows, you have a good idea what is a fair price for what you do.  Go ahead and make the sale. It will help offset the costs of your hobby.

For sure you find forums where other enthusiasts are discussing your passion.  Join in the dialog and make sure you give good value as much as you can.

Lastly, make sure you put names and contact information for every other enthusiast you meet into a spreadsheet, a rolodex, a notebook, your PDA, phone or anyplace else you can keep and retreive it later.  More on this later.

#3 Convert Your Hobby Into a Small Business:  I could go on for a long time about how everyone should have their own small business and why.  Instead of doing that, I will focus on why you want to convert your hobby into a small business.

As soon as you convert your hobby into a business you can deduct the full cost of all your business related activities and supplies that you were already spending money on, and then some.

By showing the IRS that you intend to make a profit, you change things dramatically.  A hobbiest hopes to make a profit.  A business intends to make a profit.

Establish your company name, logo, and brand.  Make business cards and get someone to buid a quick website for you that may be little more than an internet billboard.

Keep going to the trade shows and forums.  Now, you may also be setting up a table at the show.  Start blogging about your passion.  Write at least 50 great blogs and set them up to go out at a rate of 1 per week for the next 50 weeks.  You don't have to write all 50 before you start posting.

If you are a terrible writer, then you can either figure out the 50 blogs and go to elance.com or guru.com and hire someone to ghost write them for you, or you can go on YouTube and make 50 video blogs on the topics of your passion.  Again, you should spread their release out over time.

And, if you can't write well and you have the kind of face that is really suited to radio, you can record your 50 topics as audios and post them for your friends and fans, again spacing them out over time.

Keep gathering those names and make sure your blog/video/audio has a way to capture new names as people find you.  Only now you also want to start reaching out to those names and letting them know that you are doing your own thing.  Let them know that if they or someone they know is interested, you are now providing this product or service.  These people may be your first customers or referrals.

#4 Build Your Small Business Over Time: The reality with nearly every business is this - if you cannot make money doing it part-time, you won't make money doing it full-time.  So, start your business part-time while still getting a steady paycheck elsewhere.

By now, you should redo your website so that it can be a storefront and let your fans become your clients.  Sell them information that they can download and get them to buy the products of your passion.

As your blog and website pick up traffic, you can also begin to leverage the power of advertising by reaching out to some of the companies that supply the materials that make your passion possible and invite them to pay for advertising on your blog or website.

Your financial goal with your small business is to build it up to the point where the income from your small business is enough to meet or exceed your ordinary operating expenses.  This is where you begin to be able to get out of the rat race.

#5 Quit Your Job and Pursue Your Passion:  When you reach the point where business is able to support itself and you, and your job is getting in the way of you making more money with your business, it is time to give serious thought to quitting your job and investing yourself full time in the business of your passion.

It is not a decision to be made lightly and you will want to consider all the money that may be on the table in terms of retirement benefits, health benefits and such, before you plan to exit your job. 

For me, I worked at it for about 5 years before I was ready to make the transition.  Then, I waited another 2 years for my retirement to fully vest so that I wouldn't leave any of that behind when I moved on.  Then, I waited until just the right moment for me and announced my retirement plans.

Although it has been a challenging ride since then, I don't regret making the move.

Tom S.

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Tom Sheppard is the author of "Fire Yourself: Get the Job You Want" from XLibris Press and has been successfully investing in real estate since 2001 while working part time. In 2008 he left a six-figure job as an enterprise project manager with a major national bank to manage his real estate business full-time. His goal is to help 100,000 people find peace of mind by finding quality, affordable homes. 

He is currently looking to expand his network of funding partners who are helping him achieve this goal. If you would like to know more about how you can Do Well By Doing Good (TM) go to www.CharlotteWealthPartners.com 

Temp Agencies and Scams

Temp Agencies and Scams

I was recently made aware of some scams that are hitting the job seeker market in force right now.  The scams involves soliciting job seekers with promises that 1) if they pay a fee they will find you a job, or 2) if you pay a fee someone will put you at the top of the applicant list, or 3) if you pay a fee they will introduce you to potential employers. 

Legitimate employment agencies and legitimate temporary agencies get paid by the employer when the candidate is hired.  The candidates do not pay for the privilege of being hired. If someone asks you to pay them so they can find you a job, it is probably a scam and you should walk away.   At best, they are collecting a fee from you as well as a fee from the employer who hires you.  At worst, they are going to take your money and you will get nothing in return except a warm fuzzy feeling for a while, until you realize you have been had.

There is a slim possibility that those who mentioned this scam to me had their facts misaligned.  If they were actually talking about a job coach or career coach instead of a temporary employment agency/employment agency then some of the promises are just lies and not fraud.

The difference?  A job search coach may make overblown promises in their advertisements, but they don’t usually promise that they can get you a job or represent themselves as having access to employers or the ability to get you to the top of a list.   They do often know techniques that significantly improve your chances of getting a job and of getting your résumé read.

A legitimate coach will not make promises they cannot keep.  No coach can guarantee you a job anymore than a basketball coach can guarantee a championship.

For more than a dozen years I helped people by preparing their résumés and cover letters and teaching them how to conduct effective job searches and interviews. 

I have coached many people on their job searches and helped them search for a job on a fee basis.  I have never told any client that if they paid me a fee I would get them a job.   The services I offer are to teach them how to conduct an effective job search themselves.  I won’t do a job search for a client and some time ago I quit preparing résumés and cover letters, opting instead to teach clients what works well and directing them to those who enjoy doing that sort of work.

I prefer to put in practice the adage that says, “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.  Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.”  Because of this, the emphasis on all my services is teaching my clients how to do for themselves what I did for myself to go more than 20 years without a day of unemployment.  I occasionally accept engagements where I will do the work for a client, but that is not my preferred approach.

·         My clients learn what makes a good résumé and where they can get one

o   I don’t do résumés anymore, but as part of their package I will review them for my coaching clients to make sure they are getting what they need

o   A good résumé won’t get them to the top of the applicant stack, but it will make sure their résumé doesn’t land in the trash can  without being thoroughly read

·         What makes a good cover letter and where they can get one

o   With cover letters the same thing I said above applies

·         How to execute an effective job search

o   I show my clients and coach them through their own implementation of powersearch techniques that I applied for years that get interviews

·         I teach my clients effective interviewing techniques that will make them standout from the competition by the power and clarity of their responses

·         I help my clients understand what kind of job they want and what kind of job they don’t want so that they don’t end up wanting to slit their wrists with a dull spoon when they think about going in to work each day.

·         My clients learn how to apply small business techniques to themselves so that they can keep the job they want even as the marketplace changes around them.

·         My clients learn how to apply the strategic planning tools that major industries use, so they can understand where the market is going and position themselves to be the “go-to” person when their company and industry make their next shift

1)      I don’t tell my clients that I will introduce them to employers

·         Anyone who offers to introduce you for a fee is probably robbing you.

2)      I don’t tell my clients that I will get a job for them

·         Anyone who says that they will get a job for you for a fee is either lying (promising something they cannot deliver) or they are doing the hiring and looking for a kickback (taking money under the table).

3)      I don’t tell my clients that I will get them an interview.

·         Again, promising to get them an interview is either promising something you cannot deliver or you have to be an insider looking to make money on the side by selling access.

4)      I don’t tell my clients that I will get their résumé to the top  of the applicant stack.

·         Anyone who says that they will get your résumé or application to the top of the stack is either lying (promising something they cannot deliver) or is working on the inside and looking for a kickback (taking money under the table).

For those who don’t want to spend the time and money to get personal coaching, I offer less expensive alternatives.  I have created a home study course and written a book that teaches much of what I know and have successfully used.  My book and home study course will be available soon.  If you would like to receive more information on them, feel free to contact me (tsheppard@aplusresults.com).

For more than 20 years, I used the very things I teach.  I was laid off, downsized, merged, acquired, divested, and went through lots of voluntary and involuntary job changes.  Applying the same things I teach others, I went that entire time without one day of unemployment while growing my pay more than six times (600%) of what it was at that start of that period.

To put a point on all this:

·         No one who is not a hiring manager can promise you a job.

·         No one who is not a hiring manager can promise to move your application or résumé to the top of the stack.

·         Someone who has access to hiring managers can promise to introduce you, but they cannot guarantee you a favorable result, and you have to ask yourself, “what kind of person sells their access to their powerful acquaintances?”

When people ask you to pay them fees to find you a job, introduce you, or to move your application up, your best bet is to thank them politely and then walk away, keeping a firm hand on your wallet.

Tom Sheppard has been successfully investing in real estate since 2001 while working part time. In 2008 he left a six-figure job as an enterprise project manager with a major national bank to manage his real estate business full-time. His goal is to help 100,000 people find peace of mind by finding quality, affordable homes. Why pay retail when you can buy a home at below market prices? www.buybelowmarket.com. He is currently looking to expand his network of funding partners who are helping him achieve this goal. If you would like to know more about how you can do well by doing good, contact Tom at TSheppard@ADBProperties.com