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 

WOW, SHOCK and AWE!

WOW!

It is Monday and I am still in shock and awe of what the Info Renegades, Jeff Vacek and Ken Preuss did for us here in Charlotte this past weekend.

I will tell you now what I told them after the class.

I have spent tens of thousands of dollars attending training events all over the US.  Of all those expensive, 3 day classes this was the best one for teaching both the principles behind what needed to be done and the practice of how to make it happen.

There are no teasers here.

I have gone to three-day events, where I paid thousands of dollars and found that what I was taught was either just enough to whet my appetite for the real meat (for which I would have to pay for a follow-up class), or that what I was taught was working several years ago, but not today.

Jeff and Ken teach what they are doing in their business today. 

If you were invited and didn't show up, you missed out on an amazing class.  If you want to learn how to tap into the power of the internet for your marketing efforts, these guys are the real deal.

They taught us four different models we can use to make money with digital products and they taught us how to make them a reality.  They didn't just give us warm and fuzzy ideas with unbelievable promises, instead they gave us practical, actionable instruction with realistic expectations.

I am so excited to apply what I have learned from them.  Like so many others, I have heard the promises of how I can use the internet to get paid for what I know.  Others have told me to do this or that, but they never told me how exactly I could accomplish what they told me and more, how I could set it up right so that I could actually make money doing it.

Only recently was I able to get my ecommerce site, www.APlusResults.com up and running correctly after several years of bumbling around, and I was able to do that after spending about an hour going through materials that Jef and Ken gave me on a thumb-drive when I first met them earlier this year.

Now, thanks to their instruction, I can sell some of the digital products I developed over the years while helping people learn to Get and Keep the Job You Want (TM). I created them and delivered them by hand to my coaching clients.  Other than that, they weren't available to anyone except my coaching clients who were paying me hundreds of dollars for each session with me.  Now, I can make them available to a everyone without having to charge them hundreds of dollars for my time or run myself ragged with printing and distributing them.

Of course, after this weekend, I realize I will need to revise a lot of what is happening in my storefront, but it will be all to the good.

I was so impressed with the value and integrity that Jeff and Ken deliver that I told them I would promote them whenever and whatever they do.  I admit it...

I have become a Raving Fan of the Info Renegades.

And, as if giving us amazing content wasn't good enough, they WOWed us by bringing in JT Foxx and Dr. Nido Qubein to speak with us.  Admitedly, JT Foxx wasn't at the top of his game.  He was too ill to catch his flight to LA and was trying to recover in his hotel room.  But his mentor, Dr. Qubein threw down a challenge to him to see if he could still deliver high quality, high content, high value instruction even when he was feeling terrible.  So, instead of just trying to recover and recuperate in his room, he came down and gave us about two hours of high octane material that he hasn't put in front of the room before.

Of course, I cannot say enough about Dr. Qubein. He is currently the President of High Point University in High Point, North Carolina and the Chairman of Great Harvest Bread Company.  On top of that he is on the board of directors of several major corporations (Dots, LazEBoy, BB&T, and others).  If you have never had the pleasure of hearing Dr. Qubein speak, then you have missed one of the wonderful experiences this life has to offer.  I can say that I have been able to sit with him for hours in several different settings and I cannot hear him without coming away transformed and inspired to go from success to significance.

While he was there, I was pleased to have the opportunity to present Dr. Qubein with a copy of my new book, "Fire Yourself: Get the Job You Want, A No BS Guide."  He read an advance copy and allowed me to publish his comments on the back cover of the book.  He said,

“If everyone applied these principles consistently, it could affect dramatic change in the workplace yielding greater results and productivity. Results rule, and this book proves that.”

It still stuns me that this entire, three day class was mine for just a $100 seat reservation fee, which they refunded to me, just as they promised! What really kills me though is how many people I know right here in the Charlotte area who could have really benefitted from this and they didn't take action. There was a couple there who flew all the way from Australia just for this class!
I will say it again, if you have a business that does any kind of internet marketing and you have a chance to attend one of these events with Jeff Vacek and Ken Preuss (The Info Renegades), you definitely need to make the investment of time and money even if you have to go Australia to do it.

Ken and Jeff do regular webinars where you can learn some valuable information from them and learn how you can attend one of their upcoming classes.  They were kind enough to allow me to post a link here to their site where you can register for their next webinar.  If you click it, it will take you to their site.

Enjoy,
Tom S.

Yes, I Wanna Learn More About the Info Renegades

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.   If you would like to know more about how you can do well by doing good, contact him at Tom@CharlotteWealthPartners.com or go to www.CharlotteWealthPartners.com

Info Renegades Are Coming to Town

One of the great things about working with JT Foxx is that I get to meet his mentors and coaches.  Two of the people that he pays to coach him are coming to Charlotte December 16-18.  I am very excited to attend their three day class (If you want know how to attend for FREE use my link NOW!).

I first met Jeff Vacek and Ken Pruess when I was in LA meeting with JT Foxx and Bruce Buffer (see the video I made with Bruce). Jeff and Ken had recently agreed to coach JT on how to develop the internet side of his business.

I was standing in the back of the room waiting for their event to begin and hoping to catch some of it between sessions with Bruce and JT.  Because I listen to my coach, JT, I was dressed in a nice suit. Several people asked me if I was one of the presenters.  I was flattered, but had to tell them "No."  When Jeff and Ken came in and saw me dressed so nicely they introduced themselves and we chatted for a few minutes.  Then, they asked me to introduce them to the crowd.

I would love to say that I rocked the house with my intro, but frankly I think it was pretty weak.  I was Soooo unprepared and caught off guard by their request.  When the come to Charlotte, I hope to get a second chance to introduce them and if I do get the chance I will do a much better job this time.

Since then, I have met with them on a number of occasions and been able to learn from them.  Here is some of what they will be teaching when they come to Charlotte later this month.

	Exactly How To Choose an Online Market That is GUARANTEED To Be Massively Profitable To Your Bank Account
	The Absolute EASIEST and Cheapest Way To Build an Online Product That Your Market Will Pay TOP Dollar For - Plus You Need ZERO Tech Skills To Make It Happen
	The TOP Online Information Model That Has Collectively Generated Multiple 7 Figures in Revenue For Us Over The Past Six Years (We Only Teach This To Our Highest-Paying Private Clients - But You'll Get The Entire Blueprint)
	How To Get The Most Successful Marketers In Your Market Literally Swarming To Promote Your Product To THEIR List - Also Known As "The Best Kept Secret" of Information Marketing A-Listers
	A Bullet-Proof Method For Building a 5-figure Monthly Info Business In Less Than a Few HoursPer Week
	The #1 SECRET For Building an Online Business That Feeds You Consistently Every Single Month - You'll Wish You Had Learned This LONG Ago

And much more!!

When these guys say they will teach you everything you need to know, they aren't kidding.  This three day class will give you everything you need to start or improve your online business.  The class usually costs $2,997.  However, they are letting me reach out to folks who know me to give you the chance to attend for FREE.  But, you have to act NOW.  The event in nearly sold out and when that happens, I can't give away any more freebies. 

How FREE is FREE?  Well, you do have to pay a $100 fee up front to reserve your seat.  BUT YOU GET  IT BACK - when you show up.  Seriously!

If you use MY LINK NOW!  You can sign up for a $3k class with just a $100 commitment, that comes back to you when you show up.

If you think that is a trick, it isn't.  It costs them money to host an event like this.  It costs them for every chair in the room and for every cup of water at the back of the room.  I know, I have booked events like this myself and the hotels charge for everything they provide.  And, that isn't counting the materials that Jeff and Ken provide - which also cost them money.  So, if they have the hotel set up a chair for you, it cost them.  If they bring materials for you, it cost them.  But they are happy to do it if you will just show up and make it worth their time.

I have enjoyed their materials and am using them to build my own business.  They really work and they really tell you everything you need to know.  At times, when Jeff is going step by step over something I am familiar with already I find myself wanting to say "Yeah Jeff, lets just skip ahead to the parts I don't know"  and then he throws in something I didn't know.  Something other people wouldn't think to tell you.

For instance?  "You can use service A for free or you can use service B for $19.95 per month.  When you are getting started, you may want to use service A.  Then, when the money starts coming in, you can move over to service B.  And you will want to do that then because..."  you get the idea.

And Ken and Jeff really have a commitment to giving their students everything they deserve and more.  When Jeff taught us at Mega Partnering in Chicago last October JT cut him off before he could show us his last four slides.  He kept trying to get JT to let him show us those last four slides the rest of the event.  And that was after he had already given us more than an hour of really great content.

If you have a limited budget for training but want to expand your knowledge of how to leverage the internet, this event is for YOU!  How much cheaper can you get training than FREE!  And, if you live in Charlotte like I do, you don't even have to get a hotel room.  How GREAT is that?!

However, there are only a handful of spots available.  That means if you want to attend the event and only pay the $100 deposit instead of the normal $3000.00 training fee, then you literally need to sign up immediately or else it will be sold out. CLICK HERE

I know that this post has seemed more like a sales pitch than an article, but the reality is that I am super-excited that Ken and Jeff are coming here and I want everyone I know who can take advantage of this to do so.  It is going to be well worth your time and effort, and if you use MY LINK, you can attend for FREE.

As always, I will put in a plug for myself here in my column.  If you want to be added to my regular mailing list and get updates on events like this and other valuable information I reserve for my closest friends, then you can use the sign up below.

Thanks for Being a Good Friend to me.  Let me Give something back to you!

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 Your Success is Our Business (TM)

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@CharlotteWealthPartners.com