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