You’ve all heard the adage, “Do what you love, and the money will follow.” That’s a huge callout to you in regaining control of your finances in the coming year. In the next few minutes we have to spend together, let’s see how you can monetize your heart, how to create money from doing what you love, or get paid for having fun.
As the author of Business Ideas for Home Based Business and Emergency Cash Flow, I spend a great deal of time coaching and consulting business owners and individuals about monetizing their interests, passions, gifts, and special abilities, because when you do, not only do you create additional cash-flow, but if you do it right, you can far exceed the revenue you might be able to take in from traditional employment.
Imagine doing what you love and getting wildly compensated while regaining control of your finances. It’s like a dream come true. One many of my clients have done, and you can do it, too, if you are willing to do the work.
If you love to buy lottery tickets, and press buttons on slot machines more than anything else, there’s a chance you can hit the big one, but your chances are slim to none, and if you do manage to win, what will you do next? Expect another one? (Before you think that I believe it is not possible, note that I have several friends who have hit the lottery and huge slot payouts multiple times. So, it is possible.)
You can increase your odds tremendously if you choose to pursue a path to expand your income earning capacities by focusing on what gets your juices flowing and studying how to be successful with personal development.
You are a human cash machine!
You’ve been sold a bill of goods; your abilities have been downplayed and kyboshed. You’ve been programmed, just as all of us have, that you must have a job working for someone else to make a living. The only way to move your income above basic survival is to go to college, get good grades, and get a better paying job, receive an inheritance from rich relatives, or execute a life of crime that pays well for as long as you can stay ahead of the authorities.
Those are your options.
Well, you could have a great idea and make millions of dollars off of it, or at least you’ve heard of such stories, stories of immense one-hit wonders, or incredible rags to riches stories. And doesn’t it make sense? “If one of us can do it, any of us could do it,” and that means you could do it, too.
It’s true. You could. You could be lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. So, here you are, waiting for lightning to strike… How’s that working for you?
All of these are real possibilities, but how are you going to live your life between now, today, and when “God willing” you are hit by a lightning strike financial windfall?
You could work every day in slavery to the man, or you could embrace your own empowering self-improvement process and start making bank doing what you love.
So, what do you love?
What do you love anyway?
Get out a piece of paper, yeah… right now. Or jot it down somewhere… make a lost of all the things you love to do. Those activities, that when you’re engaged in them, the time just slips by. Write them down.
What did you love to do as a child? Would you enjoy doing that now?
Who are the people you admire? What do they do? Would you like to do that?
What do other people say about a particular skill that you might take for granted? What is that thing that people have told you that you are amazing at, even if it seems like it’s no big deal to you?
Have you ever received recognition for doing something well, won an award, done anything you received atta-boys or atta-girls for?
What’s the activity you’d find yourself doing, that you would absolutely enjoy doing, if you had all the time in the world to do it, and money was no object?
Have you ever had a job where there was this one part of it, this one activity, that jazzed you every time you got a chance to do it? What was it? Write it down.
Do people seem to come to you for a particular type of advice? Why do you think that is? Might it be your calling? Some divine assignment you should be performing for the greater good. That’s like a huge neon sign. What does it say?
Now that you’ve written all these things down, don’t stop. Fold up that piece of paper and stick it in your pocket, when you think of something else that the idea of it thrills you, pull it out and write it down.
Once you’ve gotten a list of all these things, write a number next to each item indicating how much enjoyment you get out of doing that particular activity. Give it a number value from 1 to 10.
Okay, you get the idea. Now you’re getting to know those activities that resonate with you heart. What’s next?
Next you have to figure out how to monetize your heart.
How can you turn what you love to do into cash?
I guarantee, there are many ways to make money doing that thing that you love, no matter what it is.
If there’s a thing that you like to do, and you love doing it, there’s a pretty good chance there’s already someone out there getting paid to do it, right now. And there’s another good chance that he or she doesn’t even love what they’re getting paid for. To them, it’s just a job.
How much better could you do that job if you, someone who is passionate about the same thing, and loves doing it more than anything, were to be in that position?
Right there, you have it. Get that job.
Or, take the next step: Step out in faith and build your own dream job by offering your skill, service, talent, share your talent, or teach it to others on your own.
That’s right. It might sound like it’s outside your wheelhouse but think about it. The most successful people in the world, are not working at a regular job. They’ve carved out ways to do what they love and allowed compensation to flow to them as they are doing what they love, or as the result of doing what they love.
That could be you.
Going backward, there’s something to be said about just getting a paycheck from someone else who’s done all the hard work. They’ve built the business, organization, or platform for you to engage in the activity that makes your heart sing.
They’ve built the machine, invested their time, energy, and money, to provide for you an opportunity to make a few bucks while you are doing what you love. If you’re able to do this, you are miles ahead of the other people who are just zombies in someone else’s money-making machine.
I can tell you this, no matter what job you are performing if you are working for a successful business, your employer is making five times what you’re getting paid from your efforts. So, already, you know
The activity you love to do is worth 500% more than anyone is getting paid to do it for someone else.
That’s just the bare minimum, possibly much more, if you factor-in that left to your own devices, with a bit of creativity, determination, effective branding, abundant marketing and effective niche positioning you could probably do far better.
Experiment
You could stick your toe in the water and see for yourself.
You could start offering to do what you love and allow yourself to be compensated for it. This is easy to do, using your own name, you don’t even need a business license. Just keep track of your income and operating expenses while you’re running this experiment.
Put up a card of flyer on your local bulletin boards around town. Post an ad in your local newspaper or on Craigslist, put an offer on fiverr, post your offer on eBay, make something and offer it for sale on Etsy, and see what happens.
Get free business cards, (yes, I said free business cards. Just Google free business cards and get some) and place them strategically around town at locations where people might be who might be interested in paying you for doing what you love.
Of course, you could invest to up a business, and potentially fail, because we all know that most new businesses do that. Why? Because they started their business without vetting their idea by running this simple experiment. So, test out your idea first.
Evaluate your results.
Once you’ve run your initial tests, you will have a better idea about how the market might respond to your doing what you love and allowing others to compensate you for it.
Get on the ball
Now its time to put some more effort into ramping up your offering. You’ve completed your initial tests in the marketplace, now you can ramp up your campaign, and see if you add more energy to your project, can you get it to bounce?
Bounce it!
You want to bounce getting paid for what you love to do, and make it go higher every time you add more energy or invest in overhead or any promotional activities, so don’t get too excited and put your life savings into this because one wrong move and you’re a statistic.
If you don’t want that to happen to you, do your research and exercise due diligence. Find out how to start internet marketing and outsourcing in IT. You don’t have to do it all yourself. Continue to learn about other ways you can add energy to your project and bounce it.
If you put in energy and it doesn’t bounce higher, stop it, and try something else.
The goal here is to bounce your business like a rubber ball. The more energy you put in, the higher it bounces. If it bounces like a superball, BAM! You’ve got a winning combination!
Sometimes you can put a lot of effort into a campaign, and it looks good, but it bounces like cookie dough. SPLAT. That’s okay. You learned it’s not all about how it looks or tastes, it’s all about the bounce.
