Pinpointing Your Profitable Passion: A Guide to help the 9-5er find their new career path
Episode 47 Finding A Profitable Niche You Love
Are you thinking of starting an online business or coaching business but aren't sure what niche is right for you?
Are you ready for the freedom lifestyle an online business affords?
You would take action today if you could find the right person to help you get started?
If you answered YES to these questions then act fast by clicking the "Wanna Work With Me" button to schedule your free call. I keep my student numbers limited so I can help each one get maximum results. Spaces are limited.
You want to leave your day job, but you only want to do so for something you love! But finding out what that thing is seems impossible.
You keep finding yourself stuck in the trap of figuring out what problem you solve and who is your ideal audience and every which way you turn you just feel, well, meh - about the whole thing. Maybe you get pumped up for a day or a week, but soon you feel like this passion project has turned into a second job.
The last thing you want to do is create a business that doesn’t light you up. I mean, if that would be the case, you may as well just stay in the job you have, right?
You don’t need a second job, or a business that feels like a job. You need a dream business. One that you feel excited to work on every day. A daily activity that embraces your creativity and ambitions and rewards you for helping people.
That is why you have come to the Passive Income Examiner podcast because you and so many others like you are looking for a way to experience a happier, more meaningful life with financial freedom and time freedom. Well friends, this episode is going to help you weed through all the noise from all the online gurus and coaches and help you pinpoint your passion. Get a pen and paper handy because today I am going to give you some key questions to help you find your way.
According to Google the
5 Most Profitable Online Businesses
Training.
Selling Digital Products.
Blogging.
Freelance writing and other freelancing. ...
Amazon FBA.
But knowing what is profitable is not the most important aspect of finding out passion. Tune in to discover how you can find a passion that lights you up and can be profitable.
TRANSCRIPTION
Welcome back PIE Tribe and thanks again for tuning in. If you haven’t already, make sure to hit that subscribe button and if you feel like this episode makes a difference or inspires you in some way make sure to share it with three other people who you know need a boost in their day because we all need more focus on happiness in our lives.
Shortly after we moved to Idaho I decided to start an online business teaching people how to do Facebook Lives. With my public speaking background and experience in front of a camera, doing Facebook live videos was easy and came naturally to me. At the time, facebook lives were really gaining in popularity and facebook was putting a lot more emphasis on video. It seemed natural that this type of coaching was a need many entrepreneurs had.
My business was on the verge of exploding. I had a thriving Facebook group. I even ran a contest in my group for people to go live and did a give a way and I had a bunch of people sign up. I got paid to consult people on their lives and give pointers. On all accounts this was shaping up to be a pretty profitable niche.
The problem was, my heart was not in it. It felt boring to me and uninteresting. In reality I really felt like I was doing it to get a pay check. I could make myself see the value I was offering these people who were terrified to push play. I was literally helping them become more visible in their business and thereby helping them be more profitable, but for some reason I just felt like this was not the THING for me.
I’m sharing this with you to demonstrate that I understand what it is like to long for a business that feels exciting and to start one that didn’t match that level of vibrancy.
I’m sure many entrepreneurs and freedom chasers like you and I have gone down this road.
It is one thing to achieve freedom, but it is another to maintain it and who wants to feel trapped in their self made career feeling unfulfilled and down right frustrated. Not me! And I’m guessing, not you either.
Before I dive into todays tips to help you pinpoint your passion let’s take a moment to dissect exactly how it was that I came to be building a business that didn’t serve my soul because understanding what to look out for is equally important as knowing the way that works. It’s like asking a guy like Tony Robbins, who has amassed amazing success, to tell you all the struggles he had before he got there. It would help you cut through all the trial and error and achieve success faster.
It all started when I decided to be a coach. I started following other coaches teaching people like me how to start a coaching business. It seemed like everywhere I turned people were telling me I needed to find my niche and niche down. And then there was this powerful advice that seemed so valid and yet was so incredible wrong, for me. She said “Find a profitable niche.”
At the time it made complete sense. Obviously, I didn’t want to find an unprofitable niche.
This led me down the bunny trail of listing things I was good at that were also popular. Until I found Facebook Live training.
At first, I was totally enthusiastic about this. Everything about it seemed to make sense to me. I was good at it. I was a good teacher. I helped infuse confidence in people. People were desperate to better themselves in this area and understood the value it brought to their business and their lives.
Every sign was pointing to YES< THIS IS A GOOD IDEA.
My mind was saying YES and my heart was saying NO.
I ended up archiving the group and checking out, still wondering what my calling was.
I want to add, that as a creative person, I often see many different ideas that can work. I even have given many of them a try with sincere optimism. I remember when I graduated high school I had the hardest time picking a major because I wanted to be so many different things. I didn’t want to limit myself to one. The same feeling applies to my career path. I like to be multi-passionate and grow in many diverse areas.
Can you relate to this? Have you often felt like limiting yourself to one thing in life just felt restrictive and boring? Me too.
So, are you ready to learn how to let the reins free on your creativity and experience what you have been missing? To finally Live the freedom lifestyle you long for without the trial and error of starting businesses that don’t light you up? Ok, grab your pen and paper and let’s dive in.
Tip #1 Do you have a personal mission? A vow to yourself? Like a guideline for how you will live your life? I think this is crucial for EVERY person because it sets the stage for decision making and gives you a clear roadmap with which to make decisions. To me it acts like bumpers on a bowling lane helping to keep your ball on course.
To give you an example of what I am referring to I will share with you my mission: To live a
It can feel so easy to lose our way when we don’t have a compass like this to help guide us. Especially in todays noisy world where everyone is an expert and everyone has the best strategy for xy and z. It is easy to start letting the compass of others drive our ship when we see the success they are having. It is very persuasive isn't’ it? Have you ever had a time in your life where you saw someone having massive success but the way they got it just didn’t feel aligned with YOU? Have you decided to try it anyway? This is exactly how we get lost in the see of trial and error and how we can give up on our bigger dream because we let ourselves get off course with what is true to us.
Friends, if I can stress anything more than another, it is to listen to your inner guidance and trust it. Having a written personal life mission will help you filter through the noise.
This leads me to tip #2 - Set intention - follow intuition. We were all born with an inner GPS, a guidance system, if you will. It is called intention and intuition. Our intention is how we tell the GPS where to go. For example, I intend to have a business that I feel excited to show up to every day and that leaves others feeling excited about having worked with me. This intention sets the parameters for where we want to go.
Intuition is like the Google Maps voice that says, “Turn left in 200 feet.” Our inner voice - our intuition - will ALWAYS and I mean ALWAYS give us guidance when we are faced with a decision. The challenge is sometimes hearing it, but often it is trusting it.
Allow me to demonstrate - have you ever had a niggling feeling or thought that you were forgetting something as you left for work? You pause for a moment to think about it, but you are running late and nothing popped up so you left only to find once you are at work, or even while on your way, you suddenly remember what IT was? Oh man, this has happened to me too! I’ve learned to trust the voice so much that I don’t leave until I know what it is I forgot. I just assume there must be something and when I relax about it I suddenly remember what it is. Only when I’m stressed and in a hurry does it seem impossible to remember.
Like i said, your INTUITION will ALWAYS tell you the truth. You can trust it! What is even cooler is when we set intention we activate a part of our brain that helps us find what we are searching for. Our intuition will communicate with us to help guide us to it. It’s cool how these two God given talents work together.
Here is how you can start applying this tip in your life - Before making any big decisions or even small ones, set an intention for how you would prefer the outcome to be. Then start living your life going through the actions and pay close attention to your intuition. When you get an guiding thought dont over ride it with logic! Simply trust it.
Once we have our personal mission and we are getting better at setting intention and following intuition it is time to sort out what business idea will serve us.
Start by setting an intention to find a business idea that is aligned with your mission. It may sound like this, “I intend to have a business that allows me freedom in my schedule without compromising my income. I want to feel excited to work on my business and I want to attract clients that value my services.” This is a very clear intention that does not focus on the details and that is what you are going for in the beginning.
The next step is to make a list of things about you that could be your forte. Here are some questions to journal about later.
What is something that people often ask me for advice on?
What is something I enjoy giving people advice on?
What do I like to learn about?
What type of things do I enjoy?
Do I have any hobbies or interests that I would enjoy teaching others about?
Do I enjoy working with people or would I prefer a business with less human interaction?
What are things I'm naturally good at?
What do other people see as my skills? I would ask them
Like I said before sometimes its helpful to know what to look out for and I have found that Im often more clear about what I dont want than what i want. I dont recommend dwelling on the negative but I do advocate using the donts to get clear on the dos.
Here are some more questions to help you…
What are some definite not things that I do not want to do in my profession?
What are things I’ve done in the past that felt wrong or out of alignment with me?
What have I seen other people do that I could never see myself doing?
You may be thinking the list of negatives could be super long, I mean there could be thousands of things I would not be into doing. The point is not to list every single thing you wouldn’t enjoy, but rather to notice the ones that jump out at you. So for example, when I was asked what is one profession I could never see myself doing, I immediately answered, be a CPA.
The idea of tax rules, regulations, precise numbers, and spending hours sorting through financial messes just sounds dreadful to me. I am so grateful for all the people who think this is fun because they are the people I employ to help me with this.
Now, let me show you how I use this negative to help me find my way. I learned some things about myself by analyzing the profession of CPA. They spend time alone with numbers and papers. This already sounds like a turn off. Why? Because I love to work with people directly, not just their paperwork. Ok, so I like people.
What else? Well, when I think of a CPA I think of rules and regulations and reading the rules and having to follow them so strictly. I have always been feisty about conforming to rules. So it doesn’t surprise me that I don’t like this. But, it also shows me that I like the freedom to grow and learn new things. I would like a career where breaking the rules is considered smart and creative. This is what I love about marketing. I love trying new things, learning new things, and breaking the norms - being different and helping brands stand out.
So, see, I learned a lot about what I do like and what I am passionate about by only listing one profession I absolutely could not do.
Now that you have a framework for what you like and what you dislike now you can make a list of businesses that you think would align with you!
See, this right here, is where so many people start and really it should be closer to the end. Often people search, what side hustle jobs pay the best. Or what is the best online business to start?
When you do these searches you may see a list of ideas such as this Google search
5 Most Profitable Online Businesses
Training.
Selling Digital Products.
Blogging.
Freelance writing and other freelancing. ...
Amazon FBA.
When profitability was my focus it left me feeling unfulfilled. I started by trying to find a profitable niche rather than finding what is something I was passionate about, I am interested in or even good at and I was left feeling uninterested. Ultimately, before we go down the bunny trail of pinpointing our passion we need to first have a clear intention about what we intend to experience so that we can use that as a measuring stick for likeability as we explore new ideas.
It is possible to have your passion right in front of you and not be able to see it. Sometimes we need to have someone outside of ourselves help us see the solution that is before our eyes. We may have a skill that we don’t think other people will find valuable or maybe we just write it off altogether without even realizing it is a skill. For example, recently I hired a business strategist and in our first conversation she asked me what I do for my current employer and I told her about the podcast I manage for them and all the content I create. She asked if I found this easy or hard and how I felt about it. I explained I felt fine. It was pretty easy and I enjoyed it. She was blown away because SHE knew that most of her clients struggle with content creation and there I was telling her it was easy.
The fact is because it was easy is the very reason I assumed it was easy for everyone and who needed my help with that? Well, that was my thought anyway. As it turns out, many people want my help.
But, here is where things get even more interesting. Just because content creation comes easy to me doesn’t mean I want to make a career out of it. Just like Facebook lives came easily. It didn’t light me up.
Using my mission statement I was able to pinpoint exactly what my passion is and it happens to relate to content creation. I wanted to make sure that whatever business I create it lights me up so finding a subject that I found riveting was a must.
I love to study and discuss the psychology behind why people buy and how to use language to motivate others. It dawned on me that I have been interested in human psychology since college. I wanted to major in human psychology but I wasn’t sure then exactly how I wanted to apply that to my life.
Over the years I have taken classes and read or listened to others who discuss this subject with rapt attention. I then love to go around and talk about it with others. This is how I know this is a passion. Now, I am turning that passion into a profitable business.
You can do this too. As you go into pinpointing your passion, use your mission statement to guide you. Set an intention and use your intuition to verify that an idea aligns with your mission. Then try on different ideas. As you go you will find things you love, others you don’t and some are meh. Only stick to the ones you love. And if you find that you need some guidance along the way You can book an appointment with me on my website at www.thepassiveincomeexaminer.com
Today I leave you with this quote by Marc Anthony: “If you do what you love you’ll never work a day in your life.”
Ok friends, I hope this episode was inspiring and helpful. Help others find this podcast by reviewing and sharing. Until next week. By for now.
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