Turning a Passion into a Business
Abstract:
I have a reputation of being "against" people making money with their passion. It's a little more complex than that, though - I'm not against it at all, I'm just aware of the challenges.
Your mission today is to learn about the pitfalls of turning a passion into a business, and how to avoid them.
Join the community of wild spirits! You’ll get a weekly email (100% spam free!) with things like book recommendations and special offers I only share by email. Simply fill in the form:
Background: The nature of passions
The wonderful thing about passions is the way they light up your soul. There's sonething incredibly liberating about pouring your heart and soul into something that doesn't serve any practical purpose, something that only exists to make you happy.
It's liberating because it engages parts of our brains that are fairly neglected in our day and age. We're drilled to think in practical or monetary terms only. Anything that doesn't fit these categories, gets a low priority.
By prioritising a passion, hobby or interest, you rebel against this paradigm. This is why pursuing a passion creates such joy and happiness.
Task: How to turn your passion into a business
From the above, you can probably see why I often warn against making money with your passion. It means to subject your precious, pure source of joy to the mechanisms of practicality and profit.
Business, you could say, is located firmly in the left side of the brain. This can taint your passion to the point where it no longer brings you joy. I've seen it happen far too many times.
The cure is to protect the joy, the innocence of your passion. Create times when you're only playing around, doing or making something that will definitely never be profitable. These pockets of joy can keep the joy alive.
This also means that during your business hours, you can then focus on the practicalities. You’ll have more stamina and headspace for it if your life is balanced with some right-brain activity as well.
Transcript
Here follows the exact transcript of everything that’s said in the video.
There are obstacles associated with turning a passion into a business, but you can overcome them.
Hello, welcome to this week's Wild Spirits News. I'm Sibylle, and I help women between 40 and 60 to do lots of what they love and find their unique life purpose. And if any of this sounds interesting, check out my website, wildspiritscoaching.com.
Today's subject is 'Turning your passion into a business'. I've acquired a bit of a reputation for being "against" trying to make money with your passion. The truth is a little more complex than that. I'm not actually against it at all, I'm just also aware of the challenges. Your mission today is to learn where the pitfalls are of turning your passion into a business, and how to overcome them.
Background
The background to this is 'The nature of passions'. Now the wonderful thing about passions is the way they light up our souls. There's something incredibly liberating about doing something that has no practical purpose whatsoever and whose sole reason for-, the whole reason for you doing it is that it makes you happy, that it lights you up, that it increases your joy. And the reason why this is so liberating is that this kind of activity utilizes parts of our brains that we are brought up and trained to neglect in our day and age. We are drilled to focus on the practical and the monetary value, and if something doesn't fit these categories, it's automatically assigned a lower priority. By prioritizing a passion, you kind of rebel against this paradigm, and this is the reason why pursuing a passion or a hobby or an interest gives you so much happiness and increases your joy so much.
Task
So the task is 'How to turn your passion into a business'. From what I just said, you can probably already see why I sometimes warn against turning a passion into a business. It means subjecting that valuable, pure source of joy to the practicalities of business. Business, one could say, is firmly a left-brain activity, and this can taint your passion - to the point sometimes where it no longer gives you joy. I have seen this happening entirely too many times. The cure is to protect the joy. And you do this by creating time and space where you focus solely on playing around with your passion, on doing or creating something that you couldn't possibly ever sell or turn into money in any way, shape or form, so again, to do something that is purely for your own joy and that purely increases your happiness. By this, you preserve this innocence, this joy of the passion and keep it fresh. And when you do that, you can in your in the rest of your time, in your business hours, you can focus a lot better on the practicalities of business - on the money and the selling and the administrative stuff - when you balance out your life with these right-brain activities.
And this only leaves me to ask you where you stand on this. Have you turned a passion into a business? Would you like to, perhaps? Or would you rather just keep it as a hobby or an interest and protect that joy that I've been talking about? I'd love to see what you think about this, and I'll reply to every comment, I promise. You can either comment below the video or reply to the email that you got the link to the video with. And if you would like some more, like I said before, check out my website wildspiritscoaching.com. There you can also sign up for the Wild Spirits News, a 100% spam-free newsletter that's one email per week where I always make sure to include some actually valuable information that you don't get anywhere else, so it's actually worth it signing up for this, and this is not just some marketing spam newsletter, right? I'd love to have you. Have a beautiful week and I'll talk to you soon. Bye!