Passion, which is an intense feeling, can be leveraged into cash generation if you know what it takes to do it. The ongoing recession has taught many people to be highly discerning as to what knowledge and skills they have in stock that can be used to create economic value in a field they like best. They seek and pursue their passion. They exercise raw courage to go out of their comfort zone and do what they may have not done before to make a living, fully realizing that passion alone without action cannot deliver financial value.
People who have excelled in converting their passion into sales recognize the fact that passion has emotional dimension that should be managed lest it distorts the quality of one's thoughts and actions. They know that from the point of passion, they have to abide by the exacting discipline of selling to produce desired financial results.
How then do you translate passion into a stream of recurring sales earnings? The following outline the steps on how to evolve a passion-driven economic activity that generates reasonable financial benefits.
1. Know yourself, where you want to go, and what moves you.
To monetize on your passion, you need to know who you really are and envision what you want to become. Awareness and belief are the antecedents of being guided by your passion.
As a general rule, what you want to become must be aligned with your passion. The needs that prompt you, wants that stimulate you, and desires that drive you to high performance are prime builders of passion-bred economic activity. Note that you can never sell without complete knowledge and strong belief in your product. For this reason, you must know yourself and your passion because they represent the product you wish to make money from.
2. Do a self-assessment to check if you can manage and sustain your passion.
For instance, you might have an exceptional love for writing that you are quite zealous in being a successful newspaper journalist. But the key question is: do you have what it takes to be one and earn from it? Do you have the necessary fundamentals to start a money-making career in newspaper journalism? The resolution of these questions becomes even more critical if the exercise of your passion requires doing something you have not done previously, a new field demanding some sacrifices on your part. Do you have the psychological readiness to hurdle barriers knowing that it takes time to earn good money from journalism? What are you willing to put at stake in the pursuance of your passion? What all these questions suggest is a purposeful reconciliation of your goal with your capacity to achieve it. And your answers should enable you to craft easier ways to derive economic value from your passion.
3. Practice and update on the essential elements of your passion.
Whether you are full-time or part-time in the pursuit of your passion, embellish your credentials with new knowledge and additional skills. Regardless of what you want to become, now or in the future, there is no substitute for building premiums around your strategic intent. Always remember that no matter how intense and hard your passion is, it can wilt and cease to serve your purpose if you fail to acquire the needed tools to make it happen.
As one of my mentors had said, passion without positive action is plain and simple passivity devoid of any foreseeable gain. If you want to be a successful newspaper journalist, you need to read a lot, make purposeful research, interconnect with more people, assimilate new learning, and write regularly so that you can get indestructible knowledge about newspaper journalism and on topics you are most passionate about.
You may even change your writing style to suit a reportorial or editorial discipline. You may have to imbibe new points of view, terminologies, jargons, keywords, and phrases to capture dedicated reader's attention and loyalty. It is not unlikely that you have to upgrade your oral communication skills to be able to effectively conduct interviews in gathering first-hand information. You need to have a proactive learning attitude by engaging yourself in continuing education so that you can morph into a more prolific writer.
4. Make a plan of action and set financial goals.
Once you are convinced and confident that you have what it takes to sustain your passion and profit from it, waste no time to craft a workable plan of action with specific, measurable, achievable, results-oriented, and time-bounded (SMART) objectives. What you can do, what you can get, and where you can go from a no-nonsense exercise of your passion demand a plan-based performance where you take a center stage role. The tail-end of your plan is a statement of financial returns you expect to get from undertaking a passion-driven work or profession.
One simple and proven success technique in the conversion of passion into sales is to be guided by the all-time saying: big things come from small beginnings. This is where the virtues of contentment, patience, and focus assume great significance. A passion that earns a little has enormous multiplier effect on what you can subsequently do to scale new heights. Small frequent successes build confidence, capacity, and courage that enshrine you to a position of strength, feeling that your passion can make a big difference in your life. Small denominations of success can also give you added maturity to appreciate things that cannot be changed, and they help turn your passion into sales in much easier ways.
5. Learn from winning examples of passion-cash conversion.
The following are some remarkable examples of how some people achieved refreshing fulfillment from their passion amid prevailing difficulties:
Passion for Cooking:
Elmer wanted to increase his income because he was earning too little from his regular employment as a waiter. Due to prior experience, Elmer knew he could earn from his cooking skills without quitting his regular job. After some pencil-pushing where he learned that he could at least net $30.00 a day by serving a small clientele of ten office employees near his place of residence, Elmer contracted early morning deliveries of pack lunch. The result: Elmer began earning $600.00 a month from work that he liked best. The lesson: existing skills and prior experience promote ease in creating income streams from one's passion.
Passion for Driving:
Gerry has been passionate about driving, possessing exceptional skills and enormous reserved energy for it. To free himself from the bondage of uncontrollable fear and recoup money lost from a sudden reduction of his pay due to a massive company restructuring, Gerry decided to go into car pool service with people going on the same way to and from his office. The result: Gerry had four regular passengers paying $15.00 each daily for an added monthly income of $1,200. The lesson: being perceptive and imaginative about your strengths and how they can benefit others could help generate immediate earnings from what you like most.
Passion for Gardening:
Arturo lost his job as a handyman right from the first round of lay-offs by his employer. He was offered a similar job by another company at the same rate of $1,600 a month. Arturo did not accept the offer. He decided to stop being an employee. He figured out that by using 60% of his savings, he could instead pursue his love for gardening by setting up a small company providing garden improvement and maintenance services. The result: In three months, Arturo had 40 residential contracts from where he earned a net monthly income of $2,000. The lesson: Risk-taking, commitment, and industry are a crucial part of making a living out of your passion.
While America is in deep recession, it remains to be a land of opportunities where any passion that offers a compelling value continues to have a financial equivalent. Your passion to deliver a distinct value is the kind of passion that generates sales. Take the heat, differentiate yourself from the rest, and take advantage of the good your passion can bring about.