Following your passion to business success
To be able to be passionate about what you do will inspire you, make hard work easier and make a great impression on others. As a customer, when you meet someone who loves what they do, that enthusiasm and passion will be contagious and you’ll want to buy what they are selling.
Once you find the thing that sparks the fire inside you and think of a way to turn that passion into a business you’re in a winning position, but don’t forget that even if you love it, it should still make you money!
The key to making money out of your passion is to understand how to charge for what you love to do. It is more valuable when you are passionate about it, not free because you enjoy doing it anyway.
I speak to a lot of caring, nurturing people who are trying to make a living through coaching, healing or treatments and they end up giving so much away and going above and beyond, so that their hours just aren’t profitable. Once they start to help someone they don’t want to ask for money at the end, so for them they are better off to charge at the beginning of the session and then be strict on the timing, in the same way a psychiatrist would do.
As well as working out your charging and feeling comfortable with allocating a value to your product or service, you also need to take control of your hours. You must ensure that you don’t put so much time into it because you just love it, but reach a point when you could never be profitable because the market will not pay for the amount of work you have put in. You need to be strict with yourself and know where to stop as you only have so many hours in the day, and those hours need to convert into €!
A business created with passion and made with love should be conveyed in your marketing and at the centre of your marketing strategy. You will always do well with the personal selling approach, as you are so enthusiastic about it, so don’t be shy and tell people about it! Go networking, if you don’t know how to do it well check out my networking tips, take part in events, sell your products into shops and get people as excited about it as you are – that enthusiasm is contagious.
Make sure that you brief your marketing agency properly to get across your passion and ensure your personality is expressed in the colours, brand and wording. You can also use social media to good effect when you love something if you think about how to get this across. If you’ve made a beautiful cake, take a picture and say so on Instagram, love your new coat, blog it, or enthuse on Facebook and make other people feel the love!
I love to teach, perform and help businesses and so I decided to channel those passions into marketing training. I found it scary to take the leap, but every time I hold a course it gives me so much joy and the feedback is so positive that I can’t wait to do another one. This part of my business injected a new enthusiasm into all aspects of my day-to-day role running a marketing agency on the Costa del Sol and I love it. This pursuit of passion is something which I would like to inspire in all business owners – you can love what you do and be successful, so give it a go!