Beginner’s Guide: Turn Passion into Business
Turning your passions into a business doesn’t have to hurt or be complicated. In fact, turning your passions into a business often provides the freedom you’ve never thought imaginable. Oftentimes, it’s not the income but the creative freedom that you are after.
This beginner’s guide is meant to help you launch your creative pursuits into a fulfilling and sustainable career. This is not meant to overwhelm you or create stress. This is honestly (to me) the fun part of the business.
Knowing that you can become your own boss, create your own hours, and design a purposeful business that can help others is a feeling you can’t beat or ignore. I can relate because I also turned my passion into a career.
There is no better feeling than knowing that I am helping at least one person in this (sometimes lonely) world. You are unique and have a purpose; your business should reflect that.
Let’s break down these 9 important steps that turn passion into business.
Step 1: Discover Your Passion
This may seem like a no-brainer, but many people have no idea what their passion is. To turn a passion into a business, you have to have an inkling of what that passion is. This is the first step you’re going to take is a self-discovery journey. You’re going to want to ask yourself the following questions:
What did I want to be when I grew up?
How can I get back to that childlike wonder?
What energizes me versus what drains me?
What does my ideal life or dream day look like, step-by-step?
What do I want my life to look like in five years? What’s something I can do today to work towards it?
What is one passion project that I let slip away from me and would love to get back to?
Whose life have I been jealous of lately? What about their life makes me feel this way? Is there something about their life I want for myself? (Career, freedom, income, etc.)
What are some self-limiting beliefs that I have that make me think I cannot turn my passions into a business?
Make it an event and romanticize your self-discovery journey. Brew your favorite tea or coffee, light a candle, or even put on relaxing music. Find a quiet space and let your mind wander. This is also the time to have a life audit and really hone in on what needs changing or doubling down on.
Ready to live your life authentically? Read How to Find Your Purpose & Design the Life You Want.
After you have taken some time to reflect on what energizes you and what made you jealous (don’t be afraid of jealousy; that means there is something you want. You have the power to have it for yourself), it’s time to move to the next step.
Step 2: Build Your Ideal Avatar
Your ideal avatar is a fictional character that exists in the real world. Meaning they are a person (or a group of people) you think of helping with your products or services. For example, you name your avatar Katherine, and she will represent your ideal avatar (more on this later).
There are questions you can ask yourself to help specific people. You don’t want to help everyone because you wind up helping no one. This is the time to get detailed and specific. The main elements you want to focus on are lifestyle, marital status, age, gender, occupation, income, and education. You can also focus on their limiting beliefs and obstacles they may face. With this exercise, you are building a comprehensive picture of your target audience.
How old are they?
When you think of a problem to solve, what kind of person do you think of?
Are you solving problems for the stay-at-home mom, working population, or other aspiring entrepreneurs?
What are some of their fears, concerns, or insecurities?
What type of hobbies do they like to participate in?
Are they married and have a family? Single or divorced?
How much do they earn and how do they earn it?
The more you niche down and the more specific you get, the better you can serve your community. This is where you will find your loyal target customers. To go back to the previous example of Katherine, you need to build her out, and she will serve as a target (and reminder) for everything you want to create and introduce.
Ideal Avatar name: Katherine
Katherine is a 32-year-old mother of 2. She has a three-year-old and a seven-year-old and has been married for 10 years. She works full-time outside the home, making $5,000 per month using her business management degree. However, she would like to spend more time at home with the family. She wants to continue making $5,000+/month but desires a more flexible schedule to suit her and her family's needs.
She has thought of the idea of opening an in-home daycare center for a few days out of the week. Since she loves kids and wants to help other parents have flexible and affordable daycare options. This would allow her to stay home more often with her kids and make money at the same time.
However, Katherine is overwhelmed with the research, regulations, funding, and marketing. She believes that she doesn’t have the skill set to watch more than her own kids or run her own successful daycare.
This avatar allows you to always have that person in mind when creating your products/services. Whether you want to make a YouTube channel, a course, or a blog post, your services /products would always serve your community. You wouldn’t want to create a course on how to climb the corporate ladder if your audience is trying to escape the rat race.
Step 3: Market Research & Ideation
Now that you have some fun and cool ideas on what kind of business you want to start, it’s time to do some research. Unless you have a totally new and unique business idea, chances are there is at least one person doing the very thing that you want to do. Don’t let that scare you! This is a good thing; this means they have tested the market as well.
Before you start to spiral into a “why bother” mentality, your personal touch in your business will be why your business attracts your ideal customer. They are literally waiting for you because Person A’s business doesn’t quite get them, but yours will.
How To Test Your Idea:
Google, Pinterest, and YouTube are great starting points to find out if your idea is something your audience wants.
Create a low-ticket offer to test if this is something people are willing to purchase. For example, you want to create a course for aspiring chefs who want to start their own luxury catering business. Create and sell a value packed ebook for less than $30 and then gather feedback.
Measure your signups/purchases. If the idea fails, you’ll want to fail fast so you can move on to the next idea.
Make changes based on the feedback and retest your product. Measure the improvements
This is a cycle of building, testing, and gathering feedback.
This strategy also works if you want to open up a restaurant or a physical location. Figure out what is a viable product that is “good enough” to test the market with (you’ll expand upon it once tested). It could be making jalapeno bread for your bakery, or perhaps selling a free trial of your services for your life coaching business.
Step 4: The Creation Phase
After you have tested your idea, it’s time to create your idea. Let’s go back to the catering chef course creator (we will name her Jasmine). Jasmine has created her ebook, and turns out her audience loves it, and this is what has been missing in their market. With this information, she can now begin to create her high-ticket offer, her Lux Chef Catering course.
In this phase, find at least 5 people in your audience to contact for research purposes. Ask them some questions and gather some more feedback. Repeat as needed and gather testimonials. You can also network and connect with 5 people in person to grab feedback as well, over coffee.
This is where you’ll also figure out what medium you want to use to promote your course and sell it. There are many resources and storefronts you can use to help support you.
Blog/website
Shopify Store
Stan Store
Email Marketing
Networking (through in-person meetings, Facebook groups, hosting events, etc)
Local Small Business Networks
Small Business Advisors
There are many ways to offer your unique ideas and projects to your audience. You can open up a physical storefront, an online presence, or a hybrid. You can also set up a service-based business, a product-based business, or a hybrid. This is the time to test, test, and test some more as you learn what your audience likes, dislikes, and wants from you.
Step 5: Find Your Audience
If you already have a budding or existing audience, start here. Check Google Analytics or your websites built in analytics. This is valuable information that can tell you where you are getting the most reach and from whom. This will tell you where to double down your efforts and ease up on another.
This is where you’ll find that Pinterest and Facebook have the best conversion rate for your website versus LinkedIn or TikTok. Or that YouTube’s conversion rate beats Instagram’s or vice versa. But what do you do if you are just starting out or don’t plan on having an online business?
Good news, you can still find where your audience likes to hang out. Remember in the creation phase, when you reached out to 5 individuals for feedback? You can repeat that step, but try to meet them in person to gain intel you won’t gain over a survey.
Or begin networking in relevant groups. Study where your competitors are focusing their attention and niche down to reach the people they aren’t. Country clubs, doctors’ offices, or even sponsoring local sports events can be lucrative ways to find your ideal demographic.
For online businesses, study where your competitors are hanging out and look at their comment sections, and look for what they aren’t doing. Sometimes your competitors aren’t always listening, or some people aren’t 100% satisfied with them, so you should start paying attention.
For example, let’s say you follow Sallie (a potential competitor), who is a fitness influencer on Instagram. Sallie’s followers are constantly telling her that they want to see long-form content on YouTube. Sallie has yet to listen; this is where you’ll start to attract your audience. Keep track of where you get the most conversion and that’s where your audience is at.
Step 6: Create Your Community
After you’ve found where your audience lives, you’ll want to create a safe place where they can talk and get to know you. We live in a time where people want to know the face behind the business. People like being around like-minded individuals, and they can even learn a few things from each other.
Places to Start:
Facebook groups (still popular)
Instagram & TikTok
Substack
YouTube
WhatsApp
What matters most is that you create opportunities for people to know you are a human (thanks, AI) and get to know the person behind the business. This gives them a reason as to why they should follow and support you. Think Kim Kardashian (whether you love or hate her, she has a cult following), and many customers are ready to buy anything from her because they feel connected to her. This is what you are looking for, but on a much smaller scale.
Step 7: Boost up and Build a Combination of Skills
Becoming a business owner is not for the faint of heart. It takes many years and many skills to get your business off the ground. Many business owners have to wear many hats before they can outsource. Many times, you have to become a marketer, writer, graphic designer, editor, website builder, and so much more.
Learning these high-value skills can sometimes branch off into other businesses or add to your portfolio. Turning your passion into a business is an exciting time. Take the time to learn and boost your skill level. I recommend using this time to take courses and classes to start making money faster and smarter.
YouTube, other course creators, and SkillShare are very popular mediums to begin learning from experts in their fields. They made the mistakes, so you don’t have to. There are courses on just about every subject you can imagine. Blogging, graphic design, making planners, accounting, starting a daycare business, starting a content creation career, and so much more.
Step 8: Hire Financial Experts
This is where things get crazy. You start making some money and a lot of it. You’re going to need some help in making sure your books are squeaky clean. Yes, you could do it yourself and learn how to do it. However, you’re already 10 different departments and feeling short-staffed.
This is the one area where I’d recommend an expert handle your finances, and you handle booking that flight to Cancun. You’ll be sipping a Pina Colada and sunbathing in no time. Nothing beats knowing your finances are handled in the background, and your business is making money in your sleep.
Step 9: Mindset & Identity Shifts
Starting your own business will test you as you’ve never been tested. Confidence, comparison, and imposter syndrome are a few of the mental roadblocks that most face. Another one is not treating your hobby as a business, so it never grows. You have to start to identify as a business owner so you can make decisions as one.
Identity shifting is when you say, “I am a runner,” vs “I go on runs”. If you identify as a runner, you are more likely to stick to running. It’s no different than being a business owner vs owning a business.
Comparison and imposter syndrome will rear their ugly head. I’ve done it, and it doesn’t feel good. To combat this, remember that you cannot compare someone’s chapter 12 to your chapter 1. Your story is unique and valuable; you will help someone on their journey. Put your creation out there.
Turning your passion into a business is fun, exciting, and a major step to the next level. DragonFly Advisory is here to help you every step of the way. You don’t have to do this alone, and you can set your next passion project up for success. Book your consultation today!
