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Passion To Profit – Yes, You CAN Have Both
Friends, we have been lied to.
All our lives, we’ve been told that if you want to follow your passions, you’re going to follow it down a path that isn’t lined with profits.
And it’s all a lie.
Here’s the thing. You CAN do what you love AND make enough money to not have to worry about if you’re going to make rent. Taking your passion to profit is entirely possible if you work for it.
See? We were all taught that you have to work hard to earn your money. You have to break your back to get it. That you’re cheating if you find a way to make money doing what you love, and that it can be something easy. Something passive. Like passive income.
In Chapter 9 of Dan Lok’s book, F.U. Money, Lok writes about the money myth that claims you have to work hard to make money. You have to work hard or it’s not worth it. Except…that’s not the case at all. Lok explains why, and how no one is going to judge you for making money through passive income. The entire book is an enlightening read, and I highly recommend you check out my review in Required Reading. Then pick up a copy, and see how your mindset changes.
Yeah, you have to work for your money. It’s not going to come to you just because you want to make $10,000 a month. But you don’t have to work yourself to death to get where you want to be. You don’t even have to work yourself to death to make $10,000 a month. You just need to have the right systems in place. That’s the key to making money, even while you sleep.
*No, I’m not knocking CSUN. One of my best friends went to CSUN. Did you know that’s one of the filming locations for the Star Trek movie that came out in 2009? Google Starfleet Academy, and then go watch the movie. It’s one of my favorites. (But seriously, don’t ask me about Star Trek Into Darkness.)
My Passion vs. My Profit
I used to work in college sports. But not the glamorous side of college sports. There’s not a lot of money on that side.
Why? Because most of these institutions, even the big names that you all know and follow when football season rolls around, are public institutions. Think Cal State Northridge*, not Stanford. And hosting so many varsity sports teams is expensive. Football teams are expensive. Lacrosse teams are expensive. Baseball teams are so ridiculously expensive that I still scratch my head at Boise State’s decision chose to cut a slew of sports, including wrestling, in favor of starting a baseball program. But I digress.
Back to my point, being an Sports Information Director is not a field in college sports where you get rich. You have a great time, don’t get me wrong. After all, SIDs are the people who make your favorite coaches look and sound good on TV. Among many, many other things. I loved what I did, met a ton of amazing people, but there’s not a lot of money in it.
And when I was first starting out, I thought was fine with that. I made the decision to start working in sports when I was a sophomore Ibn college at the University of Arizona. I had the amazing chance to work at the 2011 Pac-10 (now Pac-12) Basketball Championships at Staples Center in Los Angeles. For many reasons, it was one of the coolest weekends of my life. Being surrounded by all the full-time SIDs who worked with the different basketball teams in the conference, I thought, “This is what I want to do.”
And I did it.
After graduation, I spent a transformative 10 months living in Alabama and working with the coolest softball team on the planet. When I was done, I got my first full-time position at Arizona State.
Pictures vs. Numbers
A few years in, and the sports information field started to change.
Now, it’s all about social media and digital media, and less about stats and record keeping. Unfortunately, stats and record keeping are my bread and butter, not the other way around. I figured out that it wasn’t working out for me, and I knew I needed to make a change.
So, I left the field, and it was the scariest thing I’d ever done. I’m not built for a desk job, because I’ve never learned how to HAVE a job that keeps you behind a desk for eight hours a day. And now that I’m in a desk job? I REALLY know that it’s not for me. I’m not cut out to spend the next 35 years behind a desk, beholden to my time card, weekends, and a few days of vacation.
It took some time, but I figured out what I’m passionate about, and how to balance that passion with making money. Right now, it means having a full-time job to pay the rent, but it won’t always.
I’m still passionate about sports, and am so lucky that I do get to work in some sense as a team statistician at ASU. My old boss has taken to calling me the Volleyball SID Emeritus. And I am definitely passionate about writing science fiction, I always have been. That’s why I keep my manuscript open and ready for edits before I go out and look for an agent again.
So I know what my passions are, and I know that I need to find a way to make time so I can truly dedicate time to following them.
Passion To Profit: How To Make Them Meet
The number one way for your passions to meet your profits is to create the side hustle that eventually makes you enough money that you can leave your 9-5 job and be your own boss. Make your own schedule. Dedicate one part of your day to your hustle and another to your passion.
Not only that, but your passion can BECOME your side hustle too.
Why do you think writers spend all their time writing, bloggers spend their time blogging, and coaches spend their time coaching? They’re passionate about the things that they do, and they’ve found their niche. A writer can be a lot of things. It can be someone who writes science fiction (like me), or a writer who writes military thrillers. As has been proven, a blogger can be anything under the sun, from writing about passive income to how to boost your SEO on Google. Even a coach only coaches about certain things that they know they can teach best.
What do you know best?
It all comes down to finding your niche. Get to the core of your passion and what value you can bring to your readers. Imagine your ideal audience, and what you have to to offer them. For me, it’s not going to be a blog about cooking recipes, because I don’t cook. But what I do have is a side hustle that guides people, teaches them how to create passive income streams that help alleviate the stress of having to pay rent. Because if you don’t have to worry about where your rent money is coming from, you’re instantly freed from many of the stresses that come up on everyday life.
I am very passionate about this, because I know this is something people feel seriously about. Everyone wants to make more money, but they need help figuring out their “why”, so to speak. But if you go into creating a passive income stream with a concrete goal in mind, then you’ll find it easier to make the money you’re looking for.
How can you take your passions and make them into your profits? Let me know in the comments.
How To Start Making Your Profit From Your Passion
And what is the one thing you need to create the side hustle of your dreams? The number one thing a side hustler needs is a self-hosted website.
If you’re ready to get started with setting up your own website, don’t forget to download my FREE Blog Startup Checklist. Not only does it include the actionable steps you need to start your own website, but the freebie printable has 50 different ideas for you to get inspired to write those first 20 posts. Don’t forget to get hosting (plus a free domain) for as little as $3.95/month through Siteground. You can read why I choose Siteground to host my websites in my post, 6 Reasons I Host My Side Hustle On Siteground (And You Should Too).
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