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How to Find Your Passion & Turn It Into a Living (Step-by-Step Guide)

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Many careers can be life-draining.

Nearly 85% of people hate their jobs. 😩

But work you love can also be a source for finding purpose.

…A supply of great joy, fulfillment, AND wealth.

And that’s why I’m a huge proponent of telling anyone searching for their purpose through work this:

If you CAN make money on your true passion, do that for your career.

Not only is that a major key to fulfillment, but it’s vital in keeping your interest long-term.

So if you’re asking yourself, “What is my passion?”…

…I’m so excited you’re here.

Because we’re ALL FOR “loving what you do.”

But I want to show you how to actually make money doing it.

And yes, you CAN do it.

You see people all around you doing it… don’t you?

Even if you think your passion isn’t lucrative (somebody made millions on a farting app, my friend).

This is your life, and you get to decide what to do with it. 💥

And if you want to make money doing what you love, you have every right to pursue that.

Let’s just make sure you’re strategic about it, so you don’t waste your time, money, or energy.

I’ve put together this ultimate guide to show you how to find your passion step by step, as well as the truth about building a business and making a profit doing what you love.

Let’s not wait another moment. Here’s exactly how to find your passion and tap into it.

Table of Contents

Asking Yourself ‘How to Find My Passion & Make Money From It?’ Here’s the Truth

What Being Passionate About Your Work Really Looks Like

12 Steps to Find Your Passion and Make Money Doing It

Start Building a Business From Your Passion Today

Asking Yourself ‘How to Find My Passion & Make Money From It?’ Here’s the Truth

Many, many people I meet who learn I work with heart-felt entrepreneurs open up to me and tell me, “Julia, I’m struggling to find my passion.”

And I get it.

Once we close those motivating books and snap back to reality, there’s so much normalized fear in our society.

We’re taught to feel it’s indulgent to pursue the “life of your dreams.”

It breaks my heart. 💔

There are so many programs and coaches out there pushing profits over passion.

For example, a YouTube commenter asked me if I ever heard of someone teaching people to do what they hate doing.

“He trashes the very idea of starting a business out of your passion.”

That is off-the-charts bad advice.

Because to sustain a business — you really do need to love it. As intangible as that feels, it’s the root of success.

It can be done.

But to do this, and to make money from whatever niche you love, you need to get the skills.

Period.

Not just the creative skills, your Ikigai, but the business skills that will help you monetize your dream.

If you can accept that… you’ll be one step closer to figuring out your passion and turning it into a living.

So regardless of how “not marketable” your passion feels, even the most bizarre, niche thing can be turned into a real business.

Take these examples:

  1. An animal lover/entrepreneur wrote a highly-rated book dedicated to building a million-dollar pet brand
  2. Completely wacky, off-the-wall, and fun ideas that have made millions like Wish Bones, the Pet Rock, and even the comical iFart app 💨
  3. The highest-selling supplements are NOT big brands, they’re actually privately owned

leading multivitamin brands are private

Source: Statista

So, no matter how wild you think your true interests are…

There IS a real pathway to do this if you’re wanting to learn how to find your passion and make money from it.

But it’s more than just believing in yourself.

You have to teach yourself the skills you need to make it happen. 📚

The way you run your business and the skills you need for it are completely different than what you do (your passion).

That pet brand author had to learn not only about animals but also how to publish AND promote a book.

And I’m a writer at heart, but if I didn’t learn how to:

  1. Hire
  2. Delegate
  3. Market
  4. Manage my finances
  5. Implement a tax savings business structure
  6. Invest

…and more, I ALSO would’ve failed long, long ago.

It takes money and an investment mindset to invest in yourself, which a lot of people miss out on because they want a quick win.

If you want to learn how to find your passion and turn it into a living, knowing this is key to starting a brand that lasts and not being part of the 70% of businesses that fail before ten years.

What Being Passionate About Your Work Really Looks Like

There are a lot of things to unpack when you’re figuring out how to find your passion and make money on it — like if the work you want to do is truly what you’re passionate about.

There are too many people getting burnt out in careers they thought they would love, and feeling extremely confused. 🤷

How can you tell if you’re actually passionate about the work you’re doing?

Look for these signs:

  1. You can engage in your work for hours without getting distracted
  2. You sometimes have to pull yourself away from what you’re doing
  3. You look forward to tasks that you haven’t even started
  4. You’re proud of your finished product, even though you know you’re working and learning every day to get better
  5. You’d keep doing it even if you didn’t know if you’d “succeed” or not
  6. When you’re deep in work mode, it feels thrilling and like you’re “in the zone”

in the zone

You know the saying, “Time flies when you’re having fun?” The truth behind that statement can be the fuel that sustains your business and motivation for the long term.

And I’m not telling you that you can make a living off your passion just because I think it’s what you want to hear.

The reason I believe in doing what you love is because it’s the only reason I kept going for 10 years.

If I hated writing, there’s no way I could’ve built and successfully exited a multi-million-dollar content agency that thrived and grossed over $5 million.

It was because I loved to create. Because I loved to provide amazing content.

Those passions were the legs that kept me moving forward — even when I hit roadblocks, like when people screwed me over or major Covid income slumps happened and we had to scramble to recover.

That passion was the one piece that kept me from throwing in the towel on my business’ most difficult days. 💪

If you want to make money fast, pursue money; if you want to make money with longevity, pursue what you love doing.

Because truly, the reason most people fail at a passion-based business is because they never get the skills to run a business, NOT because they picked a business idea that was based on their passion.

No matter what anyone tells you — your family, your friends, your upbringing, you have a right to find and pursue your passion, as well as to make money from sharing those skills.

You have a right to want to work around other people who love the same things you do.

You have a right to make your dreams your reality. If no one else has yet, I give you full permission and you have my unrelenting support of this pursuit.

12 Steps to Find Your Passion and Make Money Doing It

Once you discover how to find your passion and make money from it, you’ll be living and working like very few people do.

In today’s world, these are the steps you’ll need to follow to help you find your passion and turn it into a profit.

It’s 100% OK to not be an expert in your passion. 💯

(And on the flip side, just because you’re really good at something, doesn’t make it your passion, either.)

So, at the very beginning of this passion-finding journey (and frankly, every step along the way), you need to ditch the overconfidence.

Over 10 years and 100,000 hires and fires at my writing agency, I saw overconfidence in a degree or in an impractical “skill” that doesn’t translate to real-life holding the majority of people back.

This is part of why I started realizing a modern marketing degree may not be worth it for many.

I wrote a book about skipping the degree & saving the tuition in favor of building your own brand. Buy now on Amazon (available on Audible, too!).

Buy Skip the Degree, Save the Tuition

It held them back from even being WILLING to invest in themselves, including buying a straightforward course and learning the real skills they needed to push forward with their passions and success.

Sure, no one wants to spend $50,000 on college just to turn around and still have to spend $1,000 on a writing course. But hey, that $1,000 will be worth 5x the college bill if you just spend one week studying a practical skill and emerge with REAL writing chops! ✍️

Step 2: Uncover Your Work Interests & Passion

I consider myself blessed that I knew my passion at a very young age.

But even if you’re just now learning how to find your passion in your 30s, 40s, 50s, or beyond, that pursuit demands the utmost respect — many people lead their lives never knowing.

It was bubbling just below the surface, but I still had to uncover how to find my career passion. 💕

And not only do I love it, but writing is a viable skill I was able to harness into a lucrative business.

Here are the questions to ask yourself that can help you discover your passion:

  1. What do you love doing?
  2. What do you tab away from your day job to read about?
  3. What are you good at doing?
  4. What could you spend your time on every single day?
  5. What do other people do for work that you think looks amazing? (I.e., what’s your dream job?)

Some people will have one solid answer after running through these questions and exercises. Others may have several, but a general theme could start to emerge. That’s wonderful news because you’ll want to go broad here — which we’ll cover next.

Step 3: Establish the Niche You’ll Serve & the Offer You’ll Create

I’ve got fantastic news about this little passion test you just put yourself through.

You don’t have to go too narrow.

Nope, you do NOT have to speak to only one group for the rest of your life.

I’ve used this same technique after building separate successful offers for multiple markets, so I know this works.

But if you’ve ever heard the phrase, “The riches are in the niches,” you might be questioning keeping your passion-based business idea too broad.

Here’s the thing:

Yes, you want to establish a specific niche, but you can also expand into serving several groups. If you don’t, you risk chasing the “quick and easy,” which doesn’t translate into a long-term, sustainable brand — no matter your passion.

For example, you’ve done the exercise above and discovered your career passion is proofreading. 📝

You can then target up to three groups that you want to work with/are familiar with to help with your skill:

  1. Course creators + consultants
  2. Entrepreneurs + agencies
  3. Female entrepreneurs

The importance of this can’t be overstated. You have to protect yourself.

The world is constantly in flux — and markets are volatile.

Focus on just one, and you risk your entire audience disappearing or simply losing their budget (helloooo 2020 and hospitality, retail, and education sectors, etc.).

industries worst affected by covid

But go too wide, or you’ll end up losing who you’re speaking to — and speaking to no one.

Finding that middle ground is essential.

Make sure to take this opportunity, before you’ve decided on your offer, to expand on your passion.

For instance, if your passion is writing short stories, you can build a passion-based business around writing. Keep the specific service you’re offering broad enough and you’ll easily be able to serve three groups (and keep your idea market safe).

If you’re really moving forward with your passion (seriously picturing yourself charging money for doing something you love) you’ll probably be surprised how easy these three groups come to you — because you’ll love offering them this service.

Step 4: Survey the Market (& Find Your Audience)

Before you launch your business… ask yourself this:

Who’s going to benefit the most from my service/offer? 🤔

This step is an incredibly exciting part of your passion-seeking and business-building journey. Here, you’ll be taking the idea you have, and molding it to create a product that fits a market need.

Before you launch your brand and website, you need to target a clear audience that your service/offer will transform (AND fits in the market).

Here’s how to do it:

  1. Do live market research
  2. Narrow down your perfect audience and business persona

business persona example

Your live market research will help you uncover your ideal audience because you’ll start uncovering commonalities — pain points — that you can help solve with your offer.

When you start discovering the repeated issues people are having — this can open up your business opportunities. You can use this vital information to craft an offer from your passion — one you KNOW is needed.

What’s really fun here is you get to gather tons of feedback from people who think exactly like your future customers. You can then mine all the data you’ve collected to find a common language among them — which can help you craft the building blocks of your passion-based brand (like a one-sentence magnet that draws people to you like crazy). 🧲

HOT TIP: Most brands are created WRONG because it’s the entrepreneur’s language — not the market’s.

Step 5: Build Your Foundational Business Blocks

Here’s where you’ll really start understanding how to find your passion and turn it into a business.

You’ll take the information you gathered from your live market research (that you absolutely, 100%, did not skip!) and start crafting your foundational business pillars out of your ideal audience’s own words.

niching down content takeoff

This should look like:

  • A powerful public-facing sentence that magnetizes clients toward you. Get your ideal customer thinking, “This is exactly who I am and just what I need.” This is likely to evolve along with your business, but you’ll want to make sure it’s front and center on your homepage, your LinkedIn profile, etc.

Example (Content Hacker): “We help passion-fueled entrepreneurs learn the strategy, systems, and skills to grow a sustainable, lasting online business.”

  • A description of what makes your brand completely unique. Your story and your distinctive point of view are important in both your passion and business. You’ll use this to blend it into everything you publish, so you’ll always stand out and never sound like the masses.

Example (Tesla): “Our products are innovative, sustainable, high-end, electric, and battery-operated.”

  • Note your biggest, wildest goals for this passionate brand. Research shows companies that last the longest and are the most successful established a few massive goals and values. Ask yourself what you’ll do better than anyone else in your market, and don’t be afraid to go big here.

Example (Microsoft): “A computer on every desk in every home.”

  • Craft a forward-facing mission statement. Use inspiration from your big goals, and what it will look like once you get there/are headed in that direction.

Example (Express Writers): “To create the best content on the web, by assembling the most passionate writers together.”

Because these pillars you’ve written will help drive your business forward for decades, or into six and seven figures, this step may be one of the most intensive parts of your journey in learning how to find your passion (but well worth it).

Step 6: Launch Your Name & Website

After you’ve completed the all-important above steps (and only after!), you’ll be ready to launch your brand name and website — it’s getting real, baby!

And because you did the right legwork, your brand WILL make money. 💥

Picking your name is fun, but don’t forget to be strategic here.

So when it comes to your name and branding, make sure:

  1. You have complete clarity when presenting to your ideal audience
  2. You state the value you provide (an adjective/a fun word reflecting what you offer)

For example, if you have a bookkeeping business, bookkeeping needs to be in your brand name.

Make sure to research brands that exist in your space for inspiration. Look for words you see repeated, and don’t forget to check testimonials and reviews for even more inspiration directly from relevant customers.

Just because you’ve found your passion, just because your business is based on something you love, this does not mean you can have a “hobbyist” website.

It needs to look good. 😎

To build a professional website, you’ll want to hire a web developer to do this for you. Don’t let yourself get lost in the weeds and burnout by trying to do this yourself — unless this is 100% your passion. The same goes for your logo (get a graphic designer).

Step 7: Learn the (Right) Way to Market Your Biz

If you’re still asking yourself, “How to find my passion and make money?” then I want you to know this:

Sustainability is what keeps you in the game long-term.

And the $400 billion content marketing industry will be what gets you there. In fact, it’s so powerful that it’s set to increase to a worth of $600 billion by 2024.

So, before you start paying for ads that put your website in front of an audience, invest heavily in a blog.

This is a long-term play — one that will pay off in dividends over time. 💰

But the ROI for content marketing can’t be ignored, and it’s the future of advertising. So regardless of the passion you’re building a business from, you need to learn how to market on your own platform — through your own blog.

This is going to be the foundation of everything as you learn the right marketing skills to get clients.

So start building your content marketing strategy today, before you worry one iota about social media.

Step 8: Learn How to Write for the Web

Even if you’re a great writer, you might not know the ins and outs of writing for an online audience.

It matters, and it’s a skill that can be learned.

Because these wild content marketing ROI statistics don’t lie:

  1. Nearly 80% of all internet users regularly interact with blogs
  2. Content marketing campaigns cost 62% less to launch and maintain vs. other types of campaigns
  3. The top three results on a Google search page get 75% of all clicks
  4. There will be 6 billion daily email users by 2025

Something incredibly important for online writing is mastering small business SEO blogging. (This can also be something you delegate to others once you build a remote team from scratch.)

But even if you’re not the one writing every day, don’t expect a passion-based business to last long-term without knowing how SEO and web writing works. They’re too important to success. 📈

Step 9: Track the (Right) KPIs

Once your passionate biz is up and running, you’ll want to learn about reporting on the right KPIs. Don’t overdo it here and cause burnout for yourself by reporting on everything under the sun.

Just track the ones that matter. Mostly, that’s going to be the impact from your content.

If you’re not measuring the effectiveness of your content marketing, it’ll be much harder to:

  1. Know if you’re doing this right
  2. Stay the course and keep going

Simply put, you’re going to want to look at what you’ve made, spent, and what you’re getting back.

how to calculate content marketing roi

Luckily, if executed correctly and consistently, your content’s ROI is going to be staggering. This number alone will inspire you to keep giving it everything. 🏋️

Step 10: Develop a Social Media Strategy

Truth be told, some social media platforms are better for your business than others.

Sometimes it will depend on the niche and where your audience is. But I usually coach my students to pick just one or two to focus on (and to ALWAYS have an established blog presence and website first… never rely solely on third-party platforms for your business).

For me, these are Instagram and YouTube. I get really personal with my Instagram, and I also enjoy it, so I focus on that platform.

And besides blogging, I’ve seen YouTube deliver the best long-term results due to its impressive lifespan of content.

lifespan of content

So within your social media strategy, a huge piece should be establishing a YouTube presence.

Step 11: Trademark Your Method

If you’ve got a truly original concept or method (and you’re passionate about wanting to protect it) go ahead and trademark or copyright your idea.

Especially if you want to prevent your business name from being taken.

It’s also a great way to be taken seriously. It’s got clout.

Here are two solid resources for this:

  1. You can check existing trademarks through the US Patent and Trademark Office.
  2. You can go ahead and register your copyright for your work.

You can do this yourself or use an attorney or legal platform to help you for additional fees. 💼

Step 12: Find & Pitch Clients

To use your passion to build your business, you’re going to need customers and clients! This is a very exhilarating stage.

You’re going to have two main ways you attract clients.

  1. Long-term: Consistently tap into the content strategy and marketing skills you’ve taught yourself. As your blog grows, so will your reach, and you’ll organically attract clients TO you vs. needing to pitch them.
  2. Short-term: A powerful outbound pitch will likely be the way you’ll land your first clients. If you’re doing fantastic work, you can expect referrals from both these clients AND your organic customers that came through your website.

Pitches can feel uncomfortable at first, but if you stay authentic to yourself and your passion, plus reach out to people who genuinely need your help, you’ll be finding passion-based work — and get on your way to the business (and life) of your dreams.

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