Iris is one of my idols. She’s unapologetically unique, a style icon and still crushing the game at 94 yrs young.
What I admire most about her is that she has been able to remain true to herself by doing what she loves and make a career out of it.
How many times have you heard someone say ‘find what you love and do that?’. I know I’ve heard it a million times throughout my life but I never truly knew what that meant. I thought it meant you should find something that someone else has already done or is doing and do that. As it turns out that’s not what it means at all.
Simply put it means doing something, anything that you love doing and you can do that for a living. Anything? You may ask. Yep – ANYTHING.
Let me explain.
In today’s day and age there is no reason why you should be doing something that you don’t love. So if that’s you then please STOP. The problem could be that you know what your passion is but you have NEVER EVER seen anyone doing it as their business. So what? It doesn’t matter what someone else is or isn’t doing this is about you and what YOUR passion is.
Gary Vaynerchuk once said ” If you like ALF write an ALF Blog, if you like smurfs – smurf it UP! ” Anything you love doing can be made into a business but in my view it has to, I repeat HAS TO be an absolute passion of yours. That way you can and will do it every chance you get and it’s not motivated purely by the potential to make money.
Let’s touch on that for a moment and use Iris as an example. Iris loves fashion today as much as she did 50 yrs ago. She did it naturally because it’s who she is. She did it so much and so well that it drew attention to herself (keeping in mind that this was before the internet, before blogging and social media) she then learned to apply her skill/love/passion to interior design – a related field you could say. Everything about her represented her beliefs and she did it BEFORE it became her business and before it made her any money. That’s the key.
You should apply this method to your passion and start tomorrow. Seriously.
Taking action is the most important part. Don’t invest time into trying to map it all out right now just go and do it.
Simply start by sharing what it is that you love with people around you, create a conversation around it and go from there. Use the next week just to connect with people that share the same interest and see how much knowledge you can gain and add to these conversations and you’ll start to develop a plan of how you’re going to go about it and what sets you apart from everyone else.
You don’t need to rush it because it’s not fuelled by money and your next bill payment isn’t depending on it. But just make a start and feel good about it. Then flick me an email about what it is you’re doing.
