The first question I won’t ask you is: “What is your passion?”
The reason I won’t ask is because it doesn’t matter. If you’ve found something that you are passionate about, follow that passion whether it will make you money or not. If you go into your journey with the sole intent of making money, and you don’t make it, what will happen to your passion?
Will you still be passionate about it any more?
Are you willing to love an idea so much, that you’re willing to risk going broke pursuing it? If the answer is ‘yes’, then you have a true passion. If not, then what is really driving that passion? Is it money? Is it your ego wanting status and prestige? The answer you come up with may reveal some learnings for you.
The second question I won’t ask you is: “What skill or expertise can you offer to people that they are willing to spend money on?”
This is the information age. If you don’t have a skill, buy the training for one online. Seek out night classes in your city. Learn anything new, whether it’s mastering a computer program, how to kayak, or even how to speed read. In fact, don’t buy any of these, and just watch free educational videos online. There are even full college courses that are available for free online nowadays.
You can become an expert in anything you put your mind to, even if:
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you have a full time job, and don’t have any time
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you have seven kids, and there’s no way to even think about learning something new.
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your favorite shows are on when you get home. and you can’t miss them.
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you believe you can’t learn anything new.
Well, for one, I have completed many books in the bathroom (not all in one sitting). So I’m sure there’s always time if you seek it. Secondly, if TV is that important to you, then become an expert on the shows you watch. Believe it or not, you can create a blog or podcast on the TV shows you watch, and people will start to follow you. Lastly, if you believe you can’t learn anything new, then don’t try.
Let me clarify that last sentence. Don’t try to learn anything new, just go out and do something new. When you are ‘doing’ things, you are learning them without even trying. Join meetups, take fun classes, do things that involve activity of any kind. Being involved is learning. And soon you will have learned something new.
What if you think everything you do fails? Well, isn’t that what happens to all of us anyway? We all fail eventually. If we don’t, then we can’t learn the skill set we need to maintain our wealth when we are wealthy. If you believe you are always failing, then transform that excuse into a personal growth story to share with others.
Everything is marketable when you know more about what you know than others.
One of the most motivational quotes I’ve heard is, “Fail as fast as you can.” Also known as the Fail Fast Strategy. It is a mantra I go by, because it keeps my focus on doing everything I possibly can to succeed, knowing that the more things I do, the more I will fail at them. And when I finally fail at failing, I will have success. Give that a shot!
You don’t need to have special skills or expertise to start your road to a bigger wallet. Just do things you enjoy, and maximize your knowledge of those things. And once you know enough, learn more. And soon, you will be an expert in what you love.
The final question you won’t hear me ask you is, “What’s stopping you from achieving success right now?”
If you really want to dive into your psyche and dig out all your limiting beliefs and unresourceful patterns, go for it! You will learn a lot, I guarantee it. But the world may go by faster than you think. And if you spend most of your time digging into yourself, without expanding into activity outside yourself, you will spend all your time learning, but not doing.
It reminds me of something John Lee Dumas of www.entrepreneuronfire.com said. He said learning and absorbing great information is like eating. If you eat and eat and eat, but never go outside and exercise , you won’t get anywhere, and will probably end up overweight and unhealthy. I’ve paraphrased it a bit, but he’s basically saying that you need to balance it out: Learn something, do something, learn something, do something.
Your ultimate goal is to outgrow where you are in life. And you must outgrow where you are in order to grow into where you want to be. More specifically, if you spend most of your free time learning about karate, but never do karate, you will only be book-smart. You will never be street-smart.
The book-smart person will have highly-educated opinions. The street-smart person will have highly-applicable knowledge. Which one do you think other people would be willing to spend money on?
- If you use Microsoft Word more than the average person, your skills just became monetizable.
- If you kayak more than the average person, your skills just became monetizable.
- If you practice, and learn all you can about speed reading, your skills just became monetizable.
When you know what you know well, others will want to learn from you. And they will want to pay you. Period. Does this make sense? What you’re essentially doing is condensing tons of valuable information into one package: You.
And having that, you will find an audience that knows little to nothing about what you set out to learn. And meeting the needs of others is how you make money. It’s a solid formula that you will find enjoyable, then profitable (if you so desire), by becoming the “street-smart” teacher.
What can you learn to do, or already do so well, that others would pay you to teach it to them?