Winston Churchill said, “The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”

Over the course of 16 years I’ve heard from thousands of people struggling with so-called career “problems.” These problems invariably involve reasons why they can’t (or won’t) pursue their true passion.

I don’t mean to be dismissive of anyone’s feelings. Clearly to them these things certainly *feel* like problems.

It’s just that when you view the world through the lens of optimism and creative self-employment as I do, you discover that most opportunities come disguised as problems.

This article began as a response to a deluge of FAQ coming in from people interested in “profiting from your passions” career coaching I do. Half way through my response I realized that the same mental roadblocks that keep the people you’re about to meet from pursuing this particular path are really no different than for most of my readers seeking to change course. Fortunately, the solutions are universal as well.

In fact, these problems are no different than those I hear from anyone on the fence about making the leap from having a boss to being their own boss.

The good news is most problems that seem daunting are actually pretty easy to solve.

Easy To Solve Problem #1:  “I have too many interests”

Kate has lots of interests – none of which have anything to do with her work as a financial analyst. She describes herself as “addicted to scrapbooking,” spends hours happily researching things online, and before she got stuck with a two hour a day commute, was an avid golfer.

Another one of Kate’s passions is being a cheerleader for following one’s passion. She writes:

“I’m always looking at possibilities and trying to help my friends or co-workers or even total strangers who know they’re on the wrong path.” Adding, “One friend who is a cat lover calls me the answer lady because I’m constantly researching cool things she could do in the cat world”

The idea of people actually paying her to do what she’s been doing all along for free is, in Kate’s words, “too good to be true.”

But Kate is worried. “What if I take your course only to find out it’s not THE passion?”

The Opportunity

First, I deal with clients on a weekly basis who have been so beaten down by their 9-to-5 grind that they no longer even know what they love to do.

So loving lots of things is actually not a bad “problem” to have. It means you have options.

Still Kate is afraid that by saying ‘”yes” to one thing, she’ll be closing the door on other options.

Barbara Sher literally wrote the book on so-called “scanners”. It’s called Refuse to Choose. Trying to pick just one interest she says, is like trying to decide which kid you’re going to feed! They’re your passions so you have to find a way to feed them all!

Being an “outside the job box” career coach or teaching scrapbooking or leading golf trips doesn’t need to be the one and only thing Kate does.

She can do any one of these things for 3 hours a week, 10 hours a week, 20, 30… Or in the case of the golf outings, it could be a few times a year.

Not only will life be more satisfying but in the end you may end up making more money. Which leads me to the next “problem.”

Easy to Solve Problem #2: “Will I make enough money?”

Matt has been unemployed for a little over a year. As devastating as it was to lose his job, he’d been miserable in his programmer job for ten years.

“I always wanted to be my own boss,” he tells me. “But I never had the nerve.” Matt is inspired by the idea of helping other burned out programmers find their calling.

His big worry: “Will I make enough money?” Sound familiar?

So often we get hung up trying to come up with that brilliant business idea to replace our salary that we miss the opportunity.

The Opportunity

Money is always going to be a concern.

The solution is to understand both the beauty and the functionality of Barbara Winter’s brilliant concept of creating multiple income streams.

When I started out, I had two profit centers – my job at the time (which my friend Suzanne Evan’s encourages aspiring self-bossers to think of as your “business loan”) and one eBook. Now I have at least seven.

Instead of feeling pressured to make $75,000 a year doing one thing, think in terms of doing say three things that each generate $25,000. In Kate’s case, these profit centers might be very different.

For Matt, they could all relate to the same central theme of helping other programmers escape the job box. In addition to having individual client’s he could do group coaching or offer workshops.

He could also research or do interviews with programmers who’ve started cool side businesses and create an information product called “21 Fun and Profitable Ways Recovering Programmers Can Make Money on the Side.”

When you realize that in order to hit your first profit center goal of $25,000 means only needing to bring in a little over $68 a day, it feels more doable. Heck I could probably sell stuff in my basement on eBay and make that.

And remember, you don’t need to do everything all at once. Start one profit center. Then once that’s got some head wind, launch another.

Bonus tip: Unfortunately too many people spend all their time fretting about whether they can make $100,000 that they never end up doing. If that’s you, why not see how much fun you can have making your first $100 and go from there.

Easy To Solve Problem #3: “Is there really enough of a market for this?”

A few years ago I received this from Joanne:

“I work in a large dysfunctional organization. There’s a big shake up going on and lots of bad management decisions. Everyone is miserable — including me. I’m the one everyone comes to for advice about how to get through this mess but I know they aren’t the types to quit their jobs to follow their bliss.”

“I desperately want out but I’m just afraid there’s not enough of a market out there for this kind of work.”

Even though Joanne is worrying specifically about the market for outside the job box career coaching, the same advice applies when considering any potential business.

Opportunity

Let’s review… Everyone around her is miserable… and Joanne doesn’t think there’s a market for people who can help burned out cubicle dwellers get the heck out?!?

Determining market potential is basically a number crunching exercise. Let’s just take Joanne’s own company as an example.

If there are 100,000 employees and only 5 out of every 100 were open to exploring creative ways to make a living without a job – that’s 500 people in her company alone. The same thing is going to be true for employees of the hundreds of thousands of big corporations around the world.

In fact, according to the Kaufmann Foundation, baby boomers are the fastest growing group starting businesses. As one of my trainees just told me, “I want to finish the program for one simple reason; with 10,000 Baby Boomers a day turning age 65 the market is incredible.”

Then there’s the fact that everyone looks to Joanne for advice.

Of course, as Joanne points out, not everyone is eager to jump on the entrepreneurial wagon. In fact, she says many of her co-workers are afraid to even change departments within their same company.

Here again, problem or opportunity?

What that tells me is Joanne has an additional pool of potential clients with a different challenge. After all, not everyone understands how to survive corporate life never mind thrive there. Joanne does. And remember people already look to her for advice.

She could expand her consulting practice to work with people individually or run workshops for people on how to navigate the stress of working in a dysfunctional workplace or going through a big organizational change.

Joanne could also help people who suck at positioning themselves for promotions or moving into more interesting functions within the same company.

You can do this same exercise for just about any passion. Not sure there’s enough of a market to buy your signature cheesecake or pay you to handle their social media?

Ask all your Facebook friends to tell you on a scale of 1-10 how much they love cheesecake or are comfortable in their ability to leverage social media to grow their business. If even 10 percent go with 8 or higher, you’ll know there’s a market.

Keep in mind too you don’t have to serve everyone in the world – just enough to start earning some money.

Wayne Dyer said, “There is no scarcity of opportunity to make a living at what you love; there’s only scarcity of resolve to make it happen.”

How can you turn your problem into an opportunity? And what one thing will you resolve today to realize your own dream of making a living at what you love?

Ironically, the ability to quickly translate problems into opportunities is one of the techniques these students master in the Profiting from Your Passions® Career Coach Training program.

Seats are going quickly for the February training. I’m not sure if I’ll offer this program again this year. To learn more about whether getting paid to brainstorm is right for you, go to http://profitingfromyourpassioncoach.com/

What if you could be at home — or anywhere in the world — and get paid to brainstorm with clients over the telephone about creative ways they can turn their interests into income.

Stay at home moms, recently downsized or retired folks, returning vets, recovering attorneys all have one thing in common…

They’re hungry for ways to make money without a j-o-b.

If you’re bullish on self-employment, naturally think outside of the job box, and want to start or grow an existing coaching business doing what comes naturally, then in literally a few weeks you could be earning income as a licensed Profiting from Your Passions Career Coach.

I recently shared this short video with the 400+ people who’ve already expressed a keen interest in being a part of the next training.

You’ll discover the 3 key characteristics you absolutely must possess to effectively help others see ways to turn interests into income.

The video also answers to some of the most pressing questions received so far from the coach training survey.

And, you get to meet my dog Cokie Roberts. too!

Registration for the next Profiting from Your Passions Career Coach Training doesn’t open until next week.

Game Changing Resources that Your School Guidance Counselor, Your Career Counselor, and Your Own Mother Never Told You About… But I Will
Information truly can set your clients (and you!) free.

On this informational webinar, I’ll share 5 of my most frequently recommended resources.

These are the kinds of game changing resources that help my clients go from wishing they could make money without a job to doing it!

There’s a reason most people don’t know about these resources.

That’s why you’ll also discover 10 important ways in which Profiting from Your Passions career coaching differs from traditional career or life coaching.
Monday, January 23rd
12:00pm Eastern

Please understand that I want to be able to ensure I can adequately support everyone who registers. For that reason, spots are limited.

So if you feel called to help others to find their calling, I strongly suggest you sign up here to get your name on the “first in line” list for priority notification when the doors open sometime next week.

Katharine Graham said, “To love what you do and feel that it matters, how could anything be more fun?”

If you truly want to change course, you need to stop thinking about what’s “realistic” and instead think about what’s possible.

For those of you who’ve been reading this newsletter since 1995 or even for a few months, this may seem obvious. But I assure you, not everyone is on the same page.

That point was really driven home a few years ago when I hosted a small dinner posted for a few friends.

One of my guests was taking a Spanish class. So I mentioned the invitation I’d received from International Living magazine to speak at a conference in Panama for people who want to live and work overseas.

Before sitting down for our dinner, I gave my dog Cokie his. As I mixed up a concoction of chicken and sweet potato, I reminisced about a delightful woman I’d recently met while in Paris who makes her living as a professional dog chef.

As we retreated to the living room for dessert, one of my guests picked up a copy of Sir Richard Branson’s biography on my coffee table. Much to her surprise it was autographed.

That of course required an explanation of how I wound up being part of an intimate “pick [...] Continue Reading…

A part of you can’t wait to dive into your new career − but you’re also smart enough to know that you can expect a few bumps along the road to success. By far, the biggest roadblocks exist between your own two ears!

Let’s take a look at three common mental roadblocks and learn how to overcome them.

ROADBLOCK No. 1: Wishful Thinking

How many times have you wished you’d hit the lottery? Now, how many times have you actually won the lottery? Far too many people spend far too much time wishing when they should be dreaming.

So, what’s the difference between wishing and dreaming?

Wishing is passive. We wish for things over which we have little or no control. We wish we were taller or thinner. We wish the waiter would hurry up. We wish our boss wasn’t so [you fill in the blank].

The other thing about wishes is that they are often tinged with regrets about past decisions − both big and small. We wish we’d ordered the fish instead of the chicken. We wish we’d taken the other job. We wish we hadn’t let the love of our life get away.

Dreaming is different. For one, a dream is active. Unlike [...] Continue Reading…

Share your words below.

You started out loving your chosen career – at least in the beginning. But over time, you and your calling, well, you just grew apart.

And just like a relationship that’s gone bad, it can be hard to walk away from a career or a small business into which you’ve put so much time and effort to say nothing of the financial investment.

Take my friend Donna. After earning her master’s degree in social work some fifteen years ago, she went into private practice as a family therapist. For the first five or so years, Donna got a lot of satisfaction out of helping others. For the last ten though, her work has felt more like a burden.

So what keeps her there? It’s simple. Donna doesn’t want to “waste” the degree.

I know it’s not easy to turn your back on an established career, especially if it’s one that pays well, has some prestige associated with it, or required earning some kind of advanced degree. And yet, think about the logic here.

What you’re really telling yourself is, “I’ve wasted the last 10 years of my life so I might as well throw away the next 20 as well. To hell with my [...] Continue Reading…

It’s getting darker earlier here – about 4:45pm. I can feel my entire energy shift with the change in light. Add in the cold, and all I want to do is sit in front of the fireplace with a good book.

Unfortunately I can’t do that full-time because I’m too busy marketing my own book. Since the last update, I’ve done four interviews for The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women. Two were for on-air radio shows, one for Yanik Silver’s Maverick 1000 club, and one for Maureen Anderson’s The Career Clinic show. I’m honored to be in such brilliant company.

I’m also just back from Las Vegas where my friend Ryan Lee organized two days of brainstorming and socializing with fellow entrepreneurs. On the first day, we took what was for me a repeat tour of Zappos. If you can take a tour, I highly recommend it. It will totally change how you think about work.

What other company do you know who has on staff a full-time life coach whose job it is to help employees achieve their goals outside of work? Here are a few of the outcomes that were written on the stairwell walls.

After the tour, we got [...] Continue Reading…

This week most Americans will be celebrating Thanksgiving. Our Canadian friends celebrated their Thanksgiving in October. Other countries and cultures around the world have their own days and ways of expressing appreciation for life’s abundance.

I happen to believe every day is meant for thanksgiving. I also think that recognizing the riches in our lives is integral to the process of changing course. Let me tell you what I mean.

Chances are, the reason you’re considering shaking up your life is that you’re unhappy with the way things are right now. In fact, you’re probably painfully aware of exactly what – or who – is contributing to your current misery. It’s your lousy job… or disagreeable boss… or annoying co-worker… or maddening commute… or the day-to-day pressures and stress of the job… you fill in the blank.

You’re “here” but you desperately want to be “there.” And while you may not know exactly what “there” looks like yet, you do know this: You want your future to look very different from your present. And herein lies the challenge. How do you strive to fashion this future life, yet still live happily in the present?

In a word: gratitude. If you don’t like that [...] Continue Reading…

It’s been quite the whirlwind here. Even I’m amazed at what’s happened in the course of two weeks. For starters… drum roll please.

At long last The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women came out. At one point it was on three Amazon top 100 lists but the stats change hourly so now it’s just on one. I’m grateful to all the speed readers who took the time to write a review at Amazon and for to everyone for helping spread the word.

The next day I did a 19-station satellite radio tour from my couch before taking off to speak to the engineering department at the University of Colorado-Boulder about overcoming the impostor syndrome (rampant on college campuses).

I arrived early enough to be able have lunch at the Dining Hall at Chautauqua. Being there brought back SO many wonderful memories of the Making Dreams Happen workshop I’d put on there back in 2003 with the phenomenal Barbara Sher and Barbara Winter. It truly was life changing. I was so inspired I’ve been thinking about a reunion! If you were there — call me!

It had snowed in Boulder earlier in the week and the combination of fall leaves on snow was exquisite. [...] Continue Reading…