5 tips to turn your hobby into a powerhouse career
Corporate burnout is no laughing matter. For women, especially, the work-life struggle is proving harder and harder to juggle as our professional lives bleed more and more into our personal lives. Luckily, we live in an age of online-driven businesses that allow entrepreneurship and its sister, solopreneurship, to thrive.
According to the National Women’s Business Council as of 2012 there were 9,878,397 women-owned businesses in the United States—an increase of 2,086,282 businesses or 26.8 percent from 2007. This proves that women are looking for new opportunities to become independent and successful entrepreneurs and solopreneurs. Furthermore, the industry with the highest percentage of women-owned businesses relative to men-owned and equally-owned is Health Care and Social Assistance at 64.6 percent.
I spoke with Stacey Morgenstern and Carey Peters, co-founders of Health Coach Institute (HCI)—an online coaching school that was recently dubbed by Forbes as a lifestyle empire. Their program’s business and marketing pillar is to teach students how to leverage their skills to create successful businesses.
Morgenstern and Peters share their top five tips for transforming your passion into a profitable, purpose-driven career:
1 – Discover your true passion and once you find it, own it with all your heart.
Morgenstern and Peters teach that every change starts with the desire to want something to be different. The decision to say yes to the desire leads to acting to manifest the desire. Morgenstern says, “We call this ‘yes–ing’ your heart’s desires. So often we come from a place of ‘should–ing’ all over ourselves by taking on what others want for us. To be true to your heart and live your passion, you must drop the ‘shoulds’ and say yes to what you alone truly desire.”
2 – Surround yourself with people who both support you and stretch you.
According to Morgenstern and Peters, people often try to build businesses from scratch with either no support or the wrong support—too much stretch. Instead, they say that to become empowered in business, you need support from mentors, peers, friends, and family who hold your vision to be—without a doubt—attainable. Equally important is stretch from the right people who ask for goals and plans while practicing tough love. Peters says, “There has to be an equal balance of both support and stretch for there to be healthy personal growth that produces lasting and sustainable results.”
3 – Get empowered with skills you need to succeed and systems to make it easier.
Building a business is like building a house — it has to have a strong foundation to be formidable. “So many of our students have cried to us over the years that they wasted thousands of dollars and years of study that did not translate to making a living in the real world as coaches,” says Morgenstern. To counter that, Morgenstern and Peters have designed curated programs that Peters says, “Incorporate exactly what coaches really need to know to coach clients successfully and ditches the rest.” The right skills proven to create results and systems that are easy to follow will lead to success as a solopreneur.
4 – Step into your spotlight—it’s yours to own because there’s only one of you.
HCI’s “Step Into Your Spotlight” live events are what Morgenstern and Peters refer to as business game-changers because success does not happen in isolation. Peters says their live events are all about “claiming your personal power, owning it, and having it witnessed by your tribe.” She adds, “Our events have a strong focus on a money mindset because if you can’t foster a healthy relationship with money, how can you expect to attract it into your life? And if you don’t attract money, how can you run a business?”
5 – Become a mentor and share your success path with others.
A continual love of learning and personal growth are just some of the things that Morgenstern and Peters believe have contributed to their company’s success. As mentors themselves, they teach their grads that one of the best ways to accelerate business growth is to become a mentor to others who want to follow in your footsteps. Morgenstern says, “Not only do you get to inspire others to live their dreams, but by sharing your journey, you realize your mistakes and in so doing, teach yourself to constantly improve and innovate your own business models.”
Morgenstern and Peters agree that their school is founded on the maxim: “Love what you do, do what you love.” It’s your passion, they say, that fires up your business. As one of the only coaching schools to offer business and marketing training integrated into their curriculum, Peters explains, “It’s the combination of your passion plus the right skills that fuels your business and sparks success.”
