When I was a teenager, trying to decide what I wanted to do in the world, I went to the school guidance counselor. She handed me a tome called All The Jobs In The World, and told me to look through it to decide what I liked. I poured over it. I hunted in every crevice, bored through each page, took personality test after aptitude test.
The results came up conclusive: I was born to be an artist-writer-priest-monk-public speaker-politician-social worker-leader. Excellent, I thought. That kind of hybrid job should be easy to find! When I was looking in that job book though, I didn’t see the job that’s become my life:
Leonie.
Who would have ever thought I could make my living (and my family’s living) from being a Leonie?
And yet here I am, making a wildly glorious income doing a job I adore. My love and I get to be stay-at-home parents to our daughter Ostara. We got to leave behind our city jobs and move to tropical paradise in Cairns, Northern Australia. I’m writing this to you from our treehouse in the rainforest, overlooking towering trees + luminescent green + turquoise butterflies.
It’s true: I’m one of those obscenely happy stereotypes of jumping out of a cubicle and into paradise.
All from being wildly + gloriously myself. Sharing my gifts with the world.
I absolutely believe that anyone can make a living doing that thing you adore.
Here’s my nine steps to getting paid for your gifts:
1. Start el pronto
Sweetie, don’t spend time waiting for things to be perfect. I am a massive proponent of diving in head first. Stop umping and ahhhhing over what you are going to do. Don’t wait for the perfect name or the perfect logo or the perfect website. Just dive in. You will learn by going there. If you haven’t got a website, start with a free one from Weebly.com – they are the most underrated miracle out there.
2. Embrace your crazy passions
Those crazy passions of yours? Chances are – others have them too. And they want to connect with you. They want someone – anyone – to lead a tribe of like-minded souls. And you can do it. You are the best one for the job, in fact. What’s the thing that lights you up inside? SHARE IT. Make a home for it.
3. Start writing + pour your heart into it
Blog it up, baby. Keep writing. Pour your heart out into it. Don’t hold back. Give it everything you’ve got. Think about the things that light you up inside, and share about them. It doesn’t need a theme. It doesn’t need an editorial structure. Just put YOU into it. The things you love right now. The things that have you thinking. The things that make you glow. Glowy is a catchy, infectious disease and you want to spread it.
4. Get out of your head and into your heart
Stop thinking about making it perfect, and just do it anyway. You don’t need to know everything – just do it anyway. Share as much as you can from wherever you are.
5. Build your tribe
Once you share enough and give enough, a natural tribe will form around you. And they will be your BFFs – because you’ve shown them all along who you are, what you adore, how you glow and what you do.
6. Workworkworkwork
Oh yus, and have I mentioned that you’ll work your tooshhee off? A business takes a bit of inspiration, a whole lot of faith and for the most part, a ginormo amount of workworkworkwork to get things flying. But that it’ll be okay because it’s something you utterly love doing.
And once it’s flying, you’ll be able to get the support you need to do to do less workworkworkwork and focus just on the important creating + strategy stuff that you do so well.
7. Grow your business muscles
I was a part time business goddess for a few years before it became my full time job. The turning point in my business came when I got so frustrated that my sweet lil creative & soulful hobby wasn’t earning me any awesome pocket money. And I realised I’d spent years building, honing and growing my creative and soulful muscles – but none into building business muscles. So I started reading reading reading books and blogs and investing in programs and coaching to grow my business muscles. But keep going, dearest. Keep reading, keep learning and keep putting it all into action.
8. The products will follow
Over time, as you write and listen and share and connect, you’ll know what your tribe wants. You’ll know what you can teach them. You’ll gently carve out a journey for others to learn from – whether it’s an e-course, teleseminar, e-workbook or consulting.
9. Keep playing
What I’m doing right now? I doubt I’ll be doing the same thing in 12 months time. All I need to do is keep creating what is right for me right now… and then evolve as things need tweaking. I keep playing with how often I post, what I send out to my mailing list, how I advertise, whether I have a membership program or individual e-courses, whether I do uber-soft launches or uber-excitable ones.
There’s no hard and fast rules. I just keep trying out what works and what makes me happy, and go from there.
If this happy hippy from Australia can make her whole family’s abundant living just from having a little ole blog, I’m so sure that you can make your own gorgeous life and living doing the thing that you adore – the thing that lights you up, and makes you glow.
You’ll be rewriting that Ginormo Book of Jobs to include the job of being you… the one that pays you for your gifts!
Love, joy + abundance,
P.S. Want to dive deeper?
Want to find out the practical parts + the marketing of how to make your dream job happen?
You’ll want to dive deeper into the Business Goddess program – my incredibly powerful + affordable tome of business wisdom + know-how!
