Have you ever heard, “You’ll be happy once you find your passion” but never exactly understood what it means? It sounds like this really great thing, but how do you even start to look for it?
The quest for your passion feels like the most messed up treasure hunt of all time. Maybe the treasure is buried so deep that you think you can never get to it, you need an entire crew to help you excavate it, or it doesn’t exist at all.
The process it takes to find your passion, what it looks like when you find it, and whether it’s a hobby and not a passion, is a lot different than we think.
Let’s dig into the difference between passion and hobby-based businesses and how to find your passion, realize what you want, and get a better sense of where you’re going in this lifetime.
Do you have a hobby-based business…?
90% of stylists are currently running a hobby-based business and that’s okay. It doesn’t mean you don’t work full time, love what you do, or won’t be decently successful. Most of us spend a portion of our professional time as hobbyists, but we need to have realistic expectations about what life will look like when our career is in the hobby zone.
There are some major differences between hobby and passion-based businesses, including success potential. Meaning, you can make okay money in a hobby business, but not exceptional money or live the freedom lifestyle most of us got into this industry for.
As a hobby-based business owner, it’s harder to make great money and create a beautiful life where we put our family first, work part-time, and serve our guests and community to our highest ability.
If those are our goals, being a hobbyist won’t work. We have to be in the passion zone. Use these three criteria to assess if you’re a hobbyist:
You really enjoy the profession
Most people go into a profession because they like it and it’s something they think they can spend their lives potentially doing.
Let’s use scrapbooking as an example. Maybe you see a friend scrapbook, you watch a class on it, or you see an example of one and think it looks like so much fun. You go buy all the stuff: the stickers, binder, fancy shears, and all the pens. You are so excited to start.
That’s how most of us felt when we joined this industry. Do you remember when you signed up for cosmetology school and got your kit? Or the first time you put color on someone’s head and had that rush of, “Oh my gosh, how lucky am I that this is my job?”
You go through highs and lows
Following our scrapbooking example, you make a couple of books back to back and give a few away as gifts. Time goes by, life gets a little bit busier, and the all-consuming hobby that took over your dining room table gets packed away into giant Tupperware bins. You shove them in the garage and think you’ll pull them out later when you have more time.
Do you do that with your career? Do you take time out and tell yourself you’re a little bit busy? Or do you still have everything you need but you put it in the garage for a second?
It’s being maintained, but it’s not the forefront. You don’t sit down to work on your business every night anymore.
If you get behind the chair and think, “I don’t even want to be here,” something is off. You’re not working on the right clients, doing the right services, in the right space, or might not even be working in the way you should. You need to deep dive into what makes you feel that way if you want to move into a passion-based career.
You dabble in other hobby businesses to see if they are a better fit
When we dabble, our business starts to slip. You can’t possibly give 100% of yourself to your business as a hair stylist and 100% to a new hobby business.
As soon as you start to split your focus between two hobby businesses, they each get about 30%, and that other 40% is the “What the F am I doing?” time. Those are really good indications that you are currently a hobbyist.
This makes sense because those Tupperware bins full of your scrapbooking supplies are in the garage next to your roller blades, your skis, your sewing machine, and the 50 bottles of essential oils you purchased last summer haven’t but used for months.
Those are all great hobbies to try out, but the reason they landed in your garage instead of proudly displayed in your home or used every day is because all they ever were was hobbies. They never became your passion.
…or do you have a passion-based business?
There is a very different set of criteria for a passion-based business.
Your chosen profession actually chose you
You might have sought it out initially, but it fell into your lap. It came really naturally. You don’t have to work really hard to make it happen.
If you’re struggling in your career but aren’t passionate enough to fix it, that’s a huge indicator that it’s not a passion. Just because it’s something you were trained to do or interests you, if it doesn’t come super easy and you aren’t inclined to fix it, it’s a sign of a hobby business.
You show up to do the work because you’re building towards a grander plan
75% of wealth has nothing to do with dollars. It’s time, love, and health as well as financial because we can’t ignore the fact that money allows us to live our best life.
With a passion-based career, you put on your fire suit when times get tough and walk through the flame. You don’t get burned out and let your guest experience suffer. You don’t dress lazy or stop going to classes because you’re just not feeling it. You don’t question making a financial investment to further your career.
That doesn’t mean you don’t have bad days; it means you don’t burn out to the point where you walk away because you love your business almost as if it were a child. You put on a good face and make it work.
Your work doesn’t feel like work
A passion-based career is a calling, feels like a piece of you, and not like you’re making a choice. It’s certainly not your J-O-B, something you do because bills need to be paid. It feels like you are supposed to serve this world as a hair stylist who makes your community feel more empowered than anybody else on the planet.
Can you see how that’s a passionate stylist versus the stylist who’s counting down the highlights until they finally get to go home for the day?
When you have a passion-based business, you choose to work on your days off because you can’t help it. It fills you up and makes you a better version of yourself. It’s a piece of you and, once that piece is full, everything else comes together the way it should.
If you aren’t sure if you found your passion, ask yourself if your job feels like that. Because if it does, you’re on the right track. If it doesn’t, we have some work to do.
How to move into a passion-based business
If you’re currently in the hobby business stage but you want to move to a passion-based business, you can turn your hobby into a passion. But know it’s important to respect where you are in your career right now and start making different life choices.
There’s this idea that once we start making those different life choices, we sacrifice our life and family. You don’t. It is the best thing you can do because it changes the way you show up for your family (and yourself), the life you can provide for them, and the way you level up. It’s not this tremendous sacrifice; it’s the greatest gift you could give to yourself and those around you.
The best way to find your passion
If you’re looking for your passion, ask yourself what you do better than anybody you’ve ever met.
Here’s where people go wrong when they’re chasing their passion: they look at somebody they admire and want that to be their passion. You can’t chase someone else’s passion; you have to do the inner work and find what gift you have that nobody can compete with.
You were put on this planet with some great gifts that nobody else came with. Is it the way you communicate with guests? Maybe it’s your flawless extension application technique? Or your innovative balayage technique? Is it that you’re a blow dry master? Double down on the thing that fires you up.
Deep dive into what is holding you back and then you can start making shifts to get closer to that passion-based career choice that will catapult you to levels that you didn’t even know were possible.
Soul search, dig deep. Don’t reinvent the wheel and pick another hobby, and don’t keep dabbling. Really do the work and decide what you want, accept where your business is right now, and decide where you want it to be. Give it all you’ve got with no compromises.
