Are you passionate about something? Do you find yourself more knowledgeable about this thing than anyone you know? And are you curious to know how you can make money with that passion? You should become a consultant.
What is consulting all about?
Consulting is the business of giving expert advice to other people and getting paid for it. Consulting is a type of business that can be done in virtually any industry. Whether it’s personal coaching, consulting on design or developing websites, this article will cover the basics of what it takes to sell your expertise as a consultant.
Here are the step on how to turn your Passion into Business
1. Find what you are passionate about
The first step is finding what you are passionate about. Many people already know what they are passionate about and they are doing these things as hobbies. Do you have any hobbies that you do where you find yourself lost in time? Do you find yourself always thinking about it and always talking about it with family and friends? That is what you are passionate about. You cannot just be passionate about something if you want to become a consultant in it, you need to be good at it. You need to be an expert at it. What do you know a lot about, more than anyone you know?
If you don’t know your passion, you can ask yourself these questions:
- What things excite me?
- What things do I find myself thinking about all the time?
- What activities do I like doing?
- What do I know a lot about?
Find the answers to these questions and zero in on the top one that appears in your answer to every question. This is likely what your main passion is. This part might take time as you sort through all the things that excite you, occupy your mind, occupy your time and things you know a lot about. After you answer these questions, the next step is to find out if there is demand for your passion.
2. Find out if there is any demand
The best way to find out if there is demand for your passion is to use data! Data will tell you if there is a market for your passion. Numbers don’t lie. You can look at trend data, search data, sales data, social media hashtag data and more.
These are tools you can use to look at data for keyword search volume:
https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7337243?hl=en
Let’s say your passion and expertise is in weight lifting. You would search keywords like this:
- exercise consultant
- personal trainer
- Help people train
- Exercise coach
- Weight lifting coach
There are many more keywords, these ones are just examples. Other data you can search: hashtags, followers for social profiles, views on video websites.
Another way to search for demand is to look at people who are doing the same thing. If your passion is helping people with their exercise, then you find other people doing the exact same thing. You can search for people doing this on any social networking site or on google and see how much competition you have. Competition is good! It means there is a market.
An example of searching for competitors:
If your passion is weightlifting and you find a career that is related to this, weightlifting coach or consultant. You search for a weightlifting coach on linkedin and 1,240,000 results pop up. That means that there is a good market for this.
3. Start positioning yourself as the authority
To sell potential clients, you need to appear like an authority. If you are not the expert, why would anyone go to you for an advice? You need to appear credible in your potential customers’ eyes.
To be credible, you need to appear like an expert with previous experience in the industry. How do you do this? Having a professional web presence and other people saying good things about you give you an expert image.
No matter what industry you are in, you need these things:
- a professional looking website;
- social profiles (Facebook, linkedin) with followers, good content and testimonials. For quick testimonials, consider doing free work for people in your network;
- some media attention (appearing on any news publications whether online or offline);
- a pricing structure and an idea of what exact services to offer to your clients; and
- once you have these things in place, you are ready to start going after clients.
4. Start marketing yourself
The next step is to start marketing yourself to potential clients. Let’s say you chose holistic health coaching as your career because you are passionate about having a healthy lifestyle and you want others to do the same. After you build a credible online presence, you start reaching out to potential clients. The first step is developing an ideal customer profile.
5. Develop an ideal customer profile
Before you start reaching out to potential clients, you develop an ideal customer profile.
This is where you list out your dream client based on different criteria like this:
- Age
- Location
- Income
- Interests
- Problems they are dealing with
- Goals or motivations
Once you find your customer profile, the next step is finding out where you can find these customers. Once you start finding them, start reaching out to them and see how you can solve their problems. This is where you have conversations with your target market. Have as many conversations as you can and learn what they really want and need in regards to your service. Be a little flexible on your prices and exact deliverables and let their pain points guide you into what particular service to offer.
Conclusion
Doing what you are passionate about for your career is not easy and it requires a step by step plan. Consulting is becoming a more and more popular business for people nowadays and there are consultants in nearly every industry. I hope this guide helps you on your journey of turning your passion into a business and having the career that is right for you. It is definitely not easy but as long as you have a plan and follow it, one day you will wake up and think “Wow, I can’t believe I’m doing this for my “job”! It’s almost too good to be true!”. Best of luck and remember it’s never too late to turn your passion into a business.