What To Do When You Have Too Many Passions Or Ideas

Wondering what to do when you you have too many ideas or passions?

Want to know which one to pick? 

In this video (and the transcript below) I’m sharing a proven strategy  that my private clients have successfully used to get clarity and focus – Quickly. Ready?

Transcript:

If you’re like Louise, who sent me an email the other day saying, “Rikke, I have so many passions and so many ideas. How do I know which one I’m going to pick and whether I’ll enjoy building a business around it?” Then it’s probably because your week looks something like this:

It’s Monday. You’re super fired up about this idea for a wine business. It’s going to involve loads of world travel and you research that. You get really excited, only to wake up on Wednesday to remember that you love yoga and CrossFit, too, and maybe a business surrounding those things will be much better than what you’re doing now, but by Friday, you also realize that fashion or maybe even food blogging is really where it’s at. By Saturday, you pretty much give up.

You’re so overwhelmed, and you end up staying stuck, doing nothing about any of those scenarios. If that rings a bell, then welcome to the world of the multi-passionates, the idea rich people, the popcorn brain sprouting ideas and passions by the minute!

I want you to know that you are amazing. It is an amazing skill.

“Ideas are the currency of the new economy” (James Altucher),

You have a really valuable and potentially very commercial gift, but where you’re probably getting stuck is that you’re not getting traction with any of your ideas.

What I want to do in this video is to share a very concrete strategy or tool with you that I have successfully used with my own clients to give them clarity very early on in the process as to which of their many passions or ideas they’ll enjoy most to get started with, so if you’re ready, let’s talk about that.

But before I do that, I also want to tell you a little bit about how I have so many of these strategies and so much insight into this. I’ve actually spent the last 10 years advising both multi-passionates and those who feel like they have no ideas on career change and on transitions within entrepreneurship.

I want you to know that if you are an idea rich person and multi-passionate person, then entrepreneurship is absolutely perfect for you.

Whether you’re already running a business now and wondering whether you should change into something else or add something more. Or if you are a career changer who would love to become an entrepreneur and use some of your ideas, some of your passions for that. This is going to be perfect for you.

I have tons of strategies and tools. However, in this video, I want to focus on one of the quickest applicable ones, so you can get started straightaway and get some clarity. Does that sound exciting or what?

There’s something I’ve noticed consistently over the last ten years with the six hundred plus clients I’ve worked 1:1 with and the thousands that I’ve advised via online courses or talks or these videos, and that’s this:

Multi-passionates have a real tendency to be very seduced by the idea of what turning their passionate idea into a business could be like more than actually truly nailing down what the reality of it would look like.

IDEA vs. REALITY.

If you right now are quite fed up with the business you’re running or the career you’re in, then it’s very easy to glorify that idea or that passion you have as to what you want to do instead. The exercise I’ll share with you takes care of this problem.

So often I see people being so in love with the IDEA OF what their passion could be like, but they do no ground work whatsoever to look into whether their idea of something actually matches THE REALITY OF.

Introducing The Job Description Test

The tool I’m going to share with you is called the job description test (for entrepreneurs). Even though, we’re talking about you turning your passion or idea into a business, whether that’s your first business or your second or your third or your fourth, it is still going to be a job description.

What you end up doing every day in your business is still a job description. Hence, why I call it the job description test.

I want you to write out in detail what your day to day / everyday would look like if you were to turn that passion or that idea into a business.

Now, I know you’re probably like, “Rikke, I’ve got five hundred fricking ideas or ten passions.”
My advice: Just pick one for now because you’ll quickly see some front-runners.

Tip for picking one – Just pick the one you would most regret not doing.

ACTION: Write out in detail what your everyday would look like if you were to turn that passion or that idea into a business.

Who would you be exposed to?
What experiences would you have?
What skills would you use?
What would your day to day activities actually look like?

Write that out in detail.

Tip:
If you’re struggling with input, then look at job ads for people who have those jobs inside a business (for vocabulary). Look at interviews with entrepreneurs who are doing similar things (think “day in a life of”-style articles). Find role models that you like what they’re doing and find out what do they spend all day doing. Maybe even interview them or ask them for coffee or anything like that.

Everything you can do to get words, vocabulary, and insight into a real (as opposed to a glorified/imaginary) day in the life of someone doing that.

Once you’ve done that really good groundwork, then take a step back and take a good honest look at what you’ve written.

Then, ask yourself:
Is that the life I would like, or actually is my idea of what this passion would look like turned into a business very different from the reality of what it actually looks like?

Very, very clearly/quickly would you get a “ Hell YES!” or “Hell NO! feeling, which is always what you want to go for.

Then you can quickly see whether you got some really good raw material to work with. And you can potentially put a couple of other ideas or passions through that filter and very clearly and very quickly you end up with some very exciting front-runners.

Here’s an even more advanced tip:
Once you might have found one or two front runners and there’s that struggle between which one to pick, you might realize that you can combine those two front runners into ONE really unique business concept.

That’s how you can take this exercise even further because the fantastic thing about entrepreneurship is you can potentially rejig that job description to to be perfect just for you!

You can us The Job Description Test both for knowing what not to do, but also use it to clarify more what you want.

A Warning Example:

I went to a networking event many years ago and this is how I just came up with this exercise. I met this girl who was a really super smart computer programmer. She confessed to me she would really love to transition into a different business and leave her currents business behind.

Her existing business was all about computer programming, but she wanted to transition into becoming a massage therapist because she was really passionate about alternative medicine. She also found it really helpful to have her own massage whenever she was stressed and wanted to share that with other people.

I told her to do the Job Description Test and to really look into what would the reality of that would look like, because what she wanted was loads of intellectual stimulation, loads of challenging intellectual problems. She liked a lot of variety. I asked her to really looking into what her day to day would be like if she were to become a full-time massage therapist and run a business around that.

Well, think about it, when you last time had a massage, what is that experience normally like? A dim room, probably a client who is passed out from relaxation, so can’t hold much of a conversation, and probably not a big intellectual challenge. She clearly realized that was NOT the right business for her to transition into, at least not looking like that!

Just remember: Your biggest enemy is the fact that your idea of what this passion turned into business could look like is often very different from there reality of.

IDEA vs. REALITY

Make sure that you do the Job Description Test and you can then get some front runners that you can go out and test drive.

Do you have multi-passionate friends or friends who are wondering whether they can turn their passion into a business or which idea to turn into a business? This exercise can help them too.

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On Career Change, Entrepreneur, Overwhelm, Own Business, Self Employment