Editor’s note: More bloggers have joined the fray. Over 16 amazing first steps! Get ready.
I know I’m not alone when I say that upon hearing successful people say, “Do what you love and the money will follow,” the cliche alert goes off in my head. There’s no question we’ve all thought about taking a leap of faith across the chasm of impossibility to see if those timeless words were true. Who hasn’t daydreamed of a life constantly filled to the brim with joy, where work feels like play and the sinking feeling you get right before Monday morning never comes? Unfortunately, most of us have also never tried to take that leap of faith.
Is it the crippling hesitation that corrupts our “go anywhere, do anything” mindset or is it just our feelings of self doubt that stifle us? While these are both true to a lesser extent, they are secondary to a much bigger problem; the problem of not knowing what to do first.
Most people don’t know where to start when they try create a life their own. From this lack of direction, comes doubt. And from this doubt, hesitation. As a result, our hesitation leads to inaction—this is where we get stuck.
To begin doing what we love, and making a living while we do it, we have to have a direction. There needs to be a first step in place before we can move on. This first step will be the most important one that you ever take.
Understanding that this step requires more than just my own assessment, I contacted some of the most successful bloggers in the world to share what they know. From all walks of life, regular people like you and me, they’ve gone through their own journeys in order to live lives their own.
So I asked each of them to answer one simple question:
“What is the first step you should take when trying to make a living doing what you love?”
These are their answers.
Danielle LaPorte of White Hot Truth
“Create an inspiration council. Who do you know – famous, dead, alive, near to you – that’s rocking their vocation? Pretend those liberated heroes are your personal advisory board and imagine what they’d tell you to do every step of the way. Only take their advice (albeit imaginary) when it makes you feel expanded and tenacious.”
Everett Bogue of Far Beyond the Stars
“Reduce your overhead. When you’re trying to strike out on your own, it’s easy to forget that you won’t be making as much as you did at your day job. If you keep spending like you did before you left, you’re liable to fail quicker by running out of money. If you only need $3,000 to last three months you’re a lot more likely to succeed than if you need $17,000 to last three months. Low overhead allows you take bigger risks and increase your chances of success.”
Charlie Gilkey of Productive Flourishing
“The biggest challenge with making the first step in getting paid to do what you love is finding that intersection between what you love and what people will pay you to do in the first place. If you focus too much on what you love and disregard what people will pay you to do, then you won’t be able to put food on the table. If you focus too much on what people will pay you to do, then you’ll make money but you’ll be no happier for doing it.
My recommendation is to find something you enjoy that people are already getting value from and see what you can do to make that solution, service, or product available to more people. And remember: one person’s trash is another person’s treasure.”
Tammy Strobel of Rowdy Kittens
“It comes down to believing in yourself and pushing past fear. If you believe you can do something, passion and focus will follow. I think fear gets the best of so many people. We listen to the lizard brain instead of growing and embracing new opportunities.”
Jonathan Fields of Awake at the Wheel
“First, figure out the activities, people, culture, settings and missions that make you come alive, without reference to whether they can generate money by conventional means. Then, if there’s a conventional path to monetization explore that. If not, look to find gaps in information, community, service, product, mode of delivery and more that can be exploited to create commercial opportunities in a less conventional way.”
Chris Guillebeau of the Art of Non-Conformity
“The first step is to get clear about what you can offer the world. Everyone has something to give, yes — but the trick is to figure out what your unique contribution is, and how that translates into a marketable skill. If you spend time on that at first, the next steps will be much easier.”
Leo Babauta of Zen Habits
“Assuming you’ve already figured out what you love, the first thing you should do is … do what you love. Do it for free, in your spare time, and have a blast doing it. Connect with others interested in the same thing, feed off their energy. Eventually you’ll be able to make a living doing it, but for now, just do it.”
Steven Aitchison of Change Your Thoughts
“When making the decision to do what I love I had to ask a tough question: Do I go for the money or do I go for what I really want to do in life and be proud of my work? I went for the latter and took a 30% pay cut to do something that I love doing and that’s coaching clients who have addiction issues. That work also transfers very well into the web and I love coaching clients from around the world. What better way of making a living could you ask for? Going for the money is great but if you go for the happiness instead you’ll reap the rewards in heart and also financially. I’ve found that people are attracted to others who love what they do, no matter what field you are in, so you will open up a lot more doors doing what you love and you’ll find a lot more closed doors when you go for the money.”
Dragos Roua of Brilliantly Better
“Short version: Break up with the past.
Long version: Break up with things that are holding you back. It may be your job, your current relationship, or it may be just a belief you don’t know you have it. You gotta let this go.
If you want to make a living doing what you love, it means at the current moment you’re not doing what you love. So, you gotta break up first with what you’re doing now. Make room for what you love.
It’s much easier than you think, once you summon the courage to actually lose something in the process: namely, the old you. It’s in the human nature to associate lost of something with regrets (by the way, I try to break up with human nature in this regard, regrets are a waste of time for me). But even if you will regret some things at the beginning, things will eventually unfold in the right direction.
And the new you will be much more fun.”
Scott H. Young of Scott H Young.com
“My first step: Get out there and do something. Look for a first client, create a first product, put your skills into the market. Too many people waste years of life guessing what the world needs instead of having the humility to ask.”
Colin Wright of Exile Lifestyle
“The first step is figuring out WHAT you love. It’s amazing how many people pursue the dream they’re handed by society, when in reality that dream isn’t a good fit for them personally. Identify what you love, figure out what the first step is to get there, and take it. Right now.”
Glen Allsopp of ViperChill
“Sign a contract with yourself that states you will not stop going until you’ve achieved some level of success. Also agree that you won’t chop and change between projects until you’ve achieved something with the first. I lost years because I was always testing things others told me worked rather than sticking to one thing and finding out for myself.”
Shrinivas Rao of Skool of Life, BlogcastFM
“Find what you absolutely love to do. It has to be the thing that gets you up in the morning and looking forward to every single day. For me, that’s riding waves. Build the business around that.”
Luciano Passuello of Litemind
“Provided that you already know which passion to pursue (not a trivial thing), a good first step is to get in touch with people who already “made it” — those that are already living the reality you want for yourself. If they’re really passionate about they do, they’ll not only be glad to help, but will also show you reality as it is (with the *real* challenges and rewards, not what our brains usually fantasize about it).”
Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income
“The first step is to create goals for yourself. Not just one ultimate goal, but smaller, tangible goals that will help you reach that final goal of doing what you love to do. Don’t be afraid of deadlines, dates and numbers to help you take action and get to where you want to go.”
Tim Brownson of A Daring Adventure
“The most important first step in my opinion comes just before that. It is to truly know at your deepest level that it is what you love to do and not what other people such as you parents love you to do or what you think you should love to do. If you had $10m in the bank and no need of money whatsoever, would you still do whatever it is every day? If not, then how much do you really love it?”
Celestine Chua of the Personal Excellence Blog
“I’d make sure money is not an issue first, then pursue what I love. When pursuing your passion, there will undoubtedly be an initial phase where you’re picking skills, figuring things out, and that’s when money will be slow. If you have money concerns hanging at the back of your mind, that will affect your dedication to your work, which is not what you want.
When I quit my job in Sep ’08, I was financially good to last for another year. Hence, I didn’t need to worry about money at all (in the beginning) and could get down to dedicating myself fully to my work, without having to worry about whether it’d generate money. In the end, it turned out that I started generating income in the 4th month, and from there it evolved into a sustainable full-time career. I’ve never look back since. Today it’s been almost 2 years, and I’m earning more than my pay back in my corporate job.”
Corbett Barr of Free Pursuits, Think Traffic
“The first step I would take would be to get away. Get away from your job, your town, your friends and anything else that influences how you think about the world. Get away and really listen to yourself. Contemplate if what you “love to do” is really where your passion lies, and if it is really something you want to earn a living from. By unplugging from your normal life for a day or a week or even months (that’s what I did), you’ll be able to listen to yourself in ways that your “normal life” stifles.”
Matt Cheuvront of Life Without Pants
“The first thing I always tell ‘wannabe’ entrepreneurs is that you MUST first figure out what you NEED – not what you want, but what you need. We inherently tell ourselves that we need more than we actually need – needs and wants get intertwined, and when they do, it can seem overwhelming and impossible to survive on your own. But, when you figure out what you need, you’ll most likely come to find you CAN survive and get by with a lot less than you believed. Figure out what you need, then go get what you want.”
Joshua Becker of Becoming Minimalist
“Discover your strengths and play into them. Do you love to write, speak, create, teach, plan, network, invent, problem-solve, build, or think? Find your greatest strength and build your lifestyle around it.”
Derek Sivers of Sivers.org
“Much of success is luck. What the public loves will usually be a
surprise. So do many things, giving each one 100%, but if the public
just isn’t excited about it, walk away and do something completely
different. Knowing this in advance, your first step should be to just
do anything useful to others, realizing it’s just the first of your
many endeavors and shouldn’t be taken too seriously.”
Erin Dolland of Unclutterer
In my opinion, there are only two kinds of jobs that you can love:
1. A career that you are devoted to with a deep passion, surrounded by great colleagues who support and believe in a similar vision, and that is an integral part and reflection of who you are, and
2. A job that has regular hours, no demands on your time beyond your scheduled work day, generates enough income for a comfortable lifestyle, great colleagues, and a positive corporate culture.
To get both, the first step you need to take is to clear the distractions that get in the way of making it happen. There are no shortcuts — put in the time and energy to get rid of the clutter. Once the clutter is gone, you can focus all of your attention on making your dream job a reality.
Jonathan Mead of Illuminated Mind
“The first step is knowing what you want. The second is then doing shit. Or taking lots and lots of action. Don’t wait to implement until you have the perfect plan, don’t wait for the right resources to show up, or the right timing, or situation. Act now, and then keep acting. Make your business plan “Do Stuff” and that’s it. It will get you much farther than most.”
Adam Baker of ManVsDebt
“I’d eliminate barriers. We had so many barriers preventing us from living intentionally and doing what we loved. Sell your crap. Pay off your debt. Both of these create tremendous added burden. Once you start to see what’s possible, immediately look to how you can provide the most DIRECT value to people in the shortest amount of time. Do that. Do it immediately.”
These are their first steps. Have the courage to take them.
What steps have you taken to live the life you want? Share your thoughts below.
photo credit: notsogoodphotography
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41 comments to “16 First Steps to Creating the Life You Want From Some of the World’s Best Bloggers”
Great post. Thanks.
I’d have to agree with Leo Babauta of Zen Habits. Do what you love for free. Do it in your spare time. Practice. Practice. Practice. Make it a priority in your life. Then seek out others you love the same thing you do. Observe them. Study them. Are they making money doing the thing you love? Can you do something similar?
I also like what Everett Bogue of Far Beyond the Stars says about reducing your overhead. Live for what you love. Most of the things we love, people, activities, etc cost very little money. Get rid of all the unnecessary expenses and material things in your life that are costing you money and time and holding you back from doing what you love.
SandyDFromNJ
Sandy Dempsey´s last blog ..Temporary Employment Part One – Ten Benefits
Hey Sandy! Anytime.
All of their advice was spectacular, but I agree that Leo’s really hit the mark. Don’t treat “doing what you love” as a means to an end. It should already be your end. You do what you love because you love doing it. The money just comes with it. Of course it takes work to make that happen, but don’t focus solely on that.
Everett’s was also great. Live for what you love. Said very nicely, Sandy.
Thanks for the great thoughts on this post.
Hey John,
Thanks for including me in this post. I’m really honored that you asked me to contribute. It’s really great to see what all these people have to say
No problem, dude. You’ve really gotten big in the last few months, with the launch of BlogcastFM. I have to say, the podcasts are really valuable.
And everyone here has a lot to share. I wish I could include more people.
Great info here.
I enjoyed Dragos’ tip about breaking up with things that are holding you back.
Thanks for the post!
You’re welcome, Kim!
- Low overhead
- Know what you love to do even its for free
- Find a scalable way to monetize it. I.E. The end result is earning money even when not actively working
- Know that it takes time to create something that will support your lifestyle.
Great information here. I love these types of posts.
Hey Chris! Yeah, these posts are excellent. Learning from the greats will put us on a clearer path to success.
I’d like to highlight what Glen Allsop had to say:
“…..agree that you won’t chop and change between projects until you’ve achieved something with the first.”
It reminds me of some advice I heard recently from Sandra Martini, http://sandramartini.typepad.com/, about how most of us start multiple projects, or overlap them, in an unconscious/unplanned way that ensures we never complete one.
My experience: I’m achieving success for the first time by knowing what I’ve got on the front burner and paying attention to it every day, setting goals and working toward achievement and accomplishment every day.
Thanks for this great post and the opportunity to learn from all these fine folks!
Kate Williams´s last blog ..My Event
You’re exactly right. We can’t spread ourselves too thin or we’ll never be able to master one specific area. Like you said, work towards one thing every single day.
There’s no question you’ll be able to reach it.
You’re welcome for the post and thanks to everyone who’s participated!
Thanks for including me in this round-up. It was really awesome reading what all the other folks had to say. Such good advice.
Anytime, Tammy! Stop by again sometime and share some more wisdom will ya?
What a great collection of wisdom!
Here’s one I’d add from my own life:
Be ready, at any given moment, to turn adversity into adventure. You will undoubtedly come up against some barriers and obstacles as you venture further into the life you are truly meant to live (as opposed to the one that society and others scripted for you). I believe the trick is to not give up at those points, but to use those challenges as learning points to help you grow stronger and more committed to living your passion.
Maia Duerr´s last blog ..Buddhist Chaplains Love the Gulf guest post
Great first step, Maia. Sticking out is just as important, if not as difficult, as taking action. Challenge how far you think you can go to truly get what you want.
Thanks for the comment.
This post is stellar. I think my favorite out of all of them is Pat Flynn’s advice not to be afraid of setting dates and deadlines.
I tend not to do that because I don’t like to miss deadlines or not make goals, but it’s such a vital part of pushing yourself.
Looks like I have some planning to do. This post is very timely for me, and so I appreciate all the work you put into it. It’s a great idea.
Cheers,
Tia
Tia´s last blog ..Question of the Week- Do You Consider Yourself Influential
Thanks, Tia. I too think Pat’s advice is great and one that I need to go back to more frequently—deadlines just turn me off. I feel pressured into get things done, which is the purpose of a deadline, but I always feel like I never have enough time.
But what’s important is putting quality into the time you have, and not just speeding up in order to finish.
Good luck on your plans!
Hiya John, thanks for the invite on this.
It’s always cool to see so many different takes on the same topic and just shows how subjective self-development can be.
Tim Brownson´s last blog ..The Paleo Experiment
I know! There’s so much diversity in this roundup—this shows that getting the life you want can be achieved under a great number of professions.
John,
Great compilation of bloggers and advice. I especially like what Tammy and Dragos said.
David
David Grim´s last blog ..Body Weight Training Vs Weight Training
No problem, David. Feel free to revisit this advice anytime.
Hey John,
Thanks for asking me to contribute to this project, it looks incredibly awesome. I’m honored to be in such a select company and also puzzled, as Tim mentioned just two comments above, by the diversity of paths towards self-improvement.
Dragos Roua´s last blog ..The 7 Links Challenge
Thank you for participating! And like Tim said, your passions (no matter what they are, for the most part) can be monetized. You can live a great life if you just work hard at it enough.
That’s why I’m releasing my first product (free e-book) on Thursday. I’ve waited long enough to get something out there into the world.
Yeah, dude, this is a freaking genius post. So much better than typical “blog tips from the biggest bloggers” I LOVE the theme here!
Danielle’s tip is really great and have my own list of people who I basically want to BE and watching and learning from them has been instrumental in my own growth
Thanks so much for posting this!!
Marian Schembari´s last blog ..24 HOUR SALE! 30 Minute Critiques ALL DAY for 70 Off!
Ha ha, thanks Marian. I checked out your blog and it’s absolutely stunning. It’s just so clean
Feel free to bookmark this page so you can reread the advice. Really great stuff here.
You’re welcome for the post.
Incredible, insightful, inspirational list –
Favs are definitely Leo & Dragos point’s.
Excellent idea to compile!
Ash´s last blog ..Why Stereotypes Piss Me Off And How They’re Ruining Your Life
Hey Ash, glad you liked the compilation. It’s always a pleasure to spread awareness of good people doing what they love while making a living from it.
This is my passion.
It’s interesting to hear the different perspectives of these successful people. Personally, I’d add what I think Hugh Macleod (http://gapingvoid.com/) would probably say, that you should maybe NOT try to make a living from what you love at all. Sometimes it’s enough or even better to just enjoy it as a hobby, so you don’t put pressure on it. Instead just (as Leo Babauta also said) do it for free. Give it time to develop on it’s own. Do it for the love of doing it and maybe some day you’ll make money from it. Or maybe not.
Tim Woods´s last blog ..Extending the Human Brain
Hey Tim, it’s funny—I send an email to Hugh hoping he’d participate as well. Regardless you do a great job of summarizing his thoughts.
I believe that his approach is also very insightful. As I read in his free e-book, work hard on your passion as a hobby and let it evolve organically.
Money is irrelevant initially, but if you want to keep up with what you love doing, you should think about monetizing.
Thanks for your thoughts, man.
Great collection of lifestylers!
Best,
Sam
The Yakezie
Financial Samurai´s last blog ..The Four Different Ways To Spend Money By Milton Friedman
Great article! I’m going to check out these blogs, too. Thanks!