How to Make Money Doing What You Love Learn advanced self-improvement techniques that will get you out of the job you hate and into making money by doing what you love.

This is another often overlooked area for people to address while working on the transition from their current career to doing what they love. The idea here is to seek out role models or mentors who have already achieved what you are looking to accomplish. If what you love to do is to coach people, then look for other coaches who are already doing the same thing you’d like to be doing. If you want to be a teacher, look for role models in that profession.

The main thing here is to get around people who are already doing what you’d like to be doing. If you want to be a professional magician, get around the magic circles. If you want to open up a pottery store, get around people who make pottery.

The next step is to also re-frame who it is that you are looking for. In the above example, where I mentioned a pottery store owner, you might want to start looking at retail store owners in general, not just people in the pottery business. Why? Well, what if all the people in your pottery circles just do pottery as a hobby and have absolutely no retail store experience? The only thing you’ll learn from them is how to make better pottery.

Find someone who runs a retail store doing something similar. Perhaps they run a store that sells glassware or quilting supplies. Perhaps even a high-end wedding cake business or something that is very similar to what your store would be like, except in a different line of business. Ask around, talk to your friends and relatives and see if anyone knows someone who is a store owner and see if you could go visit them and have a chat to see how they started their business, what issues they had to deal with etc.

Another similar path to take here is to hire a professional mentor who mentors people in the area you are seeking to transition to. For example, I am currently working with a mentor who works with people looking to build online businesses. These mentors are a little bit more tricky to find, but if you can find one that teaches exactly what you’re looking to do, chances are the investment will be well worth it.

The difference between a mentor and going back to school for your specific profession is that a mentor will often help you cut through a lot of unnecessary crap and focus you on the shortest path towards your goal. Sometimes mentors are not officially labeled as mentors and they might not do mentoring full time, but they could be someone who has gone where you’re looking to go and if you approach them with a proposal they might agree to mentor you.

Ideally the people you’d like to model or get mentorship from are people you can speak to directly over the phone or in person, but if you really get stuck and can’t find anyone who has gone down the path before you in person or over the telephone, look for books and autobiographies of people who have been there. If you want to be a movie director, study movie directors, if you want to be a politician, study politician’s autobiographies. Often times they will talk about going through some of the exact same problems you may be facing right now.