BB Ep 65: How to Find Your Passion and Grow a Business You Love with Amber Lilyestrom

Passion is so important in everything you do. When you’re passionate about something, you perform a million times better. This is true whether you’re working at your day job, cooking dinner for your family, or launching a side hustle. That’s why, today, we’re talking about how to find your passion. There’s no better time of year to discover this. A new year means a new you! You know that I’m passionate about helping women step into their God-given gifts and make money doing what they love. But before you start making money doing what you love, you have to discover what you love. So how do you do that? Three Strategies to Find Your Passion It’s not as scary as it seems. I actually have three different strategies you can walk through to help you find your passion. Here’s what’s great about a strategy: It isn’t a formula or a fancy equation to make a passion magically appear. It’s none of that. It’s simply an approach—and it’s a flexible one. Maybe one strategy works for you or maybe you’ll use a combination of all three. Dig deep into these strategies, and I bet you’ll discover something amazing. Related: How to Find Your Business Idea The Self-Focused Strategy This strategy takes a look inside—you guessed it—you! Now, this isn’t about self-centeredness. But it is about taking a good inventory of your past to discover what you’ve been uniquely created to contribute to the world. That inventory is usually a combination of your past, education and experiences. This is actually how Business Boutique was born. Before Business Boutique, I was a speaker at Ramsey Solutions. The company wanted to transition me into an official Ramsey Personality role, but before we could do that, we had to figure out what my focus should be. So, I sat in a boardroom with Dave Ramsey, my husband, and a ton of other leaders in the company. We spent hours going over my background to see how I could best serve the marketplace. In other words, what should my focus, market and message be? We looked in a few different places. First, we looked at my story growing up with a mother who was scrappy and built a successful business from scratch (a unique experience). Then we looked at my education: I studied business and marketing, and I’m a Certified Business Coach. We also looked at some of my other unique experiences, like how I started a couple of side businesses to help make ends meet. Finally, we looked at my strengths: My natural strengths are in speaking, teaching, writing and coaching people as they step into their God-given dreams. Can you spot the patterns? Business was all over my background, and when we looked at the marketplace at the time, we saw businesses launching at a crazy rate. The problem was that so many entrepreneurs didn’t actually know how to run a business. They just had great ideas. When we put that all together, here’s what we came up with: There’s a lot of people who need help with business. I am a really good teacher, and I have a background in business. So Business Boutique was born. Related: Recognizing Your Gifts Now we have a podcast, a book and an online business training academy. We’ve even created an amazing goal planner, a sold-out event and two courses. But it all started with an idea on what I uniquely brought to the table. If you take a deep look at your past, experiences and education, I have no doubt you can find something you’re passionate about. Here are some questions you can ask yourself to get started: What is your story? People are often passionate about something in their history because they’ve lived it. What are your strengths? What comes effortlessly to you? We are naturally more passionate about things we’re good at. What do you get really excited about? What do you get really mad about? When you pay attention to your emotions around an issue, it’s a good indicator you’re passionate about that one thing. Look for the intersection where your story, your strengths, and what you get excited about meet. People-Focused Strategy I believe most of your passions come from within you. But I also believe you can be passionate about just about anything if you choose to be. That’s right! It’s a choice. After all, the difference between something you have to do and something you get to do is just your attitude. For example, let’s say you have an idea for a business that you’re not sure you’re particularly passionate about. Say your business idea is refinishing furniture, but you wonder how you can be passionate about a table or a chair. Before you quit the idea to find something else, I want you to dig a little deeper. Why? Because I’m willing to bet you can find something within that idea you’re passionate about. It’s usually the people. On the other side of every business transaction is a person you’re serving. You’ve improved their life because of your business—yes, because of the table you refinished. When you focus on the person on the other side, the business is no longer about upcycling old furniture, but about helping people make memories with their families. When you look at your business through the lens of the impact you’re making, you can see that your passion is ignited by the people you get to serve. Related: Excuses Stopping You From Using Your Gifts Focus on the people. That’s why we go into business in the first place—to make a difference in people’s lives. God-Focused Strategy I know this might sound crazy but stay with me here! It doesn’t happen for everyone this way, but for some of us, finding our passion looks like praying about it—asking God or listening to hear what God is trying to tell you. I’ve heard thousands of stories of women who, on the surface, lacked the education, skills or experience to start a business, but they clearly heard God tell them to do it. So they did. It sounds crazy, but it’s also just the kind of thing God does. I love Christine Cain’s story of how she started A21. She was walking through an airport when she saw all these posters of women who were missing, likely abducted and forced into human trafficking. She recalls thinking to herself, Someone should do something about this. She quickly realized that someone was her. She was obedient to the voice she heard, and now thousands of women are being saved from human trafficking across the globe. Related: Use Your Gifts to Make a Difference God can use any of these three strategies to lead you to find your passion. But whichever strategy you use, I want you to know that God created you on purpose for a purpose, and I can’t wait to watch you step into that. Building a Business You Love with Amber Lilyestrom Amber Lilyestrom is a speaker, author, branding strategist, business coach and host of The Amber Lilyestrom Show. She is passionate about helping female entrepreneurs get clarity about who they are and then build businesses to support that message. Amber spent 10 years working in marketing at the University of New Hampshire. She loved that job and learned a ton, but after conquering one of the most difficult times in her life, she knew there was more to her story. A near-death experience helped her realize there was something missing from her life, which led her to start her own business. This new adventure ignited a fire in her to help other women realize their potential as well. In this episode, we talk about: Recognizing the signs you’re not working in your passions Living out the life you were created for Fighting for your truth Finding your passion and amplifying it with a business Leaving a corporate job to start your own business Turning Bad Experiences Into Good Ideas   Whatever you’re balancing right now, whether you’re working full-time in your business or working your side hustle with a full-time job, don’t be discouraged by bad experiences. I encounter at least one a week. Don’t we all? But here’s the thing: We don’t have to let them overcome us. Instead, I want to challenge you to take those bad experiences and turn them into great ideas. Take the time I tried to get a photo of my son with Santa at the mall. What was supposed to be a sweet memory turned into a nightmare that ended with me losing the photo I’d waited hours to get. Instead of allowing that experience to deter me from ever getting a photo with Santa again, I turned it into the now-annual “Shindig With Santa” at our house. I pay a little more to have Santa come to my house where I can invite all my friends and family over to bake cookies and take as many pictures with Santa as they desire. What bad experience can you turn into a great idea? #AskChristyWright On today’s #AskChristyWright segment, we talk about identifying a market for your new business and regaining momentum in your business after maternity leave. If you have a question, give me a call on my toll-free line at 844.944.1074. You might hear your question on a future episode!  1:18 The Three Strategies to Find Your Passion 19:04 Building a Business You Love With Amber Lilyestrom 57:00 #AskChristyWright 66:49 Challenge to Turn Your Bad Experiences Into Good Ideas Resources Use the code BOOTCAMP when you purchase Business Idea Bootcamp and get the Business Boutique audiobook completely free! Go to BusinessBoutique.com/Bootcamp. Sponsors Our friends at Infusionsoft help you manage your customers and your business all in one place. If you’re ready to organize your contacts, automate your emails, generate leads and turn those leads into sales, Infusionsoft can help you! Get started now with a free trial by visiting InfusionsoftNow.com/ChristyFree. Check out our friends at Volusion. You can set up your online store and start selling your products within minutes. It’s that easy. Sign up for your FREE 14 day trial at Volusion.com/BB. If you have a success story you would like to share with the Business Boutique community, email me at [email protected]. New podcast episodes are available every other week.