I’m back from my Funnelhacking Live adventures, and let me tell you something so interesting…

I was in a room of 3500 entrepreneurs for four days straight…and so many of them had the exact same question:

Should I pursue my passion for [ insert whatever you’re passionate about ]

or…

Should I do “this thing” over here because I know it will pay the bills?

In most cases the “this thing” was either:

• Funnelbuilding
• Ad/Agency services
• Selling a pre-existing expertise in some arena (fitness, Amazon, etc.)

Again and again, I heard this conflict over pursuing a passion or paying the bills.

Do you feel the same way?

Do you currently work as a service provider or agency…or…do you have a business/expertise that you’re not as passionate about because you’ve been doing it awhile and you’re onto something new?

This happens to entrepreneurs all the time…because by our very nature, we love to create.

We love to learn.

We love to explore.

Once we know something well (whatever it is), we want to move on to learning something new and challenging.

The funny thing is our latest and newest passion is often less concrete/tangible than our skill or expertise. I find it usually centers around impact, mission, meaning, and lifestyle.

• You may be passionate about helping single moms
• Passionate about organic living
• Passionate about social justice or the environment
• Passionate about spirituality, self-care, balanced living

I know the road is totally different for everyone, and so I hesitate to give generic advice, but I’m going to anyway…

If you have an existing skill or expertise that you know you can monetize, you’re most likely going to make more money faster if you leverage that, than if you try to start something completely new. And…the funny thing is that when we shift our mind from requiring ourselves to feel passionate about our skill, to feeling passionate ABOUT the people we help, passion and paying the bills start to merge together.

What I’m saying is…don’t look at your bill-paying skill as the obstacle to your passion, look at your mindset as the obstacle. THAT you can fix!

I know I can have more impact with the things I’m passionate about (women’s issues for example), when I have the financial freedom to do so. And that financial freedom happens with my marketing.

And since I work with a ton of women anyway, I can serve that population of people and feel passionate about THEM, more than my skill as a funnelbuilder or agency.

People say things like…

• I’m really good at Amazon. Should I help people with that or do what I’m passionate about, which is self-care and balancing life?
• I’m currently a funnelbuilder, but my real passion is helping women ages 45-55 get a new start mid-life. Should I keep funnelbuilding or change directions and become a life coach?
• I love organic and sustainable living and I want to build a business around that. But I don’t know what to sell. Right now, my ad agency is paying the bills but it doesn’t inspire me.

But here’s what often happens.

People go off and expend enormous amounts of energy on this passion, and the stress mounts because the bills start to pile up. Not only that, but maybe their passion shifts again, or they start to lose the passion because the financial constraints are killing them.

You realize that your ability to have passion about something IS BECAUSE your financial and basic survival needs are met and therefore you can focus your mind elsewhere?

That’s the thing. Your monetizable skill is giving you the gift of creativity and passion. It’s not killing it.

Once you shift your mind around, you might actually just fall back in love with what you do, because it’s enabling you to do so much more!

Remember, attaching yourself to PEOPLE and your audience will help you feel more connected to who you really are as a person, rather than focusing on exactly what you do on a day to day basis.

I have so many things I’m passionate about that have NOTHING to do with marketing.

But I will not just shift gears every 3 seconds because I KNOW that what I do now…is so critical to the financial freedom and independence I need to have the brain space to really creatively impact the planet.

And guys…we have time.

It’s a matter of discipline. I work a full-time job, have my own business, and four kids. You can PAY the bills with your skills and pursue passions at the same time.

So that’s my Monday morning pep talk for you!

If you’d like to get a behind-the-scenes look at what happened the past two weeks at Funnelhacking Live, check out my debrief over on my blog.

Talk soon!