What are your passions? Do you sometimes have a hard time fitting yourself in a conventional career box? I do. There are so many things that I was pursuing, yet it was all under this umbrella of entrepreneurship. The problem was that I constantly felt ashamed and self-conscious when people at parties would ask, “What do you do?” I figured after a while the term multi-passionate entrepreneur sums it all.
I went from running my own fashion company to being an illustrator, photographer, jewelry designer, web designer, creative director at an e-commerce firm, copywriter, online marketer, content creator to what I do now helping people create a business and life they love minus the overwhelm. This is my greatest passion.
There are a lot of people like me and you, a multi-passionate who has different niches through the journey of entrepreneurship.
You, see, your changing directions as a way to find your true calling and not being confused. The secret lays in bridging from one thing to the other without looking crazy or out of control.
The truth is, many of us have multiple strengths and passions but we never give ourselves permission to explore and cultivate them. But I’ve got to tell you, some of our greatest cultural icons have. Take Leonardo Da Vinci, the Italian multi-passionate, whose interest included invention, painting, sculpting, architecture, science, music, math, engineering, literature, anatomy, astronomy, botany, and writing.
So the question is, how do you make all the things make sense together? I want to give you 6 actionable ideas to consider. Simply choose what is most relevant to you.
1. Embrace who you are
You’ve got to be real about your journey. Just own the fact that you’ve enjoyed a very rich and diverse path and if you want to keep experimenting with different ideas, just be real about that too. Stop being ashamed of who you are babe. Whether you’re just legitimately confused about what you want to do or you’re just genuinely interested in having multiple businesses or parts of your career. You’ve got to own it. You gotta love it. You’ve got to hug upon it.
2. Position it properly
Realize that you get to choose how you position anything, like who you are as a human being and your journey. You get to frame your experience both for yourself and for the world. What’s the story you’re going to tell? Are you going to position your multi-passionate nature as a strength or as a weakness? As something that makes you fantastic or something that makes you confused? Is your message to the world, ” I don’t really know what I’m doing”, or does it sound more like, “What don’t I do, girl?!” The choice is yours.
3. Play in private
You don’t have to announce every time you’re going to try something new. That way when you say you want to switch to running a bed and breakfast you don’t have to hear everyone say, “What happened to your clothing store?” Just because you can throw up a new website or start a new Instagram account in like 5 minutes does not mean you should. But if you do, you don’t have to put out a press release about it and tell the whole world. It makes no sense to tell everyone to look at you if you’re not ready to be looked at quite yet.
4. Relish obscurity
Chances are right now you are the most unknown that you’ll ever be in your whole career, and that’s not a bad thing. That’s, in fact, a good thing! Use this time to make mistakes and just test stuff out. Try random ideas. In my previous company, we experiment and test market things all the time, like A/B testing. We do things on a very small scale with just a few people to see if a new idea, feature or product really has legs before we roll it out on a large scale. So use this time when you don’t have a huge audience watching your every move wisely.
5. Do not try and turn everything into a business
This is the biggest and hardest one of all. Have hobbies and have passions that you don’t try and earn a living from. You do not have to monetize everything you do. It’s hard I’ve been there. Do not try and cram everything into just one business. Not everything is going to fit together into a narrative that makes sense for customers or for you, so don’t force it. Let some of your passions be just that: passions you do purely for the joy of it.
6. Give zero f*cks
It is time for you to stop giving so many f*cks about what other people think. If other people think you are confused. So what babe? If I cared what other people thought about how many things I wanted to do, I’d still be stuck in my little design office in Amsterdam. At the end of the day, it is your life. You’ve got to ask yourself, are you happy? Are you fulfilled? Who cares what other people think then?
I really hope that these pointers help you in your journey called life! Next time you find yourself feeling uncertain and scattered, remember this: one of the biggest keys to success is giving zero f*cks what other people think 🙂
I would love to hear from you, please leave a comment below, write me an email or hit me up on Instagram or Facebook.
Stay awesome!
