Lynne Franks talks about marrying your passions and natural gifts with your business ideas.
Sometimes your passions can be the most obvious things. What makes you light up inside when you think about doing it? And is there a way to combine this pleasure with your existing professional experience and skills?
Of course, for many of you, just transferring your professional career from employee status to freelance seems the easiest way to start your own business. But does your current or former job light up your life? And for those of you who aren't currently working, do you want to go back to your last job or training or do you want to move into a totally new career? Is there a way of taking elements of your experience and combining them with more of your personal values and gifts?
Passions
Let's look first at how you enjoy spending your time, what lights up your soul?
Make a list of 20 activities that you currently enjoy doing the most. These can be professional or personal. They could include going for a walk, dancing, going to art galleries, meeting people or surfing the Internet.
Just to make sure we're not overlooking any passions that you've let go of, let's also look at your preferred activities and hobbies as a child and a teenager.
For example, when I was a child, I was always the organiser of the other neighbourhood children's games, and I loved dancing and reading. When I was a teenager, I was still organising everyone's social activities, dancing, reading and writing. Now I am an adult and I am still doing the same things. I now appreciate that amongst my gifts are people skills, organising events, absorbing information and writing ideal skills for a person with a career in public relations, journalism and public speaking, who loves to dance whenever possible.
A friend of mine spent much of her childhood and teenage years on the telephone to all her friends advising them on their parent or relationship problems. Needless to say, she grew up to become a psychologist. Another, now a successful interior designer, told me she used to love making furniture for her toys when she was small, using her mother's sewing machine to make little curtains and constantly redesigning her bedroom as a teenager.
Your attributes: the good, the bad and the not so bad.
Once you've defined what you really enjoy doing with your time, look at your strengths and weaknesses. Once you have honestly assessed your passions, skills and problem areas, you can then start looking for a picture to emerge of how you can use what you've got and what you would love to create a thriving business from.
Sometimes it's difficult to be very objective about yourself, so after making a list of your strengths and weaknesses check them out with your nearest and dearest as well as your work colleagues. Choose people who you know will tell you the truth.
Of course, one person's strength is another person's weakness. It's just a matter of balance and context.
You may prefer writing to speaking to people and see that as a strength, as one of my friends does. However, even though that does make her a good writer in a job, it also means she is unable to deal with people face-to-face, which is clearly a weakness. Having a sense of humour in just about any situation is obviously a plus, but not to take situations seriously when they obviously need to be is surely a minus. What we have to learn to do is either to turn our weaknesses into positives, or just weed them out.
As you begin to plan your new business, consider where your weaknesses could become positive attributes. For example, if you are always restless, think of a business that requires a lot of travelling. If you don t like being with adults very much but love children, why not create a business based on childcare or children's education.
Clearly, there are some weaknesses which just have to be accepted and taken into account when you are planning your future. If you don t enjoy crowds, create a business where you don't have to deal with any.
It's all common sense, but it's amazing how we sometimes ignore our essential personality traits and inner qualities when we take on a particular job or plan our working life.
