Earning a living by following your passion doesn’t happen by chance

Summary

Intrepid entrepreneur and home staging expert Debra Gould, talks about the role timing plays in the journey toward making a living by following your passion.

Earning a living by following your passion doesn’t happen by chance

Louis Pasteur said, “Chance favors the prepared mind.” There’s a great deal of truth to that quote.

During one of entrepreneur Debra Gould’s many moves, she found a five-year old newspaper clipping about the home staging industry that she’d saved in a “business ideas” file.

The irony was that she had no memory of seeing the article much less saving it a full two years before starting her own home staging business. She thought she’d pulled the idea of being a home stager out of the air after reselling her fifth house within 8 weeks of buying and redecorating it. Yet, there was living proof in her ideas file, that somehow she had already planted the seed and her subconscious mind had been thinking about it for five years!

There are so many points in life where we’re at a cross-road that we don’t even realize. For every choice we make, we are by default choosing not to go with another option. So if we’re unhappy with our careers and we don’t feel we are following our passions, every day we don’t do anything to change our situation is actually a day that we’ve chosen to keep things how they are.

Sometimes it takes an outside jolt or chance conversation to help prepare our minds to see the other opportunities that await us.

Debra Gould, also known as The Staging Diva®, says, “When I first saved that newspaper article on home staging, I was living comfortably and feeling absolutely secure in my career. But I always felt like there was something more that I was meant to do. That’s why I was always saving stories in my business ideas file and was hungry for any story about how others had reinvented their lives. When I read the home staging article, I thought about how house staging would allow me to use my natural decorating talent and interest in real estate. But at the time, I pushed the thought to the back of my mind, in part because I had no interior design training, and kept going with my marketing consulting business. I did have an MBA after all, what could I have been thinking? The thought of leaving that cocoon of security and credibility was terrifying.”

While anyone on the outside looking in would have said that Gould was operating a successful business as a six-figure earner working from a home office, success is a relative term.

Can you consider yourself successful if you don’t feel passionate about what you do?

Gould says, “I believe I was meant to get into the field of home staging, but when I first learned of the industry, my mind wasn’t ready to go there yet. I had to reach the point where I had no choice but to follow my dream of fully using my creativity to make a real difference in people’s lives. When I started my home staging business, Six Elements Inc., I realized there is nothing like spending your days doing something you love and are naturally gifted in, and being paid well for it too. Teaching others how to grow their own home staging business actually evolved from there, because of the many aspiring home stagers who came to me for help in reinventing their own lives.”

A few months ago Gould received an email from a woman who was working in the human resources field. She didn’t feel passionate about her work because so much of what she did all day had nothing to do with helping people and she was tired of dealing with office politics.

During a random encounter with a colleague, she admitted her restlessness and desire to try something new. For whatever reason, this colleague saw something in her that she hadn’t yet seen in herself and asked if she’d ever thought of getting into home staging. It was a seemingly random suggestion given that this colleague knew her as a human resources person.

Yet, suddenly she found her passion.

She was full of excitement and a newfound positive energy, realizing that being a home stager would still allow her to help others, which is why she’d chosen a career in human resources in the first place.

So much that happens to us can be attributed to a source we can’t see or really explain. One thing is for certain and that is, timing can play a crucial role in your life. When it comes to following your heart, listen to that inner voice and pay attention— prepare your mind!

About the author, Debra Gould

Intrepid entrepreneur, Debra Gould, president of internationally recognized home staging company Six Elements Inc. has no trouble attracting clients. An entrepreneur by the age of 30, she also created The Staging Diva® Home Staging Business Training Program with 1000+ Graduates worldwide, authored several guides and is the founder of the Directory of Home Stagers which helps homeowners and real estate agents locate home stagers to decorate homes to sell quickly and for top dollar. To learn more visit http://www.stagingdiva.com.