How To Make A Living From Many Interests

Many Baby Boomers or encore entrepreneurs reinvent themselves from the corporate world to their own businesses because they feel stalled in careers that don’t encompass their varied interests.

Unfortunately, many carry their old way of thinking with them when they open their own shops. That’s the industrial structure that emphasizes you should “focus” on one role or task to the exclusion of everything else.

But today, you don’t have to focus as much, especially in an encore business, which is aimed as much at exploring as it is in generating a lot of money so you can by a lot of useless things.

The Pursuit Portfolio
The solution to this dilemma is a Pursuit Portfolio, which allows you to turn your interests, or pursuits, into streams of income.  A pursuit portfolio also contains an element of risk management because, if you devise the right portfolio mix, some elements will produce income while others are in a slump.

Here’s how to design a Pursuit Portfolio:

1.    List all your interests. Write them down, describing each in about a paragraph in terms of why they interest you, and what you do in the area. This will allow you to look at them with a cold eye instead of through emotion, which is notoriously short-sighted. While composing this list, note your experience, knowledge, and degree of interest. Then prioritize which you like best.

2.    Find common denominators. You may find that you are interested in several things that all revolve around a single denominator – your ability to analyse, predilection for organizing, or love of creativity, for example. These can often be clustered into one overall business pursuit. Then find the interests that are truly diverse and eclectic, such as your love of sports. Pick the top 3 or 5 that you really want to pursue.

3.    Determine how you can profit from them. This is the crux of the plan, and is also the creative part, because you are figuring out how to earn income from each interest. So, apply business planning principles to each pursuit. For each, devise a plan on how you can sell that knowledge, perhaps by employing some of the denominators that you identified above. It may be in the form of an ebook, a seminar, or in face-to-face consulting. It may be in some product that eventually sells steadily and automatically without much involvement from you.

4.    Organize your pursuits in terms of income. Like in a financial portfolio, different pursuits will produce differing results at differing times. Some will yield quick results, and some may need a lot of seeding and watering before they produce regular income. Also, some will produce steady income and some will be more sporadic. You probably want a mix of immediate, later, steady, and “maybe” (possibilities) business pursuits.

5.    Manage Your Time. Because multiple pursuits usually mean multiple demands, you may be tempted to engage in multitasking. Don’t, because it means you won’t be able to devote your full attention to anything. You can pursue multiple interests if you organize yourself (or have someone do it for you). Devote specific time periods, perhaps days, or partial days, for specific pursuits. Obviously you want to devote most time to immediate pursuits.

Okay, I lied. There actually are six steps. Consider Number Six as a bonus.

The Bonus Step. Recognize that a pursuit portfolio is evolutionary and must be constantly re-evaluated and adjusted. So build in regular evaluation time.  The upside of this process is that you will also be continually creating, as you tweak this or that pursuit because of knowledge you’ve gained in another pursuit.

Have a suggestion on how to make this work better? I’d like to hear it.