The Day I Stopped Being an Employee and Followed My Passion
How to capitalize on creativity in the passion economy
“Aren’t you worried?” My friend said, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.
I’d received the same response from everyone I’d spoken to since losing my coveted job at London’s top university days before, right in the middle of the pandemic.
In truth, I felt liberated. I’d been an employee of one company or another since I was fifteen years old. Coming from a working-class family I’d worked my way up the career ladder through sheer hard work and persistence.
Now, at the age of thirty-five, I had a moral dilemma —
I wanted a job I was passionate about, not one that just looked good on paper.
As a millennial and creative type, I’d been following the rise in digital platforms from YouTube to Patreon, Shopify to Medium, and seen how creators were capitalizing on what they loved.
Why couldn’t I be one of them, too? I’d been writing my whole life, had a degree in English literature and creative writing, and considered myself tech-savvy.
If I wanted to make my passion my living, now was the time to do it. I had no idea what was ahead of me. I never imagined that losing my university job, a job I’d worked so hard to get was actually the best thing that could have happened to me and that I’d come out of lockdown making 4 figures a month doing what I truly loved.
So at the time, all I had was a childish excitement at being able to pursue my passion but also a strong sense of ‘what the hell would I do if I failed?’
I took a tentative step into the world of the Passion Economy never expecting the life-changing opportunities that lay ahead of me.
The Passion Economy
To understand how much easier it is today to cash in on creativity, we first need to understand what the previous model looked like.
Rewind 10 years — if you wanted to make money from writing a blog, for example, then it would have looked something like this:
- Learn website design so you can build a website to blog on.
- Add either CPM, PPC, or CPC advertising, sponsored content, or affiliate links. Preferably all three, as these were the only way you’d make any money.
- Learn and implement search engine optimization (SEO) to send readers to your blog.
- Spend precious time and money on optimizing plugins and, and trying to fix tedious problems like bugs and functionality issues.
Sounds like hard work. It was. Most bloggers struggled to make a decent income and became disenchanted by how much time went into admin and marketing and how little time went into creating.
The barriers to entrepreneurship have now been lowered
The new model under the passion economy looks like this:
- Find an established platform that fits your creative niche.
- Start creating.
- Get paid.
Today, all the heavy lifting is done for you. Established online marketplaces are incentivized to help creators grow as the bigger and better they get the more traffic they drive to the website — whether it’s a blogger on Medium or a handbag designer on Etsy.
As encouraging as all this sounds though, there is one problem…
Avoid rose-tinted lenses
Crucially, just because there are numerous easy-to-access marketplaces and platforms that doesn’t mean that everyone can succeed. Those who are expecting maximum rewards for minimal effort soon disappear into obscurity along with all the people before them who brought nothing with them but the expectation of fast money. To make money in the passion economy you have to be passionate about what you create.
“No matter what it is you provide, the greatest value lies in the passion with which you provide it”
― Adam Davidson, The Passion Economy
The key to my success was not expecting success. Yes, I had a plan, but a sane one. One that didn’t involve chasing money but was based on research of what was realistically possible. Not to say there is a ceiling to earning money online, far from it. Rather, there is a way to approach being a creator if you want to succeed and this is best explained in the following three strategies.
How to Thrive in The Passion Economy
Play the long game
I started writing on Medium on November 1, 2020. I had enough savings in the bank to last me around 6 months. After that, I needed to earn £900 GBP per month; the minimum amount to cover my living expenses. I wasn’t chasing the big bucks or looking for a get-rich-quick scheme, this was about prioritizing my passion.
Play the long game, don’t expect overnight success. Set a sane deadline that gives you something to work towards. Have money in the bank or another income as this will allow you to experiment and see what works rather than putting you under unnecessary pressure because you need to earn money straight away.
Change the way you look at things
Yes, there are hundreds of examples of creators earning millions of dollars but don’t expect that you can join them straight away.
You have to work hard to be a lawyer or doctor, teacher or police officer, so the expectation that you can start earning thousands or millions online without putting in the time and effort is naive.
In addition, if you ignore what society tells you about what a decent income is then £900 (or whatever amount just covers your living expenses) won’t seem like a pittance, it will feel like a fortune when you realise you are earning money to live your passion.
When you start to earn more than your minimum amount it will mean so much more than if you’d set a higher target and failed to reach it. Remember, if you change the way you look at things the things you look at change.
Specialize don’t generalize
“Find a niche, and then you’ll always have a following.”
— Adam Davidson, The Passion Economy
Wise words. If you want to thrive in the passion economy you need to find a niche — focus on one thing and expect it will take time to establish yourself.
If you’re dividing your time between too many hustles you’ll never succeed at one let alone all of them. When I joined Medium, I wrote on Medium. Full stop. I didn’t start a newsletter, create a course, or jump on the Newsbreak bandwagon. I ignored the common advice to have my finger in several pies and instead focused all my efforts in one place.
So, take your passion, find a niche market and learn it better than anyone. Passionately pursue problem-solving for that niche market and make yourself the person everyone comes to when they want advice/a product/a service in that niche.
Crush your market, don’t let your market crush you.
Make Your Passion Your Life, Not Your Job
I can’t lie — when you’re given the opportunity to follow your passion, it doesn’t feel like hard work, so to say it’s been a difficult journey would be far from the truth.
Yes, there was the trepidation that it wouldn’t work out but my practical approach and realistic expectations meant I didn’t put my passion on a pedestal, giving me a stronger chance of success because I hadn’t raised the bar ridiculously high.
A succession of wins would be the best way to describe the last few months. Yes, earning four figures a month has allowed me to say I’m a full-time writer and truly make my passion my living but so much more than that I’ve joined a community of people just like me — creators with unique and diverse skillsets who make a living by standing out, not fitting in.
What’s more, I now have the additional privilege of being an editor on the platform, an amazing opportunity that allows me to work with and learn from the founder of Medium’s largest active publication, as well as use my own skills and experience to offer feedback and advice to other writers.
Looking back, losing my job at the end of last year was the best thing that happened to me. Pursuing my passion has taught me that you don’t need to put happiness on hold for when you retire, you can live it now. Don’t be fooled into thinking you have to follow a set path in life — the right mindset is the key to making your passion your purpose.
Remember, you’re the only you there is and that means you’re unique. And because you’re unique there’s a place for you here.
So, in the new economy — Where will your passion take you?
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