5 Ways to Find What You’re Good At

I’m Haley, and I make a living online.

I’m all about women finding freedom through working for themselves doing something they LOVE. Something that moves them. Motivates them to get up early and stay up late.

This is the kind of life I have created for myself (thanks primarily to the grace of God) and I absolutely THRIVE on helping other women find success in their gifts and passions as well.

When I was a junior in college in journalism school at The University of Kansas, I took a web design course. That single course changed the trajectory of my life.

Though most of what I learned during that course was already outdated by the time I learned it, it opened my eyes to a burgeoning industry and one that was rapidly changing – one that I wanted to learn more about.

I started researching web design, graphic design, learning first Adobe Flash animation, then Illustrator and Photoshop.

I was in love.

I remember the feeling I had when I saw what I was capable of creating digitally. I could never go back to a time before that moment.

That was the beginning of my love affair with digital and it would take me to launching and growing a digital web and graphic design business that would allow me to leave my full time marketing job and stay home with my babies full time while making MORE than I ever did in my full time job, in half the time.

I know. I know what you’re thinking. This is another one of those online people trying to teach me how to “do what I did” to create a million dollar business with 10 revenue streams, BLA BLA BLA BLA BLA.

Nope.

Not me.

I do not promise you that if you “do what I did” you will build a business that allows you to make more than your husband or leave your job or stay home or whatever. I’m not making claims here. I’m simply wanting to share what I’ve learned in my 7 years as an entrepreneur with others, and inspire women to believe in themselves again.

Believe that you are capable.

Worth the risk.

That what you have MATTERS to the world.

That we NEED your gifts.

I am a HUGE champion of women stepping up and claiming what they are worth and getting paid for their skills in the marketplace. Why? Because I think we as women have become too comfortable GIVING AWAY our greatest skills. I think we are used up and burnt out and often wonder why we are always doing ALL THE THINGS for everybody else.

Now before you think I sound like a miserly scrooge, hear me clearly. I 100% believe in giving away what you’re good at to the people you feel passionate about serving.

But if you aren’t getting paid to do what you love, eventually, you have to choose between two things:

limit the number of people you serve to VERY few, or stop doing it at all.

Here’s why I hate both those options.

1. Because you are good at things. Like, really. You have unique, undeniable, God-given skills and traits that are only YOURS.
   and
2. Because you should not be separated from doing what you love simply because you are unwilling to recognize the value of what you provide to the community and world at large. You should not alienate yourself from your natural talents and abilities because it’s uncomfortable asking to be paid for what you’re good at.

OK?! Are you feeling me here?

This is important stuff.

What I hear from most women when I start getting excited about this stuff is:

1. They don’t know where to start or think they won’t succeed or

2. They doubt their ability to make it on their own or build a business worth the effort

The thing I want more than anything to impart to women looking to do something for themselves and find ways to make income and also do something that is life-giving to them is the can-do, know-how attitude that is based in a confidence that they have what it takes and that people need what they have.

If those two things are true, you can do anything.

And I’m here to tell you today, they’re both true.

Regardless of what the thing is that you’re thinking of? Both those things are true. How do I know without even knowing what youre good at? Because the internet.

It is broad and big and far-reaching and wide and there are a whole HECKUVA LOT OF PEOPLE searching for just what you have, and you might be the only one capable of doing it in just such a way that they would choose to work with you. And if you self-fulfilling prophecy it out that you will not be able to and no one will want to work with you or think you’re needed, YOU WILL NEVER KNOW what could have been.

So just stop that train before it leaves the station.

Unfollow all the people on instagram that make you feel like its too late and theres too many people doing it already and just DO IT.

Seriously. There’s still enough business for all of us doers.

Most people will never get up off their couches and do anything and if the idea is crossing your brain that you are capable, YOU ARE.

Because ideas like that don’t cross the minds of people who aren’t.

In one of my favorite movies of all time ELIZABETHTOWN, Kirsten Dunst playing Claire Colburn astutely says, “I may not know a lot of things, but I do know a lot about the little that I know and that’s people.”

So hear me, people.

The world needs what you have. God doesn’t make things to be wasted. And He didn’t make you to sit on the sidelines. As a girl who has ridden the bench during two long and terrible years of high school basketball, If you feel like you’re on the sidelines, you’re playing the wrong sport.

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