Note: In the last post, I introduced the idea of Going Pro without Quitting Your Day Job. In this second part, I cover the benefits. Part 3 will show how you can Go Pro.
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My palms were sweaty and my voice was about two octaves higher than normal as I dialed the phone. I was just hoping that I wouldn’t sound like a total idiot.

I had landed the first big interview for my new website Avocationist.com. In a few minutes I’d be talking to an author who had sold more than 2 million books. He was someone I had watched on TV. His financial advice had helped my wife and me learn how to save for retirement. And he had agreed to talk to me!

His phone rang. And rang. And rang.

And then I got his voicemail…

Gulp. “HeyDaveIt’sAllanBaconI’mcallingforourinterview.”

Now I had to wait for him – would he call? And – oh crap – I can’t record the interview if I don’t call him from my skype account!

Welcome to the world of Going Pro - moments of panic followed by intense learning and massive satisfaction…

What did I get from this experience? Flash forward to an hour later.

The interview was safely recorded. And even though I had been nervous and still had a lot to learn, I realized that I had broken through some invisible barrier I had previously created.

After this experience with Dave, I began to believe that I could interview anyone – maybe not that day or the next, but I could see myself getting there.

But that was just the first of many other benefits. Here are some of the others:

Just by taking action, I opened up other opportunities.

The interview with Dave wasn’t some bold move on my part. It really came about through some unwarranted cockiness on my part. After I finished an interview with one of my friends, I was feeling good, so I started started thinking big about who I might approach.

Dave’s book was on my bookshelf, so I Googled him to see what he was up to. I found out that his career had taken some surprising and unusual turns since I had read the book. I emailed him on a lark to see if he would talk with me.

Ten minutes later, he responded by email: “sure.”

I was stuck.

I have experienced a momentum that ramps up if you let it. Call it synchronicity, purpose or a higher calling, but I got pulled to do something that I would never have believed that I could do (and it went fine).

My skills increased very quickly.

From my first to my second to my third interview, each one got easier to do. I was more comfortable and less nervous and more able to go with the natural flow of the conversation.

I loved parts of it – even some that I didn’t know about.

I loved doing the interviews. I guess it shouldn’t have been a surprise but there was a good reason that I was interested in interviewing people – it felt a lot like what I did all the time when I met people. Going Pro just helped me to consciously start to build some additional skills on top of what I already had been practicing my whole life.

I hated parts of it – even some that I didn’t know about.

One of the biggest lessons of Going Pro is that you can’t skip any of the required steps.

One of these was transcription. I loved doing the interviews, but hated dealing with them afterwards. First I tried for an automated system – until I found out they don’t exist yet. Then I found out about elance.com and hired a few transcriptionists. I ended up with a great partner (who ended up transcribing my entire book).

You will quickly find that some parts you will like, some you won’t mind, and some you will need to work around.

Going Pro is a starting point, not a destination.

Going Pro doesn’t mean that you will necessarily stay with what you started with.

Some things you will try just won’t work. My original idea for the website was to publish the full interviews in a Q&A format. I assumed that others would be interested in getting to “meet” these cool people I was talking to. But what I discovered was that people really were looking for me to distill down what I had learned for them.

That led to writing which led to a book and talks and this post.

Going Pro is a necessary stepping stone to things you will love that you can’t even imagine now.

That interview with Dave was also a watershed event for me. It was the first time I was exposed to the business of writing and speaking. A big part of our interview was on how he developed and grew his business. It planted a seed in my mind that would grow and morph into what I’m doing now. But I could never have gone straight from where I was to where I am now without this step of Going Pro.

Going Pro isn’t all about work.

I began to realize that the people I was interviewed really enjoyed the experience, too. They were learning about their own lives in the process of talking with me about them. My interviews were a kind of gift to the people I was talking to.

And I was creating new friendships. Since I started the site, I have met several of my interviewees after our initial phone calls. I even had dinner in California with one of my Avocationists and his wife. I’m still in touch with most of them. It’s been a great way to expand my experience to include a greater variety of people.

I could fit in a lot around my job if I was patient and willing to be creative.

It was much easier than I thought to work in my interviews. It took planning. It also took patience to realize that sometimes the website would need to be dropped for a couple of weeks while I was busy with work or family. But I was having enough fun and positive feedback from the experience to keep plugging away at it.

How can you Go Pro? In Part 3 of this series, I’ll present the 3 essential parts of Going Pro and give some ideas about how you can get started.

Photo courtesy thorinside via flickr.com

What are you working on?

If someone asks you that, are you excited to tell them the answer?

I hope so. If not, you're wasting away.

No matter what your job is, no matter where you work, there's a way to create a project (on your own, on weekends if necessary), where the excitement is palpable, where something that might make a difference is right around the corner.

Hurry, go do that.

That's the spirit behind Going Pro without Quitting Your Day Job (read more in Part 1 and Part 2). You don't have to wait to try anything. There is a way to do it small, now.

What do you wish you were doing now?

Admit it. You’ve got a secret love.

You sketch shoe designs during meetings. You build toy trains in your basement. You sing arias in the shower.

You probably don’t tell too many people about your secret love.

Why not?

• “I’m not good enough yet.”
• “No one would care.”
• “I can’t make money doing it, so why bother.”
• “I’ll get to that after I’ve made my money and have more time.”

What if I told you that you are good enough, you can easily find people who care, you can make money and that you have plenty of time right now?

All you have to do is Go Pro.

In this post, I’m going to explain the process of “Going Pro” and how it is simpler and more powerful than you think. In the next 2 posts I’ll talk more about the benefits and the how-to for taking your secret love public.

What does it take to Go Pro?

If you are an athlete, it means accepting sponsorships and prize money. Basically, it means that you are getting paid to do what you love to do.

So to Go Pro, you only need 3 elements:

1. You
2. Your project
3. A customer or audience

You’ve got number 1 covered. (Congratulations!)

Now, what kind of project could you do? What does Going Pro look like?

Kate's First Gallery Show

It can start really simply. When my daughter Kate was 7, she had her first gallery show of paintings.

The gallery was our house and the show took place on Thanksgiving when we were hosting lots of out of town guests. She pulled together her favorite paintings and mounted them. We put them on the walls around the house.

I interviewed her and typed up her “Artist’s Statement” and put it up with a photo I had taken of her.

When everyone arrived, we had wine and cheese and the show began. She gave a brief talk about her art and inspirations. By the end, she got several offers.

Kate had Gone Pro.

Was she ready for New York? Not yet. But she knew more about what people liked. She knew more about putting together a portfolio. She had practice talking about her work in front of a group. She had experience now.

The next time she would be better.

So, what’s your goal for your secret love?

If you had all the money you would need and could focus on your love, what would you do?

Take that as the starting point for figuring out your project. (And if you need help finding your love, watch for an upcoming post on Life Experiments.)

What’s the easiest, safest way you can think of to make a “starter” version of your long-term goal? What would a 7-year-old do?

Next time I’ll talk about how I started this blog and what I learned about the benefits of Going Pro.

In the meantime, comment below with your thoughts and questions. How can you Go Pro? What's your secret love?

Photo courtesy Gianmaria Veronese

For most of my career, I was busy with work and the little remaining time was dedicated to my family. While this arrangement made me feel like I was taking care of everything, over time it left me feeling hollow.

Somehow I knew that the empty feeling was from not doing the things in life I was born to do.

When the pace would slow down a bit I would think up big plans for how I could fix my work or my life to fill that gap. But none of these dreams were practical – and deep down I didn’t believe that they would really fix things anyway.

Then one Saturday afternoon about ten years ago, I had a realization: I had been getting little signals all along about how to find what I was made to do. I just needed to follow my spark.

It happened when I took this photo of my daughter.

The little teardrop under Meg’s left eye took my breath away. I didn’t know why, but luckily I decided to do more photography.

I've since realized that it wasn’t because I was meant to only do photography.

But the photography tapped into the spark in me. It was the start of a great journey.

Following the photography led to amazing growth in my life. I met new friends. I took some beautiful photos of my daughters. I learned a lot about myself. Through more than a few ups and downs, photography taught me how to learn new things without going to school and without having to stop working or being a good dad and husband.

Through these and other paths, seeds were planted that helped shape what I get to do now: At a photography school in the mountains of North Carolina I shared a room with 70-year old Bob and learned how he managed a sane career at GE. In a photography group I learned about Photoshop but also met the blogger who inspired Avocationist.com.

You are not meant to feel like you are missing something inside.

When you start paying attention to your spark, that hollow ache will go away immediately. In its place will be energy and hope. And they lead to inspiration and ideas.

Here are some places to pay attention: What makes your heart beat faster? What stores always grab your eye? Whom do you admire?

Follow those impulses and find your spark.

Have you completed employee reviews in the last month? Did it feel like a good use of your time? Did you feel like you were really building value in your company or did you feel like you were checking off a box on someone else’s cover-my-butt list?

Be honest.

When your Outlook calendar is completely colored in and you don’t know what half of the meetings are, you should probably start to think about giving yourself a demotion.

I’ve been inspired reading Seth Godin’s new book “Linchpin” which launches today. (Buy it here. I love the book because you can dive in anywhere and pick up some uncomfortably challenging advice.)

In the spirit of Seth's book, I offer my favorite way to free up time while making a bigger impact at work...

One of Seth’s most uncomfortable sections (for those of you in corporate jobs) is on the commoditization of white-collar jobs. If you are just checking off other people’s boxes you are putting yourself at unnecessary risk of becoming just like any other middle manager. Which means that you can be replaced with any other middle manager.

Instead, Seth challenges each of us to become a Linchpin:

The linchpin is an individual who can walk into chaos and create order, someone who can invent, connect, create and make things happen. Every worthwhile institution has indispensable people who make differences like these.

If you are sitting in someone else’s meetings all week you aren’t becoming indispensable.

You are in a career holding pattern at best and in danger of a career death spiral at worst.

Working more hours will just make it harder for you to make a big contribution. You need a way to focus your efforts on something that will challenge you and bring real value to your company, without requiring another 30 hours of meetings each week.

Here’s my radical suggestion for creating more time and flexibility in your job: give yourself a demotion from management to a position where you can directly make a strategic contribution. I call this “strategic downshifting”.

Just like downshifting in a car, this gives you more power and control. It also makes your engine rev higher and gives you faster acceleration. That is to say, you can create a place where you can be excited about your work again.

I’ve done this three times in my career and I know of dozens of others who have had similar experiences. There are several factors to a successful downshift:

• Find a place where you are excited and can see new possibilities

After we sold a company where I was VP of Sales & Marketing, I was excited about applying our new parent company’s licensing business model to our old industry. I knew it was a chance to influence a significant change in the way optics were sold for cell phone cameras. But I couldn’t do it from my management role. Instead, I took responsibility for leading the business development efforts by myself with no team.

• Look at previous jobs to find great launching pads

Bob got passed over for a promotion early in his career at GE. Instead of continuing to press for a management role, he focused his productivity on inventing new products. He had a happy, sane 40 year career there and was awarded over 50 patents. (The guy who beat him out for the management job was let go 6 months later in a restructuring effort).

• Build a new constituency to support your efforts

Work with your management to ensure a graceful transition. Even more importantly, make sure that you have support from people excited about what you will be doing in your new (old) role. They can help smooth over any resistance you encounter.

• Watch out for the pull back into management

Traditional advice says that taking a step backwards on the career ladder means that you are done for. This is exactly the opposite of my experience. I have found that the wisdom and passion you bring to a downshifted role tends to bring results and recognition. My shift to a direct sales role netted me a bonus within 6 months.

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7:06 pm at the Hilton. Running late from work. Pay my $15. Put on nametag. Gulp. Walk into a ballroom of strangers standing around chatting. Everyone knows someone but me. Crap. Maybe I’ll just stand in the corner…

Have you ever experienced the "yuck" factor of networking? Do you feel like you have to pretend to be someone different to make new contacts? Do you feel guilty about bothering people you'd like to meet?

I did too. Then I learned that networking was something I already knew how to do.

I just had to forget everything I'd read about the "right way" to connect with people.

Instead of fearful cold calls or sweaty-palmed handshakes, think about lunch with an old friend.

What do you talk about? Maybe how she is doing, what's going on in her life, or how her work is.

You share a new recipe or a restaurant recommendation. She gives you the name of a book that can help with your business. You remember that she loves painting and offer to introduce her to your neighbor who owns a gallery.

You have fun. You re-connect. You share.

Afterwards, you feel great and you've both helped out a good friend and built on your relationship.

Guess what? That's all there is to "networking".

It's how I've met best-selling authors, friends all over the world and how I've learned most every cool thing I've ever done.

But I also tried the networking receptions, the cold-calling and the mercenary focus on "what's in it for me?". None of these did much for me other than make me feel like a loser. It's really no wonder that networking has such a scary connotation.

If you want to find a new job, a mentor or just meet some cool new people, here are three tips for guilt-free (and fun) networking:

1. Skip networking meetings and start with your friends

You are only a few degrees of separation from most anyone you'd ever want to meet. Instead of trying to impress strangers in artificial 30-second meet-and-greets, reconnect with old friends, colleagues or neighbors.

2. Unless you just love networking, don't do it until you have a specific reason

When you are looking for a job or trying to get new clients, networking is the best way to find openings and new opportunities. Networking is also a great way to find the best daycare or guitar teacher.

But unless you just love meeting people, don't add it to your list of "things I really should be doing". Just wait until you have a specific reason to expand your connections - it will make it easier for your friends to help you find the information you need anyway.

3. Focus on helping - even when you most need help

This is the cure-all to your nerves and guilt about connecting with people you haven't talked to in a long time. The trick is to prepare ahead of time with a quick list of ways you might be able to help the person you will be meeting with. Check out their website or facebook page. What do they like? Who do you know that they might like to meet?

When you do this pre-work, you'll be primed to be in "helping mode" and less focused on your own needs. And even if you can't think of anything to offer, remember that a genuine note of thanks afterwards is an excellent gift of gratitude.

Want to learn more? Sign up for my Authentic Networking teleseminar.

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Here's a quick way to try out your secret dreams, create some new ideas and sow the seeds of your next adventure - all without leaving your desk.

Today I used it to feed my "travel jones" during lunch: I went to Brazil.

Here's my Lunch Break Dream Launch process:

1. Choose the first interest that pops into your head

Start the process with any dream you have - world travel, music, woodworking. Think quickly and capture the first things that come to mind.

Then write down what your dream is - it's fine to be vague, high-level and even a little crazy at this point. You might want to go to every country in the world or play clarinet at Carnegie Hall or learn how to call square dances. The only requirement is to actually write the idea down.

Then, spend 10 minutes on Google searching for the main words in your dream - for example, "world travel", "clarinet", "square dancing".

2. Get more specific to get more creative

As you get results back, follow your instincts and click on any site that draws your attention. For example, if you like movies and travel, you might do a search and remember that you've always wanted to go to the Cannes Film Festival.

Then do a search on that more specific version of your dream. Look for the details you would need to make a good plan.

Maybe Cannes is too far off for now. But find out when it is. (It's in May and the weather is lovely - I checked).

Maybe you don't have the money to pay for a fancy hotel on the Cote d'Azur or to rent a yacht in the harbor. So search some travel sites to see if there are creative ways to get there - Can you volunteer? Can you offer to lead a tour group? Can you get a pass from a small film production company?

As you begin to dig for details, you'll start to broaden the list of ways you can experience your dreams.

3. When you get stuck, blow it up

If you get stuck or bored, take a different direction.

You could see what other film festivals are going on - there are several in the US. Find one near a city where you have a friend or relative (= free place to stay).

Or think about the "pieces" of your dream. When you think about "Film Festivals", what does that bring to mind?

Is part of it seeing interesting movies? Then find out what is showing at your local Art Theatre or University. Leave work on time one day this week and catch the 7pm show.

Is part of it sharing your perspective? Write a review of the movie.

Is part of it the thrill of interacting with other film buffs? Send a note to the film's director with your feedback.

4. Tangents can become your new path in life

Traveling to South America is on my list of dreams, so today I searched for cities in Brazil and Argentina. While looking for cheap ways to travel, I stumbled across a website called "couchsurfing.org" with a list of people who would let me crash at their houses for free. I searched not just in Brazil, but also in California (where I'm headed on a business trip soon). Then I went to Orbitz and researched flight schedules and costs.

With each new piece of information, I'm building on a plan that can someday soon get me to South America. And I know I'll be able to do it while managing my household budget and my other responsibilities.

See how it goes?

5. What's in it for you

Now, I may not take this particular trip to Brazil. And that's perfectly fine. Even if I never make it there, my Lunch Break Dream Launch has given me some powerful benefits:

I spent time on me. I got to do something just for fun and I broke up the monotony of a regular day.

I focused my brain on what matters to me. Even when I stopped doing the search, there was part of my mind that was still thinking and scheming and planning.

I motivated myself to keep going. Now that I've started planning, I am looking forward to my next 15 minute break where I can find out more and take the next steps.

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In the first excerpt from our interview, Pam explains how she started the blog and gives insights into how she has successfully balanced the practical parts of her life with her passion for helping budding entrepreneurs.

Check out what I learned at a No Doubt concert this weekend - how to know when you have outgrown your work.

Watch until the end for an invitation to a series of classes I'm offering (you can also get more information here).

Want to do something different, but can't figure out what it is? Or how to do more meaningful work without jeopardizing your lifestyle?

Join me for a special tele-class this Wednesday night, June 10th at 5pm ET: Don't wait to test-drive your dreams (How to start now without quitting your job).

It's free for my newsletter subscribers.

This tele-class is part of a series I'm offering to take you from "I don't know what I want to be when I grow up" to "I would never have been able to envision how rich my life is now."

Sign up now because there are a limited number of spots left. I'll email you more details and a link to the recording of our first tele-class: "How to find a job as fun as your life was as a kid."

Here's what you need to do:

1. Click here to sign up
2. Sign up for my newsletter (it's free, too)

You can get more details and check out the whole list of upcoming classes here.