Saturday 16 August 2014

When Passion meets Business Opportunity

Turning a Blog into a Business

Heeding one of the biggest learnings from the program – that as noble as it may be, running an NPO full-time is not financially sustainable, or simply put, it’s a poor optimization of a high-potential, ambitious 30 year old in the prime of her career – I took the next big step in “putting my learning into action”. And let’s just say that I didn’t resign from a lucrative job only on a leap of faith - it was a bit more of a calculated risk ;)

In addition to dedicating “more” of my time to growing the NPO, I resigned for another reason. I have always been extremely passionate about people development. Mentorship, in particular, played a big role in my. So much so that I often say that I am a product of Mentorship – both inadvertently and purposefully, especially over the past 5 to 7 years, through the non-profit organisation that I run (SAWomEng), the thriving engineering career that I had with a corporate engineering company, some leadership programs/opportunities that I have participated in over the years, but the most impactful certainly being the Fortune program last year. In being so passionate about the power of mentorship and in line with my deep-seated commitment to “paying it forward”, I once again put my learnings into practice and I went on to turn this burning Passion into a Business Opportunity. 

After fulfilling my desire to dedicating a few months full-time to SAWomEng, I started my own business venture heeding the learning from the program “don’t be ashamed to make money from doing good” – I founded The Passionate Professional (who knew the simple naming of a blog would be the catalyst to something so much greater!)

The Passionate Professional is a Leadership Incubator focused on developing youth and young professionals through Mentorship, with the intention of building a socially conscious generation of leaders and entrepreneurs with a core focus on giving back to society.

Attesting much of my own success to the role that my mentors (both formal and informal) and the mentorship programs I have been fortunate to participate in have played in my life, I founded the incubator to address the severely lacking need for sound and impactful Mentorship Programs and Leadership Development in South Africa. The incubator serves as a platform enabling me to design and facilitate programs based on my experience, thereby bringing the unique exposure, learnings and opportunities that I have so generously been afforded to those who may not otherwise have access to these.

The Passionate Professional, while conceptualised post my resignation, was only formally recently and is as such still in its “incubation” phase itself. However, with a sound and exciting service offering well mapped out and broken down into a 4-phase roll-out over the next 2 years, this is certainly going to be an exciting space to watch. Through the incubator, I ambitiously aim to spear-head a paradigm shift in the way Mentorship in South Africa is approached and practiced. So I invite you to join me on this journey and be a part of the magic that promised to unfold.   

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