Are you a people person?

Turning your natural talents into a business: building on your people skills

You have a real understanding of what makes people tick. You are regarded as thoughtful, tactful, articulate, confident and cheerful – qualities you could use to create a business.

How to develop your natural talent: which interaction do you most value and enjoy?
• Bringing people together, putting them at ease, finding their common points of interest?
• Helping friends to solve their dilemmas by listening carefully?
• Advising others on the right course and giving them the confidence to ‘go for it?’
• Running successful events?

 

Identify your key strengths:
Where do your main skills lie?
• Match-making (assessing, facilitating, persuading)
• Therapeutic (analysing, listening, questioning)
• Coaching (supporting, developing, persuading)
• Organising (assessing, planning, negotiating, deciding)

 

Learn more:
• Take a course in psychology, counselling or stress-management
• Read books in this field by well-known communicators
• Analyse the organisational details of any events you attend
• Look up property-finder or matchmaker websites and explore how these services are organised

 

Build your confidence:
Practise what you’ve learned by:
• Rewriting your friends’ cvs
• Composing lonely-hearts advertisements for your friends
• Doing unpaid befriending work in a hospital, residential home or local people’s homes
• Making it your project to find your best friend a true love
• Organising a car-share scheme with half-a-dozen mothers for the school run

Your hobby has become a passion when...
• Total strangers ring up and say you’ve been recommended to help with their smoking addiction/relationship crisis
• Your place of work has asked you to set up a special stress-management centre
• Friends begin to take notes when you give advice

Learn more, get practising
Qualifications
There are few qualifications or minimum standards in the field of ‘personal services’. Check up on any course you’re considering so you’re clear about its status.

Read, observe, practise
This area is also replete with self-help, pop-psychology and lifestyle-advice manuals. Read a handful with a critical eye to give you confidence in your own common sense and analytical abilities. Sharpen your style, techniques and skills with observation and practice:
• Sign up as a volunteer with the Samaritans, Cruse or other counselling-support charities
• Agree to mentor a teenage relative or friend’s child
• Fix up a speed-dating evening for friends and work colleagues
• Organise a fund-raising event for a local cause
• Shadow a recruitment-agency boss, property finder or life coach

Towards a people-based business
You’ll almost certainly start small, building up slowly as your reputation and experience grows. Possibilities include:
• Life coach
• Party/function planner
• Fundraiser
• Introductions agency
• Property finder
• Personal shopper
• Psychotherapist/counsellor
Or you could combine your ‘people’ talent with other skills or subject knowledge to become:
• Art, music or drama therapist
• Personal fitness trainer
• Beauty therapist
• Agony aunt
• Recruitment consultant
• Personal-finance adviser


Resources for people people
British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy 0870 443 5252; www.bacp.co.uk (overview information on counselling services)
Counselling Books www.counsellingbooks.com (wide range of titles)
British Association of Art Therapists 020 7686 4216; www.baat.org
The Coaching and Mentoring Network 0870 733 3313; www.coachingnetwork.org.uk (courses, contacts)
The Samaritans 020 8394 8300;  www.samaritans.org.uk
Cruse Bereavement Care 020 8939 9530; www.crusebereavementcare.org.uk
Confederation of Scottish Counselling Agencies 01786 475140; www.cosca.org.uk
Mentoring and Befriending Foundation 0161 787 8600 www.mandbf.org.uk
United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy 020 7014 9955; www.psychotherapy.org.uk
Relate www.relate.org.uk (advice, books, relationship counselling, mediation)

 

Need further inspiration?

Here are some ideas to capitalise on your natural talents to think about - with ideas and advice for each...

Take our quiz to discover your natural talents... 

...and then make the most of them

Can you spot a bargain at 20 paces?

Have you got green fingers?

Can you make a meal from nothing?

Are you good with children?

Can you talk to the animals?

Do you make or create things?

 

 

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