A 42-year-old who left marketing to become a breakup coach shares advice on turning your passion into a career.

For the first 10 years of her career, Amy Chan, 42, focused on building a successful marketing career. However, her true passions lay elsewhere.

At age 25, Chan started openly discussing her romantic experiences by writing about a breakup on Myspace. Her post received a significant response, with many people reaching out to her. This was in 2007, a time when people were not as open about sharing the most personal details of their lives online.

Despite working in marketing by day, Chan wrote about relationships for her local newspaper, blog, and national publications like Huffington Post. She also had an idea for a breakup bootcamp where people could find comfort together after going through a breakup.

"What happens to people who don't have friends to offer them a couch to stay on?" she wonders.

Although she wrote out the vision for breakup bootcamp in 2015, she was too scared to make it happen immediately. Instead, she kept it and talked about it for a long time. However, in retrospect, she realizes that she should have acted on it sooner. There was no real reason not to make it happen.

Her advice for turning your passion into a career is to simply launch it, regardless of what it is.

She says, "The mind's way of working is to convince you of all the reasons why you're not ready yet, but you need to push through those negative thoughts."

"She realized that if she didn't act now, she wouldn't do it," Chan says.

Breaking down a project into smaller tasks can make it less overwhelming, she suggests.

Just like a writer," she says, "you shouldn't focus on the entire project at once. Instead, start with the first step and then move on to the next one. If you're changing careers, read an article or talk to someone who's already doing it. If you're starting a new venture, start with the first social media account and build your audience.

Chan found a psychologist to help her put on the bootcamp and booked the space, which ultimately propelled her forward.

In February 2017, she hosted the first breakup bootcamp, a three-day, two-night retreat on a private property in upstate New York that featured yoga and sessions with Chan and a psychologist.

At the conclusion of the weekend, Chan contemplated and mused, "I accomplished it," she remarks.

She started with a small group of seven people, including two media and two friends. But it gave her the courage to continue with bootcamps, which she now hosts annually.

Your idea may not unfold as planned, and you don't need to implement all of it at once. However, by testing it out, you can begin to understand where to take it from there.

Chan's career as a breakup coach began with the help of coverage in publications like Fortune and The Cut, which led to her getting the attention of a major talent agency. In August 2017, she left her job in marketing to launch her relationship-oriented career full-time. Her first book deal was worth six figures.

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