It’s a battle for the ages – when you start a business should you follow your passion or go with what you know will make you money no matter how interested you are in the business or products/services?
There is such passion on both sides of this argument – but be careful, most of it comes from people who have never built a successful business OR realized the full extent of their passion.
They have opinions, but one must ask – “how much are those opinions worth if they are not backed by first-hand experience?”
Based on real-life experience – here is some advice, based entirely on fact…
The road to financial success AND personal fulfillment is to start a business that combines the best of your personal passion and fundamental elements of a strong business – those being desire, willingness to pay and relationship to your market.Â
Here’s a great example…
Through thouands of sales of The Ultimate Information Entrepreneur’s Success Package, we have helped a small army of writers – book writers, freelancers, wanna be writers – who have tremendous passion for the act of writing…they absolutely love writing and would ideally spend every waking hour on their craft.
Yet – most of them come to us because…
- They can’t find the time to write because they are too busy working other jobs – most are broke and have to deal with many challenges in their lives – not exactly a situation that prompts maximum creativity
- They are freelance writing for pennies on the dollar. They pick up extra projects, write about things they are not really interested in, are forced to re-write to please the editor – bottom line is they are NOT enjoying what they are doing
- They have incredible, passionate ambitions – some with projects near completion, but they can’t figure out how to turn their passions into reality — in such a way to continue spending more and more time on the craft and business they love.Â
As writers, their passion is for expressing themselves through the written word, some love the art of teaching, simplifying while others love to tell a story and entertain…but all wish to control their time and energy to spend as much time on their passion as they can.
Just as some love to build businesses, teach or train, develop software, paint or express themselves through other art forms…writers are not directly motivated by making money – they don’t always look at their craft as a business per se.Â
However, the reality of the situation is that they must pay their bills, they must pay for materials, to get their books printed, to get a better computer or software to write with, to market themselves so others know about their work, etc…
Feed Your Passion By Starting Your Own Business
Those that do NOT find a way to make money from their craft cannot spend near the time they wished on doing what they love – instead they must sneak in a few minutes here and few minutes there, but eventually become frustrated and angry they can’t get more time to do what they want to do.
On the other hand, those that learn to direct their craft in a way that is in-demand by their community – learn to direct their focus to an area of specialization, learn to teach others, learn to market themselves find themselves getting more and more time to direct to their passion – AND they have to worry less and less about the bills being paid.
I can tell you, based on personal experience with customers of Information Product Success Package – the writers that fall into the first category often end up bitter, unfulfilled, even angry that they have been jipped out of a lifetime of enjoyment – they haven’t been able to achieve living in alignment with their greatest passions.Â
Of the second group – this is where you find the success stories, the writers who have been able to give up a job they hate (or at least move into a lower stress part-time position) because they are generating profits from their writing – and they get to CONTROL the topics, subject matter AND get to interact directly with their market getting immediate and ongoing feedback on their writing.Â
Yes, you really can start a business by marrying your passion with a commerce model based on making profit – for every topic or mode of writing you can think of, there is a business model that can make that venture profitable…the sooner you move to a model like this, the sooner you can be more deeply fulfilled and live in line with your passions.
What are you passionate about?
How have you – or can you turn that into a viable business?
Jeff
