Recently, a friend of mine told me she was ready to become an entrepreneur and start her very own business. She came to me asking for help and advice about getting started. Our conversation reminded me of something very important that I wanted to share with you here on the blog today — don’t confuse your passion for business. Let me explain…
The Passion Business Craze
Entrepreneurship has deep roots in US culture. The common traits of entrepreneurs — risky, ambitious, daring — are some of the same traits very common among the original immigrants who made long journeys and big sacrifices to come to North America hundreds of years ago.
But something that I’ve noticed cropping up more and more lately is what I call “The Passion Business Craze.” This is the idea that entrepreneurship is really about taking your passion — baking, astrology, writing, wine, whatever it is — and turning it into a business.
Somehow that idea has become very common lately, and it’s filled with problems.
Now, I’m not here to say that you can’t and shouldn’t look to your passions when starting a new business. What I am saying is that your Passion is not the same thing as Business, and it’s important not to confuse the two.
I’ll give the same advice here that I gave my friend…
If you want to use your passion as a starting point for creating a new business, that’s great. But just be sure you recognize the reality that there’s a lot about business you’ll need to learn (and even master) that will have nothing to do with your passion.
The key to being successful with a “passion business” is to get very passionate about business. That means learning everything you can about marketing and running a successful business. That means finding people who have done what you want to do and emulating them in every way possible.
What about you? Did you start your business from passion? What other comments do you have? Leave your response below.
