
What is Your Passion?
What’s this thing called passion? It is an intangible quality that successful entrepreneurs and business owners are forever obsessed about. You need to be passionate about your product, service or cause to sell it to others and stay confident that you can accomplish your business venture. Your passion is something you can do every day for the next fifty years without getting tired of it.
What makes you feel energized connected and stimulated? What activity do you do where you get totally lost in it and lose track of time? Is this an activity that requires very little time to learn? An activity where you can skip steps and continue to excel, as well as put your own unique twist on the basic underlying theme? You are drawn to the activity even at an early age. It’s a yearning, it’s a thrill, it’s a passion, and you hate to put it off.
Your Passion is Not a Hobby
Your passion is something you can do 24 hours a day. Instead of performing unsatisfying tasks for other people for the sake of a paycheck, you make a business out of the one thing (or sometimes multiple things) that consumes your thoughts. You are obsessed with this.
Your ideas, hopes, and possibilities for your future move your mind naturally towards this activity. It’s what you want to focus your time and attention on because it feels right and meaningful for you. Is your passion strong enough to stay focused? Are you continually motivated to follow through on finishing your tasks all the way to the end, even when faced with obstacles and adversity (which you inevitably will)? Going out on vacation? You’ll still spot things related to your passion that’ll spark ideas. Such a compelling passion will make you stronger and grant you the fortitude to move forward and not quit when the going gets rough.
Brainstorm every possible way you can pursue your passion in a way that earns you money. The more business opportunities, you see the easier it will be to find the one that will work for you.
For example:
You love to bake. You also love to decorate the cakes you bake. What are the different business opportunities you can do with your passion to bake and also decorate?
1.) Design birthday and special occasion cakes you sell by special order
2.) Create cake and cupcake designs to sell to local bakeries
3.) Work with bakeries on their special order cakes for birthday parties, graduations, anniversaries and weddings
4.) Teach baking and cake decorating to private individuals or in classes.
5.) Sell your cakes and cupcakes at street fairs, flea markets, and craft shows.
The more business opportunities you see the easier it will be to find the one that will work for you.
While considering all the possibilities, always keep your true strengths and weaknesses in mind, in order to best assess which opportunities will really work. You cannot do it all in your business. Some of the skills and talents needed to make your business work will come from others. You want other people to complement your strengths and talents. Remember: your weaknesses are someone else’s strengths.
Be sure you understand your passions, your strengths, and your weaknesses thoroughly. Take these considerations seriously even if your teachers and family won’t. Some people will give you directions based on their own experience and perceptions of you. They may also offer advice they learned from years of so-called ‘truths for a successful life’. What these people do not know is that your strengths lie in areas they do not see, and what they perceive to be strengths could actually be weaknesses.
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