Do you get this overwhelming feeling of excitement when you think about your business idea? Do you find yourself daydreaming about how you’re going to build it out and up? Can’t wait to start spending 16 hours a day looking up keywords and sourcing products and services from vendors and crafting beautiful listings to upload?
If you are like most people, you will feel your joy slowly draining away as you think about all that’s really involved in starting up a business. But if you love your idea and have startup passion, you will have what it takes to see it through.
More Than a Feeling
So you have this awesome idea for a business, or you have these fabulous products that you know are going to sell. Your instincts will tell you to run for the money and never look back. Having a business is every man’s dream, right? The freedom, the earning potential – that’s the life! I can see several entrepreneur friends sort of half-smiling and half-cringing right now. It’s always a joy to see other people catch the business bug, but they know that there’s a lot more to it than just putting an item on a shelf.
Anyone can stand on a street corner and peddle an amazing gadget or upload a listing to Amazon with an attractive dollar figure. Being a business owner involves making that your life. Being a good business owner means having startup passion that sustains you to be there every day. Passion means you can sit down and peddle and not lose your voice throwing deals out to passersby. But nearly every virtual street corner is full of dozens of other peddlers who probably have more of everything – product variety, sales experience, loyal customers, patience. How do you compete?
If It Makes You Happy
Being a successful business owner means being on your corner with a winning smile. This is no ordinary smile, mind you. This is the smile that comes from within, the only one that has the ability to draw people to buy. Your passion will seep out and permeate everything around you, and it makes people want to interact with you and your business by extension. Without that startup passion, you lack color. Your awesome products will seem dull and your exciting brand will pale in comparison to others.
You can try to fake it ‘til you make it, but you will soon find that it’s hardly worth it. If you have to drag yourself out of bed every day because you need cash for groceries and you can’t hit up mom again, then this is far from living the dream. This is not to say that there are not low moments in the life of the most enthusiastic of entrepreneurs. The difference is that those who are passionate about their business have a sustaining vision and motivation that is fueled by their startup passion. Up or down, the smile remains, and it creates such a positive atmosphere and energy that keeps everything running at peak levels.
Love It or Leave It
It has often been said that if you love what you do for a living then it’s not work at all – and for good reason. Having a job that you love makes you fulfilled and happy. It stands to reason that the opposite of this would also be true. If you are not happy with the work that you are doing and you don’t love waking up every day and getting down to business, then it’s going to be a total grind.
When you have startup passion, you enjoy every bit of running a business. Sure, we all love making that sale and finding that new product that perfectly fills that empty space in the catalog. Most of what you will be doing when running a business is a lot less glamorous, though. There’s a lot of tedious research and long hours sorting through data and many uncomfortable moments when you will feel like you don’t know what’s going on or what to do about a problem.
When you love your business, you will find pleasure and stay motivated even through these draining tasks and trials. You will be excited about learning new things and developing new processes to solve problems and streamline operations. You know that all this is taking you closer to the goal that first lit that fire inside you.
Striking Gold
Let me come straight out and say that this is not a section on how to make a million bucks with your product. For me, striking gold comes long before payments start pouring in. Your pot of gold as an entrepreneur is your drive to provide value through your business. Your gold mine is your hunger to relentlessly pursue your business goals until you achieve them. What you make as a result of filling that original need by happily pushing forward is the overflow.
You can make money the primary purpose of your business, but making your joy a secondary goal will leave you too drained to make it even close to the finish line. When you love it, you will sell without effort. You will provide irresistible value because you believe in it. You will jump out of bed bright-eyed and bushy-tailed even after a measly 3 hours, ready to take that next step to providing even greater value to more people.
I’ll ask you again – are you excited to the point of bursting? Is the dream of providing that value product or service alive in the face of long days full of tedious tasks? Are you still smiling and raring to go after answering these questions? If yes, then congratulations, you are passionate about it, and this will go a long way to ensuring your success as a new business owner.
