4 Reasons You Should Consider Turning Your Passion into a Business

“Passion” is a bit of a fraught and hotly debated concept these days. On the one hand, a certain segment of people will insist that the only thing you ever need to do in life is to “follow your bliss” and enjoy an endless array of happy and fulfilling moments, one after the other, until the end of time.

On the other hand, a substantial number of hard-nosed professional types will sneer that “passion” is nonsense, and business is all about expediency, determining the right balance of risks to benefits, and then putting your nose to the grindstone and doing the hard work.

As is so often the case in life, there’s a good argument that the truth is somewhere in the middle.

This post will look at a few reasons why – whether you’re interested in starting up an escape room franchise or an SEO firm – turning your passion into a business can be a great idea.

Your enthusiasm will help to drive you forward when you want to quit

If you ever come across someone who promises that they can show you a method for becoming rich and fulfilled, without putting in any hard work, you should be very sceptical, if not run the other way outright.

It’s simply a cardinal rule that any job you’re going to do will require a certain degree of hard work. The more ambitious and entrepreneurial your career aspirations may be, the more hard work you should expect to put in. While it may not be glamorous and encouraging to think in these terms – if you’re starting up an entrepreneurial venture, and are competing with other businesses in the same boat – the number of hours that you’re willing to work will generally play a major role in your overall success.

If your chief rival is working 60 hours a week and you are working 15, for example, it’s not hard to see how you could get quickly get left behind in the dust, no matter how brilliant your professional insights may be.

When turning a passion of yours into a job, your natural enthusiasm for the thing in question will help to motivate you to push through difficult patches, and work hard when you would otherwise feel like giving up and taking a day off.

If you get started down a career path that you’re completely uninterested in – or even worse, that you hate – you simply will not have the same kind of resilience as someone who is genuinely passionate about the subject of their work.

And while it’s possible to develop a passion, or at least a deep enthusiasm, for many jobs – you should assume that if you’re doing your work purely out of expediency and the desire for a pay-out, you will struggle to compete with those people who love what they’re doing.

You will enter the field with a significant degree of insider knowledge

One thing about being “passionate” about a particular subject, is that you’ll probably have a substantially deeper understanding of it than members of the general popular, or even just casual enthusiasts.

It’s this kind of in-depth insider knowledge which can pay off quite dramatically in business, as you see things from the perspective of a customer as well as from the perspective of a marketer, and have a sense of how the two worlds relate to each other.

This kind of direct knowledge of the subject will also be invaluable in helping you identify points of strength or weakness in the competition, not to mention opportunities for innovation which might have a profound overall effect on the success of your business over time.

Your competition will need to acquire all of their knowledge of the industry from extensive research, or the length of time spent working in the field. You, on the other hand, will be ideally positioned to hit the ground running.

Your life satisfaction will likely be much higher as a result

There’s an old quote attributed to Confucius which says that if you “choose a job you love, you will never work a day in your life.” There is some profound wisdom to this sentiment; as many people struggle through each working day with a constant sense of irritation and resentment, longing only for the distant time when they reach retirement age.

But life is unpredictable; no one knows how long they’re going to live, how enjoyable or satisfying they would ultimately find retirement, and what state of health or mental well being they would find themselves in even a short number of years down the line.

One of the best ways of ensuring life satisfaction and positivity is to take whatever steps possible to begin enjoying your daily working life, not merely enduring it. Working in a field that you field genuinely fascinating and rewarding, is an outstanding way of achieving this.

You will enjoy a sense of meaning and genuine contribution (which may improve the quality of your work)

When you work on something that you enjoy, find valuable, and like on a fundamental level, you will not only be able to feel entertained and engaged during the working day, but will also be in a position to contribute positively to something that you find worthwhile.

As a result of this, your work will take on something of an altruistic spark, rather than being purely a matter of self-interest. Of course, you will primarily be doing your job in order to support yourself and all the rest, but you will also be contributing to the greater progression and development of one of your preferred hobbies or interests.

That level of engagement is likely to lead to an enhanced degree of productivity in the workplace, and may well improve the overall quality of your work. After all, you care actively about the activity in question, and so as a result will presumably want to take steps to improve rather than diminish it.