Thank you for the great post. Lately I have been questioning my career path. I am currently in a position that I truly enjoy however, in about a month I will no longer be in that role. I have a strong passion for helping, coaching, and developing others and my current role affords me the ability to do just that. I have really been considering taking my passion to the next level and turning it into a career. I will definately utilize your advice when I begin my journey to a “brilliantly better life”!

“Do what you love, CREATE VALUE FOR PEOPLE, and the money will surely follow. (Don’t forget that critical middle step.)”
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But when you align passion, hard work, and fair compensation for your efforts by creating value that people are willing to pay for… there’s almost nothing that you can’t turn into a business to sustain yourself and your family.

I LOVE this post. Found it while doing a little research to see what’s out there as I just wrote something about passion and new business myself. So many of your points I went through over the years as I figured out what I’m really passionate about and how to build that into a business.

Your point about not being obsessed really hits home with me. I was at a point in my business a few years ago where every waking hour was spent thinking and TALKING about my business – until my family said that had ENOUGH! That finally shocked me back into an appropriate passion level, lol.

One thing I would add is to make sure you know the nitty-gritty of business. Your passion will have given you a broad knowledge of the subject but make sure you know the industry too. Get business training too, you will need to know about accounts, management etc. Passion is an excellent start but you need practical skills too.

What we need here is to start thinking of our work from a business standpoint; how can we make money, what steps can we take, lots of questions come to mind.

Having said that there is alot of room for business analysts, technologists to make their mark these days; tons of opportunities out there. Btw you did forget one factor, and that’s LUCK; which should never be overlooked.

Defining your core business to me is more important than passion (to me) as well as staying consistent! Good luck everyone!!!
.-= Ahad Bokhari´s last blog ..A Recap Of Chirp — Twitter’s First Developer Conference =-.

Thanks for the post.

I think you make a great point about the difference between a passion and an interest/hobby. There are certain things that we love that may have been a part of our lives for years. And while they might work perfectly as a hobby, they don’t “scale up” well to working as a passion.

The key seems to be to really think about what pursuing this as a business full-time will entail and whether or not you would be happy with this.

Also, I think it’s very wise that you suggested getting feedback from friends and family. At the very least, they will help you see things from a different perspective which I think is always good.
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