The Dilemma of Turning Your Passion into a Business_时代人物智库_http://www.ems86.com/index.php
 
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The Dilemma of Turning Your Passion into a Business
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王百慧

美国雪城大学(Syracuse University)会计学硕士学位
-北京工商大学 会计学学士学位

Passion itself Won’t Build a Business 

Apparently, most entrepreneurs are willing to start up a business that they have passion on it and we have always been told that we should “follow your heart”, “do what you want”, and “making money from the things you love”. In reality, I heard more than once that entrepreneurs said they started a business because they are fascinated about it and they want to do what they love. I agree that it will be perfect if we can spend our whole life on something that we have passion about and making money from it while we enjoy the whole process. I also agree that passion is an important component of successful business that millions of talent ideas were started from that. However, does that means passion is a valuable factor itself and will naturally lead to success in business eventually? No, I don’t think so.
A friend of mine is a famous photographer. He started his journey from a camera. As we can imagine, teenagers will always use their pocket money to buy something that they have passion about. So does he, he always wanted to take photos and videos, so he brought a camera for himself. This is the part that comes from passion. However, that is not enough. He couldn’t make money from a single camera. And passion won’t help him to find his way out through connections with music stars or bring him cash flow in those dark days. It was his talent and efforts clear his way later. 
I agree with the opinion mentioned in an article named Why Passion Won’t Build a Business, that passion itself will not guarantee anything and in realistic simply doing what you love isn’t enough. Indeed, many people set out to do what they love, believing if they just work enthusiastic enough people will pay them for it and money will follow. Which is wrong, and the article gave me some hints with three possible scenarios:
It is true that customer and investors care more about what’s in it for them instead of how passionate you are about what you do. Which sounds heartless but fit with reality. In daily life, whenever we buy something from stores, we won’t care whose factory has enthusiastic workers. We just find the product we like and buy it without concerns. 
Sometimes your passion won’t align with what other people need. Which suggests that entrepreneurs should match their supply with the need in market, analysis the balance of demand & supply and provide what the market is in need instead of oversupply something that won’t fit. 
In some cases, your passion just may be too personal to turn into a business. The classical example of this will be artiest trying to turn an art into an income.  

Passion May Lead to Disasters
I’m sure passion in business will bring multiple benefits, but I do believe that sometimes it will lead to disasters though it may sound not that optimistic. Based on research and expert opinions, there are several situations I think will be persuasive. 
The enthusiasm needed to take a risk and launch a company sometimes will cloud entrepreneurs' judgment to the point where they delude themselves into thinking they can be successful, even without some necessary conditions. 
“Among a group of 100 Harvard Business School graduates who had founded companies, the most commonly cited skill they lacked when launching their businesses was sales experience, followed by technical or scientific experience and management experience. However, despite lacking these skills and other necessary conditions, entrepreneurs still chose to set up their companies because too many business owners think an abundance of passion can make up for a shortage of relevant experience.”
With crazy idea about business, people may set their initial budget far from realistic and focus more on how to make their dream come true instead of focus on real money income. The business may run out of money before they see the result in long term. 
As the Wall Street Journal reports, a significant percentage of entrepreneurs who are advised to reconsider their startup business plans due to problems with commercial viability continue pursuing their ideas anyway. In one survey, nearly 30 percent continued spending money on their business, while slightly more than half kept spending time on their ideas.
A resent business case in China confirmed this view. A new trend of business called “bicycle-sharing”, which is a service in which bicycles are made available for shared use to individuals on a very short-term basis for a price. At first, there are several competitors provide this service in Chinese market. Among them, “Blue gogo” was my favorite because their design meets ergonomic, look more attractive and use comfortably. The CEO of this company is a crazy ride lover with no business background, who is fascinated about bicycle design. While most competitors in market are focus on how to cut their cost and improving their promotion policy, “Blue gogo” was still focus on perfect their design. They thought they can differentiate themselves by being more attractive and to do so they spent more and more money on R&D, customer survey, and patents. However, people who choose to use public bike are not that care about the bike’s design and people started to give up their app because they couldn’t provide enough bicycles. Soon enough, the company “burn money” appear afterwards capital catenary ruptures then close down. 
As we can see, the company failed because the founder’s passion has blind his way. When he focuses on his passion area, he invests more than enough money on that and ignore the company’s cash flow, which led to the tragedy occurrence. As the fourth point raised in an article named Six Lessons Learned from Turning My Passion into A Business, called always remember the money. It said that when you couple that with doing something that you'd do for free anyway, you might end up doing just that -- working for no money, which is the case here.
Though problems may exist, they could be avoided if entrepreneur could always see the business with an objective eye. As we can see in AJ’s case, AJ Damiano is a gamer himself and knew that's where his passions lay. He devoted himself into gaming business and seize the opportunity in market. However, it was surprising to know that AJ himself did not know how to code.  He realized his shortages and he sought to find a team that can help fill his weaknesses. Meantime, he knows how to utilize his unique social skills to grow his network with people resulted in a huge outcome for his career. By hiding his weaknesses and showing his strength, he and his team reach his vision of Power Spike eventually. 
Possible Disappearing Fun Factors
Before started up a business, we should aware that if you turn what you do for fun into your business, it might not be fun anymore. 
“Fake it until you become,” AJ told us that generally, entrepreneurs look shinning all the time, but reality is not that case. I remembered he said he always express feeling on his face because he doesn’t want others to know about his pressure and wants to be approachable to his connections. As mentioned earlier, he is an example of creating a business follow his heart. He is the one who do what he loves to do every day. But when pressures and difficulties come, the fun parts will fade away. 
Same scenario happened in John Torrens’s case. When they started up the business about marijuana at the beginning, they thought their idea is cool, the business is cool, and everything just seems perfect. However, with damage, theft in several places and heavy tax issues appears, they suddenly feel things were not as much fun as they imagined, and they realized that you don’t treat people like you would in a normal business field. I think that during the process of running a business, unusual or unexpected situation may happen all the time. It could be hard and uncomfortable to deal with them and you may lose interest in the end. 
Losing passion may not always the case, Donna Farchione’s experience is an example that a founder who loves her business all the time. Nevertheless, those two examples above do give us a hint that even if you are an entrepreneur yourself and you created a business based on your hobby or your passion, it doesn’t mean that you will love every single piece of your business and you must have some mental preparations that you may face dark days and end up lose the enthusiastic. 




References
[1] Graham Winfrey Staff writer, Inc. Why Having Too Much Passion Can Sink Your Startup [D]. U.S. 2016
[2] Paid to Exist in Entrepreneurship. Why Passion Won’t Build a Business [D]. U.S. 2017
[3] Forbes Contributors. Six Lessons Learned from Turning My Passion into A Business [D]. U.S. 2017
[4] Alyssa Gregory. Is Having a Passion for Business Enough? [D]. U.S. 2016
[5] Natalie Clarkson. Richard Branson: The importance of passion in business [D]. U.S. 2015



时代人物智库   2018-01-09 16:03:13 作者:www.ems86.com 来源: 文字大小:[][][]
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