Today is a hot topic. You’re hearing everybody, especially entrepreneurs, talking about passion. Follow your passion and success will follow. Well, is shouldn't be a surprise to hear that it's not that easy. You are supposed to be a new entrepreneur by just following the things you love to do. A little more is shared on this episode and where you can get that passion.

I’ve got a clue for you: passion sucks the life out of you. What do I mean by that? Yes, it’s wonderful to have a like and a love for what you’re doing (and we’ll get to how you can develop that), but following your passion and putting your money on your passion, success will follow is the mantra. Where does it come from? How does it get there? It’s not just some magical, magical law of attraction. The idea that customers will just flock to your doors because you have this passion, well, there’s a little bit of truth in that, in the idea that if you have the right enthusiasm, and emit a wonderful positive attitude – yes, people will feel more comfortable around you and you’re more likely to get customers. That is something that you should have.

The idea that you can do almost anything and just have that passion for it. Does it pay well? Are there economies of scale, or are you just going to be trading your hours for money? That’s just another job. Is there a room for increased productivity? Your passion or love of a hobby may be very different when all of a sudden you think you love doing this, let’s say it’s scrapbooking or let’s say it’s stamp collecting, what happens when you have to do marketing, sales, bookkeeping, when you have employees, when you have to satisfy vendors, suppliers, when you have government regulations all entering into this hobby, the thing that you loved before? It is no longer just a passion. It’s something that’s much more complex and much more difficult.

People and marketers love to pedal the idea of following your passion. It sounds like a nice quick fix to happiness, but it doesn’t help if you can’t sell your passion to a consumer. You have to fill some need or demand that someone is willing to pay for. Can you completely fill that need? Take a look at all the people who have passions.

One way to do this is next time you’re at a shopping center, or shopping mall, or driving by strip malls, take a look at all of the empty stores. Not only did those people have a passion and truly believed in what they were doing, but failed, but most likely in almost all cases, they had to guarantee with the bank or others with everything they had, their home, their savings, everything, and you can be sure that they stretched out and went into debt, trying to make that work right up until the end. Their passion didn’t work.

You have to make sure that you have a combination of the right skills that will fill sufficient demand, to actually earn sufficient income, and that the market isn’t over-supplied. It also doesn’t mean you have to go necessarily to the thing with the highest income.

What are your goals, what are the desires that you have? If you’re interested in just earning a few hundred dollars extra a month or something, and you’re going to use that money to put aside and set aside for your retirement, that’s fine. But have realistic expectations. The idea that you’re going to make six figures or seven figures… I’m going to get to an episode of what the distribution of income really is, and you’ll find out that getting even six figures is not as easy as it sounds. It will be more about how you use your money, not necessarily just how much you earn.

Let’s get back to passion. One of the most coveted businesses that there is out there is actually restaurants. To open your own restaurant. Actually very, very few survive. It is the worst of all businesses, actually, to get into for the idea of making money and surviving.

Even if you do survive, there’s ridiculously arduous hours. You have to be in there early maybe to get the produce or g...