Real Passion Doesn’t Die
You always read and hear business entrepreneurs talking about passion. Even the wikipedia entry on entrepreneurship, characterizes an entrepreneur as someone who “promotes the vision with enthusiastic passion”. But its not always very clear what they mean about passion.
I spent the last year and a half, with a good friend of mine, working on an idea, namely clickable videos, that I was quite passionate about. However, after many iterations and thousands of assumptions later, the passion started to fade away, and today we put the idea to rest.
Watching a video of Gary Vaynerchuk today, talking about wine, I was absoloutly astonished by how he described the wines. He exudes so much passion as he describes the wine that makes me want to buy those wines and experience what he describes he is experiencing, and I don’t even know wines. This is the kind of passion that everyone refers to. It is really contagious and will spread to everyone around you. This kind of passion doesn’t die after two years.
A big lesson though from these one and a half years was that my passion didn’t die, it just got crushed under a huge pile of assumptions. So don’t make too many assumptions, just try what feels right in your gut and execute.
May 22nd, 2009 at 2:43 pm
There are two things you’ve touched on. One is being a salesman like Gary V. and the other is about keeping yourself interested in the idea that you’re working on.
The second case for me, comes down to seeing results. Once I see results (even small ones) it motivates me to keep going. But if there’s no visible progress I lose interest and give up on the project.
May 22nd, 2009 at 6:25 pm
To keep the interests going, one thing I recommend is getting a co-founder. This pushes you beyond where you would usually give up if you were on your own.
May 25th, 2009 at 11:52 pm
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