My web and email friend, Chris Guillebeau, has written a solid post on how passion has to meet the pragmatic of paying the bills. I addressed this same topic in my book Success for Life:Answers to the 77 Hardest Questions College Students Ask. One of the questions that I answered asked this:
How can I make a living following my heart and the things I am passionate about?”
I wrote “In one sense, all of the questions in this section [of the book] get to the core of who we are, where we are going, and what does it mean to get there. I want to stress my desire for you to reevaluate how you define success and understand that a healthy self-awareness is the start of the journey. I am not, however, in a dreamy state of mind that ignores the need and reality for goals, for paying the bills, for taking care of the normal issues of life. Living in the “now” won’t really help you if you fail to pay your mortgage.”
I went on to add that: “Understand that some things a person may hold as their passion cannot create income, but many things can. Do you realize there are people who make 6 figure incomes playing video games? Did you know there is a 16 year old young lady who runs a very successful website that brings in millions that she started to provide skins for Myspace? There are people who make very good incomes running Ebay auctions. It’s not so much that we can’t make an income out of something, but that we are not willing to pay the price to get there or be creative in the execution.”
Chris, in a recent post, wrote “In fact, most things you love don’t really make a good business. This is probably the most common misconception of the entire “follow your passion” concept: you love watersports, or crafting, or traveling, for example. So why not build a business around it and do what you love all the time?
There are actually several reasons why this isn’t always a good idea, one of which is that you might not like everything that goes along with running a business as much as you like the actual activity. Sure, you like traveling… but how much do you want to work while you’re traveling? Do you like the business of crafting or just the crafting itself? Second, not everything you do is commercially viable. Chances are, no one will pay money to watch you go surfing, and this brings us to the next point…
What you love must be relevant to other people.
Whoever your prospects, customers, or clients are, they have to identify with what you do and believe it can be possible for them as well. That’s why you work to find the magic convergence between your passions and what customers will pay for.”
Good thoughts Chris. Take some time now to reflect on what you are really driving for in your dreams. Is it merely a big paycheck? Or perhaps you are after “living your dreams” and are willing to do what it takes to get to live that dream. I hope you’ll also take some time to read my book because we also talk at length about how finding out your own definitions about success and dreams is critical.
Write down what your passion is and then do some good investigation. Can you carve out a living doing it? Will you accept a lower standard of living for the joy of doing your passion? Those bills have to be paid