If You Do What You Love, Will The Money Follow?
By Anna Johnson on July 8th, 2010You’ve probably heard the saying ‘do what you love and the money will follow’ but is that really true? It can be, but here’s the problem: some people love lying on a beach, watching movies, playing video games, and doing all kinds of activities that don’t necessarily translate into money.
And no, these people do NOT necessarily want to turn any of these activities into professional activities. Someone who likes watching movies does NOT necessarily want to become a film critic – they just like watching movies!
Okay, so if ‘do what you love and the money will follow’ doesn’t necessarily hold true, what can we say about the relationship between pursuing a career or building a business based on a love or passion?
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While ‘do what you love and the money will follow’ may not be universally true I DO think the following statement is generally true:
“LOVE WHAT YOU DO and the money will follow.”
In other words, if you are passionate about what you do, you are likely to do it well, resulting in a good income.
Again, it’s a generalization, but the point is: not everything can be turned into a business… but if you’ve found a business you enjoy, then you’ll probably make more money from it than otherwise.
Here’s another important distinction: the distinction between loving the product or service you’re selling and loving the business of selling that product or service.
This distinction really sorts out those of us who are better off being professionals working for others, and those of us who will thrive as business owners.
In fact, unless you love running a business for its own sake, I don’t think you should go into business. At the very least you should only go into business with someone who DOES love business for its own sake and make sure your role in such a business is making or delivering the product or service.
For the most part, though, you’ll probably be happier pursuing your profession without having to deal with what you’ll probably end up regarding as the ‘headaches’ of running a business.
You might be okay being a freelancer, contractor or consultant since the administrative side of doing so may not be too arduous. However, you probably won’t enjoy being in a position where you have to do a lot of work ON the business rather than IN it, and for that reason, business probably isn’t for you.
What about if you love running a business but don’t have any particular passion for the product or service you’re selling?
Personally, I need to be passionate about both, but I’m the first to admit that there are plenty of people who don’t need to love the product or service in order to be successful in business. Somehow their love for the business renders the need to love the product or service irrelevant.
At the same time, however, running a good business generally involves valuing the customer, so the main thing may be to ‘love the customer’.
In any case, when it comes to making money from what you do day to day, it’s not necessarily about doing what you love. Instead, it’s about loving what you do.
