The missing ingredient of entrepreneurial success.

December 9

I read an arti­cle today regard­ing entre­pre­neur­ship and what dri­ves peo­ple to it. It explained that the lust and desire for cre­ation and free­dom is what entices us. The author explains how her chil­dren has got­ten used to her 60–70-hour work weeks and that it’s atti­tude on a per­sonal level that dri­ves most peo­ple to this behav­ior. So is a desire to break lose from the reg­u­lar­i­ties of nine to five work all we need? What, then, is the miss­ing ingre­di­ent that causes so many to fail?

As I’ve never started a com­pany, I can’t say for sure. How­ever, if I were adven­tur­ous enough to take a guess then I would say pas­sion. It’s could very well be the dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing fac­tor between good and great, suc­cess and fail­ure. I’m not say­ing that every entre­pre­neur hit­ting a fail­ure lacks pas­sion — of course not. I’m merely stat­ing that it’s one of the essen­tial fac­tors that many over­look. There are no text­book require­ments to start­ing a com­pany but at least to me, it seems log­i­cal that a huge pas­sion means a huge advan­tage. Peo­ple go to great lengths for love.

Per­haps it’s too log­i­cal, so log­i­cal that it was left out of the arti­cle. Per­haps not. If we look closer at how the world works today, it becomes appar­ent that love isn’t nec­es­sar­ily a decid­ing fac­tor in many major deci­sions. Peo­ple sep­a­rate the pro­fes­sional from the per­sonal and for what? A belief that love, an emo­tion, clouds our minds? Per­haps peo­ple believe that by ignor­ing it, we make ratio­nal and log­i­cal deci­sions. It makes sense.

This leads to peo­ple tak­ing about their (pick a num­ber) 60-hour work weeks. They talk about careers as if they’re com­pletely sep­a­rated from our per­sonal life. Our ini­tial inten­tion is to make log­i­cal deci­sions but as it turns out, ratio­nal­ity pro­vides the best guid­ance first after we find what we truly love. Once we find that, work ceases to be work. When we’re no longer able to count our work­ing hours — when work has become so trans­par­ent that we can’t tell the dif­fer­ence between busi­ness and plea­sure — that’s happiness.

That’s what dri­ves some of us. We’re in pursuit.

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2 responses to “The missing ingredient of entrepreneurial success.”

  1. Anonymous
    Anonymous
    December 10 at 1:14 AM |

    You are very much right. I thought I was wait­ing for a great idea to come along. Come to think of it, I have and always had great ideas. Pas­sion can be defined as an irra­tional but irre­sistible motive for a belief or action. I lack that.

    The other day a friend of mine said I was apatic, not in an offen­sive way but because it had some truth to it. You can not really miss some­thing you never had, right? Yet I really want to be my own boss one day and see my cre­ations grow.

    Why don’t you write a post of how to attract that feel­ing you call pas­sion? I would surely read it. Also, how great impor­tance has inspi­ra­tion in com­para­nce to passion?

  2. Mr. Nordstrom
    Mr. Nordstrom
    December 12 at 8:14 AM |

    Mr/Miss Anony­mous,

    First of all, thank you very much for your com­ment. It’s so fun when peo­ple want to actu­ally com­mu­ni­cate on the web. :)

    Sec­ond of all, EXACTLY! You want to be your own boss and watch your cre­ations grow but you don’t know exactly what these cre­ations are yet. Rest assured, if you keep believ­ing, it’ll come to you.

    Of course, we can’t just sit on our ass and wait either. I really want to write those posts you’re men­tion­ing. Inspi­ra­tion has a huge impor­tance but I don’t want to get into it right here in the com­ment box. :)

    Any­way, regard­ing sit­ting on our asses — it doesn’t work. We need to actively pur­sue what we love, even though it’s not clear to us what it is. But as a wise man once said, “the jour­ney is the reward”. And part of the jour­ney is find­ing out what it is we’re truly meant to do.

    Thanks again for the com­ment, it always makes my day!

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