This is actually a debate I very often have with my friends and colleagues.
Is it really necessary to love what you do? Do you really have to enjoy doing your business in order to be successful?
Well, to be absolutely honest with you, I am not sure if you need to “love” what you do, but I bet my whole career on what I will state here:
You absolutely have to be obsessed with your business in order to succeed.
Unless you become obsessed with your business, you will not be able to achieve great results. At best these result will be mediocre and they will take a lot of time to be achieved.
Even if someone ignores what almost every successful man has said about that, I can personally guarantee you this one. Luckily for me, I became obsessed with Kindle publishing right away, but I can tell you for sure that all my previous business ventures have failed for this exact reason.
What you read here is not another speech of “love your job”, “do what you like for a living” etc. In fact, publishing books is not my favorite thing to do. I prefer to write articles on my blog for example.
Publishing books isn’t entertainment for me. But I invest many hours thinking about it and working on it. I always think of ways to improve my methods, to implement new marketing techniques, to find new ways to provide valuable content to my readers etc.
Even when I do something else, and an idea about Kindle pops up in my head, I stop what I do, note it down and then I proceed. But the important thing here is to do it.
Please note this down. Read this previous phrase again. The underline meaning is not that I write down the idea it pops up. It’s the pop up itself.
When you are obsessed with something, (no matter what this is) your brain works over-hours in order to figure out solutions to optimize this procedure. If you have a serious problem about your business, and you’re truly obsessed about it, your brain will try to figure out how to solve this issue on the background.
If it bugs you very badly, you will find a way to solve it sooner or later, even if the idea comes to you while you wash the dishes, or you are out for a walk.
Actually, the best ideas I had up to now, lighted up in my head in a phase I wasn’t working on my business. I know it seems a bit odd, but it’s 100% sound.
Publishing is not my passion, but it is one hell of a vehicle to get me where I want to go. Financial independence.
I have convinced myself that this is the way I’ll do it, and I don’t complain about it. I have decided that for the moment this is my way of making money and I’m gonna stick to it.
I am 100% committed, both mentally and physically. My whole life revolves around my business. My daily schedule, my social life, even my phone calls are scheduled around my business.
Business comes first. Everything else is of lesser importance. I have embedded this is my head, so now it doesn’t consume my willpower in order to do things that might seem boring.
If it needs to be done, it needs to be done. There is no boring stuff. There is only stuff that makes money or doesn’t. If I decide that doing all the mundane stuff isn’t a good time investment from me, I will outsource it. Not because I am bored, but because my time is invested on a higher end procedure like marketing, keyword research, that will have a better ROI.
[bctt tweet=”There is no boring stuff. There is only stuff that makes money or doesn’t.”]
Actionable steps
Well, to be completely honest with you, there are no tips to become obsessed with what you do. From my limited experience, I have seen that you either are or not.
Most of the times if it makes money you are going to like it. If it’s not profitable you will get tired of trying and you’ll drop it.
The catch here is not to give up unless you make absolutely sure that this business won’t be profitable in the future. You can only quit after the numbers say so, and not your emotions.
What I have done about it was the following:
When I started with it, I set some “internal” metrics and evaluation points for me. For example:
I said that if this business isn’t generating at least $1.000 for me after a year, I will drop it and look for something else.
Of course that was my individual metric, but you get the idea. You can only quit after you have set a realistic goal (based on research and data) and this goal isn’t met.
As soon as you find out something that looks interesting, try to learn about it as much as possible and try to have some successes as soon as you get started.
That way, you maximize your chances to have some early victories that will keep your interest alive. Success after success, your interest will compound to something big.
The more momentum and success you get, the harder will be to abandon this. The more successful you become, the more obsessed you will be with that. The more obsessed, the more committed and so on and so forth.
After that, you literally become unstoppable.
Now, this is your business, this is your child. You have seen it grow big and strong. After that, there is no chance you are going to let go. Now you see results. Now you push even harder. Now you are obsessed and 100% committed!
