TIE #013: Why You Should Never "Follow Your Passion"
Finding a great way to pay the bills is what creates passion, not the other way around.
Apparently you hate money. If you didn’t, you’d be using Rakuten every time you shop on websites like Walmart and Target to save money.
They have paid me over $8,000 for things I was already going to buy for my one-person business (click here for proof).
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“Follow your passion and you will never work another day in your life”
I’ve heard this a million times and it’s terrible advice.
Truth be told, passion is a horrible business model and most people don’t make money when they follow it.
If everyone had their choice of what to do while making a comfortable living, we would have a ton of people:
Playing their favorite sport
Playing music
Drawing/painting
Playing video games
The issue with this is demand. Who is going to pay tens of millions of people to do those things?
That’s right, no one.
Unless you have a very unique offering within your passion, good luck paying your bills.
Don’t get me wrong, it is possible to take what you love to do in your free time and turn it into a cash-flowing business.
However, the odds are against you.
You only ever hear about the people succeed, you never hear about those who followed their passion for 15 years and then ended up working as a janitor.
I only recommend trying this if you already have an extremely healthy financial situation to fall back on.
We as humans do not directly follow passion. We follow needs, wants, and desires.
Passion only develops after we have put in effort to accomplish something special and reap the rewards of the accomplishment.
Take myself as an example, I am not passionate about any of these tasks:
Customer service
Receiving and shipping merchandise
Researching/sourcing products
Storing my LEGO investments
Posting on social media
Writing posts (like this one)
Recording YouTube videos
I did (and still do) them because they allowed me to become self-employed and then financially free as a one-man business owner.
I am passionate about my lifestyle, not all the annoying things I had to do to create it.
So instead of “following your passion”, follow my advice in this recent post and watch what happens as you hit each major benchmark.
The passion will flow naturally as you move closer and closer to the life you’ve always wanted.
I’m not saying this is the best way to do it, but this is what worked for me.
When you are ready, there are two different ways I can help you:
If you are interested in starting an efficient one-person online business, I recommend starting with one of the following:
Textbook Flipping Mastery - My in-depth guide on how to start a high-margin Amazon e-commerce business.
LEGO Investing Mastery - My in-depth guide on how to start a long-term “buy, hold, and sell” LEGO investing business.
The Conference Room - My private mentorship community that includes the two guides above, for free. Pay once and stay a member for life.
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