When you decide to start your own business, there are many choices that must be made. First, you must decide what you want to do. That “what” has to be something that meets a need within you. You must have an interest in what you’re creating. If you don’t, it will be just a job. In that case, you might as well go work for someone else.
There are many reasons that could have brought you to the point of considering starting your own business. It might be that you were just recently laid off or were down-sized, your company is closing or has closed, you’ve been offered an early retirement, or you’re just plain tired of making other people rich. Another reason could be that you've been thinking about it for a long time and realize that now is as good a time as any! Whatever the scenario, you want to pursue that burning desire to be an entrepreneur.
It doesn’t matter what the driving force is to begin your business. But before you take that first step, consider where you’ll be in six months or a year from now. Will you still love what you’re doing? You will if you are following your passion. Using passion as the deciding factor will build a strong foundation as you move forward.
When I started my business, one of the criteria was “to end each day knowing I help others.” That’s very vague, and allows for a multitude of services, but the fact is that it helped me focus while investigating the variety of opportunities. It helped me choose to provide a personal property inventory service. We had been burglarized twice, so I knew the difficulty of recovering after a disaster and trying to remember what was taken. I wanted to help others recover financially from their losses.
That purpose – the passion – for what I do has been the driving force for the success of my business. So, how do you know what that feels like before you get there? You can consider other situations in your life and equate your future business to that.
Possibly you’re an avid sports fan and you live, eat and breath that sport and specifically your team. You don’t miss a game. Nothing stops you from being there or watching it on TV. Every point they score elevates your heart beat. Each loss creates a true sadness in your life. This is your passion!
Or maybe it’s politics. Your blood curdles when the “other party” does something that upsets you. You post happenings on social media and possibly find yourself in heated discussions with those with differing opinions. You are very passionate about politics!
Children often create an emotion that is so deep in your heart and soul that nothing in the world is more important. Your life centers around them. You hurt when they hurt, you feel joy when they feel joy, and when they are sick, you would do anything … ANYTHING … to be sick instead. Your passion is the love you feel for them!
This is the internal emotion you need to help ensure success. Find a product or service that will steer you toward doing something that feeds your values, allows you to serve a purpose and give you something more than money to drive you to succeed.
Then, when you’re tired, you’ll have the stamina to go on. When you don’t have a customer, you’ll have the energy to make that one more call. When revenues are not where they need to be, you’ll have the belief and the desire to go on because you know your passion will win!
It’s the one single ingredient that moves you to success because you can’t picture yourself doing anything else. Since that’s all you want to do, you find a way to make it work! Your passion will drive your success.
Cindy Hartman is President of Hartman Inventory, a woman-owned business that provides business and home inventory services. She and her husband Mike own Hartman Inventory Systems, a complete turnkey home inventory business package for those who want to establish their own inventory company. Hartman is also a distributor for MonaVie, the leading network marketing company in the health and wellness industry.