Tue 18 Nov 2008
Don’t Lose Your Passion
Posted by Megan Dorn under Entrepreneurship, Small Business, Startup Teams
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One of the most important characteristics a person can have when starting a business is passion. If you’re passionate about what you’re doing, then success will come that much easier. The problem with passion is that even if you have it, you can lose it.
I recently read two blog posts about passion in business—one about losing it and one about maintaining it. The post about losing your passion pointed to “trying to do it all” as one of the ways entrepreneurs quickly lose their enthusiasm for the job. It’s hard for them to relinquish any amount of control—even if it’s tasks they hate—because they rarely believe that others are capable of doing things up to their standards.
What the other post (the one about maintaining your passion) points out is that entrepreneurs must take it upon themselves to fight the urge to be a do-it-all entrepreneur. Obviously when entrepreneurs are in startup mode they have no choice but to do it all. When business starts to pick up, however, the onus is on them to maintain their passion by continuing to do the things that they enjoy and then outsourcing those tasks that are sure to cause burn out.
As a business owner your job is to strategize and manage, not code a website, write a press release or create sales collateral. The bottom line is that you need to make sure you’re focusing your efforts on those tasks that will continue to give you that zest for business, not those that you just don’t trust others to do.

