What’s the Thin Line between Love and Hate?
Did you know that 99.9 percent of the 27.2 million businesses in the United States are small businesses that have less than 500 employees? Home-based businesses account for 52%, or 14 million, of the total. In 2007, 637,100 new businesses opened, 560,300 shut down and 28,000 went bankrupt. Self-employment is today what the safe secure job was to our mothers, fathers and grandparents. When it comes to working for yourself, there is a thin line between loving what you do and hating every minute of it.
Passion’s playing field. In 9th grade, I decided to try out for football. Long story short – it ended badly – very, very badly! I only hung in there for about 30 minutes and after writing this blog, I consider those 30 minutes well spent. Pursuing your passion is just like playing football. If passion is the name of the game, then money is the 50 yard line. If you have passion for what you do, the ball is in your possession. But if you lose the ball, it can take a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to reclaim it. The following statement may be tough to swallow, but it’s no less true. Money is the line that often determines whether you love or hate what you do.
The downside of doing what you love. Think about it. Passion drives you to do what you love so well that more and people want you to help them out. The increased demand causes your time to become more valuable and you start charging people for your services. But the moment that you start getting paid for doing what you love, things change. It feels like passion is holding a knife to your throat commanding you to do what you love. It’s hard to continue loving what you do under these conditions. So the passion that fueled your love quickly turns to hate. When your passion for what you once loved heads south, do not give up. Just start doing something else that you love, for free.
Work for free?! Yes, I did say “work for free”. And no, I’m not crazy. If you have been hanging in there with us, you’ll remember the first thing I ever said was “It’s not about the money…“ Here’s why. As an employee, you work because your boss pays you. In fact, most of the stuff you put up with on the job is because…your boss pays you. But starting out as a self-employed person, you have to give your time away. In most cases, this happens quite naturally. Most self-employed people will tell you that they became self-employed, not by design, but because they started doing what they love – for free. More people started asking for their help and they were in business before they knew it.
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