How to Strategically Pursue Your Passion

It’s 2018 and everyone’s talking passion these days. Passion is everywhere around us and it’s supposed to be the miracle drug that we can take to make our lives that much better. If that was truly the case, we would have seen hundreds of thousands of people following their passion until the sun goes down.

Coming to Terms With it All

That’s not entirely true, is it? The reality is that few people get to follow their passion for short periods of time, and a majority of the people have to put in real effort and hard work at what they do. It’s not that they’re lacking in skill or anything. They might just be amazing at what they love to do. What’s important is that there be a market for what they’re trying to do. If there’s no market behind it all, then there is a systemic approach to passion that must include strategy and execution.

It’s not easy to swallow this pill and a lot of people are still trying to find their passion at the workplace. They feel like they’re under pressure all the time and want to get away from it all. They think that following your passion can make things easier for them and everything will work out in the end. This cinematic perspective needs a bit of realism to get them back to earth.

A lot of younger people want to become entrepreneurs and open a new venture. However, what they don’t anticipate is the amount of work needed to get the job done. You can’t sit around waiting for inspiration to happen, or even wait for that perfect gig or job. It’s always going to be messy and you have to deal with it. It’s as simple as that. There are no two ways about it.

Finding the Right Market Fit

What’s critical in the pursuit of passion is that you find the perfect market fit for your service or product. You need to find that perfect market fit at the right price so that you can make a mark in the industry that you’re developing yourself in.

Talk to the people in your industry, and network with them. You can get more insights from a simple conversation than you can with years of educational analysis. Don’t be afraid of failure and think of your ideas as possible outcomes of effort.

Finding the right market fit requires two things. Firstly, you need to find out whether other people are doing the same thing that you want to do and analyze the demand for it. If you want to be a full-time game designer, then talking to other designers is generally a good start. If you want to be a freelance artist, then talking to other artists is key.

Secondly, you need to focus on how you can fit in the market. If the industry is dominated by premium players, then maybe you can offer something cost-effective. If the market is saturated, then maybe you can bring something new to the table. It’s all about how you position yourself and what kind of message you’re putting out there.

Branding Yourself

You want to develop the right brand assets to get yourself going. If you’re currently working in a job right now, you don’t want to be doing this at the office. You also don’t want to tell anyone about this. If you’re young and in-school, you can probably start talking to your friends about their points of view.

You can start to develop a great website, logo and brand elements. You can also start new social media accounts or update your existing ones for better visibility. Try to understand the importance and impact of all these elements as you’re going to have to work through a large set of information.

Branding yourself also involves presentations, decks, and branded elements. You need to think about what you want to call yourself and how well you can position yourself in the industry. If you keep a name that has a deeper meaning behind it, it might just resonate with your audience better.

Pitching to Clients

This is probably where a major chunk of passionate people start to drop off. Passion empowers you but getting yourself out there takes away that power. That’s where the conflict starts to emerge, where we don’t have the confidence to pitch for more clients and we’re nervous about the whole thing.

Pitching is an art that develops over many years of perfection. You’ll start to get a gut feeling for it the more you indulge in it. You can also get a Spidey-sense every time you see a new lead. That’s the power of pitching and getting outside your comfort zone.

Another grey area where a lot of passionate people start to falter is talking about themselves. Since they’ve been under a lot of pressure at work or in life generally, they can’t confidently describe their services. This is key to understand. You want to position yourself as the expert whenever you spot any opportunities, but not be overconfident and talk too much.

There’s a balancing act that must be done, a few people outside of yourself can understand the passion that you’re bringing in. Whether that’s a passion for their industry or a new technology they should adopt, keeping it cool is a realistic approach to growing your passion further.

Conclusion

Pursuing your passion should be a mix between what you want and what you think other people might want. You can be the world’s best juggler or AC repairman, but if there isn’t a market open for you then you’re not going to feel too passionate after a while. In fact, that passion might become overwhelming for you and you start to break under the pressure.

That’s why it’s important to balance out the passion with hard work and daily effort. If you’re waiting for that next big gig or break, you’re not going to get anywhere in your professional life.