Follow Your Passion, Fall Off a Cliff
In May of 2014, actor Jim Carrey gave the commencement address at a small University in Fairfield, Iowa. The speech went viral thanks to Carreyâs remarks about following your dreams, taking risks, and doing what you love. Social feeds were full of people waxing poetic about âfollowing their passion.â The world was one big poster with eagles and mountains underscored by the word âDREAMS.â I wanted to join in and sprinkle pixie dust on the conversation, but it honestly made me want to punch a kitten.
People readily latch on to the idea of finding oneâs calling in life and pursuing it to the ends of the earth. While the earth isnât flat, there are cliffs, and blindly pursuing a passion is bound to take you over more than one. In an age where overnight celebrity and wealth are becoming increasingly common, the adage âfollow your passionâ is a message of hope that everyone loves to embrace. But itâs a terrible business strategy. Not every passion can earn you a paycheck.
When weâre in the thick of it, and doing the work, that fire isnât burning as bright. Weâre tired of doing yet another repetitive task for a client that asks for ridiculous revisions. We have half the budget we need to do a quality job, so we cut corners and turn in another final product that isnât worthy of our portfolio. A few months or years go by, and you havenât done anything âmeaningful.â What happened to that passion? What happened to that fire? Now, it just feels like a job.
I love it when someone brings a deep and personal passion together with good business sense. People like Sara Blakely, Richard Branson, Tori Burch, Walt Disney, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Tony Hsieh come to mind. They did the work as business people first in order to sell creative and innovative ideas. They all had talent, but their focus was always on getting the solution into peopleâs hands. They knew that no matter how fun or enjoyable the work, if no one used it, it wouldnât be around for long. We expect others to be infected by our passion. Typically, that isnât the case. You have to sell your ideas, your solutions, and yourself. Itâs no surprise that it requires a lot of hard work and energy to do so. Itâs laborious.
âWork is what we do by the hour. It begins and, if possible, we do it for money. Welding car bodies on an assembly line is work; washing dishes, computing taxes, walking the rounds in a psychiatric ward, picking asparagusâthese are work. Labor, on the other hand, sets its own pace. We may get paid for it, but itâs harder to quantify ⊠Writing a poem, raising a child, developing a new calculus, resolving a neurosis, invention in all formsâthese are labors. Work is an intended activity that is accomplished through the will. A labor can be intended but only to the extent of doing the groundwork, or of not doing things that would clearly prevent the labor. Beyond that, labor has its own schedule.â
Lewis Hyde2
The Pursuit of Happiness
Weâre raised to believe that tasks producing income are work, and anything else is playing. So when we spend our time doing something we donât enjoy, like waiting tables or selling insurance, weâre unfulfilled. We feel that our work is distracting us from our true calling. Throughout our monotonous workday, we long to rush home and labor at our side projects and creative pursuits: our passions. We hear speeches and read articles that fuel the fire to quit our jobs and pursue our passion. We search desperately for ways to do what we love and have it be our primary source of income. So we tear off that apron, slam it on the table, yell âI quitâ and go home to open a graphic design business.
And then six months later weâre on food stamps.
Maybe thatâs a bit harsh, but it happens. The reason for failure probably wasnât a lack of passion or even a lack of talent. Most likely, it was a lack of income. Reconciling something weâve always done for fun to our financial livelihood isnât easy. The truth is that most people who set out to make money pursuing their passion end up disillusioned, disappointed, and underemployed.
But why?
Get Your Mind Right
In the words of Young Jeezy, âyou gotta get ya mind right.â A creative job will follow you everywhere you go. Being a garbage man or customer service rep isnât likely to do so. You finish your work and you go home, there is no âlabor.â We need garbage men, but âif we believe that personal fulfillment is really the ultimate purpose of labor, then who do we expect to do all the other jobs that are not so existentially fulfilling?â3
Garbage men and customer service reps arenât defined by their jobs. The garbage man may be an incredible woodworker on the weekends and the customer service rep a great jazz singer at local clubs. Neither of them may harbor a desire to make a living at their creative pursuit. For them, a job is a job, and love is love. âIt makes it seem like work is a very important if not primary source of love, and if you arenât deriving pleasure from your work that thereâs something wrong with you or something wrong with the choices youâve made in your lifeâI absolutely reject that.â4
You donât have to turn your passion into your career, but if youâre going to do so, know that there are challenges along the way. Turning your passion for creative into a bad business will suck out every ounce of joy. But thatâs what weâre here to fix, so donât be sad! I promise, Iâll put you on the back of a magical unicorn thatâs riding through candy mountainâyou just have to climb on.
If you get into this line of work because you believe itâs going to fulfill you or give your life meaning, prepare for war.
The pursuit of passion and great work is part of finding happiness in a creative business. The key is to change your approach and let the passion come from the work. âDonât follow your passion, follow your effort.â5 If you get into this line of work because you believe itâs going to fulfill you or give your life meaning, prepare for war. Itâs hard to be financially stable and find meaning from a creative business unless you learn to treat the work as a deliverable. Youâre only a few pages in, so thereâs still time to run away. If, however, youâre still with me, I want to help you do what you feel you must do and make a decent living along the way.
You, Defined
In âWhen Youâre At the Crossroads of Should and Must,â artist Elle Luna asks a profound question, âwhat if who we are and what we do become one and the same? What if our work is so thoroughly autobiographical that we canât parse the product from the person? What if our jobs are our careers and our callings?â6 Your life as âyou,â the person and your creative life are then one and the same. The work is the outcome of your efforts, so it is your energy and your time being traded for an end product. You are the equipment, the tool, and the machine. Just like a factory, if a piece of equipment is used at full speed without rest, maintenance, and care, it will break. Getting to a place where we can relax and enjoy the fruit of our labor means being smart about how we work.
âA master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.â
L. P. Jacks7
Business in the Front, Creative in the Back
What stands out among my successful creative colleagues is a dedication to the creative work and business operations that run in parallel. They are intentional about their day, week, month, and year as a business owner first, then a creative. Theyâre focused and tactical. When things go wrong, they arenât lost without a map. Theyâve developed systems and methods for working through the inevitable creative and business challenges. Those systems, as boring as they may sound, wonât stifle the creative fire. In fact, they make it possible to keep it burning for years to come.
In a creative business, misguided passion can be poison. Holding too tightly to your vision, your design, and your opinion can cost you clients, money, and personal peace. In the past, if your creative pursuits were just for play, the pressure was off. Now, itâs what keeps the lights on. Your attitude regarding your creative work changes when it becomes your job; itâs unavoidable. You have to become pragmatic, which doesnât come easy for many creatives. Pragmatism means using success and experience to determine what works. It means being practical, which at times is the opposite of passionate.
Itâs Just Business, Baby
Business, business, business. There, you said it. Your creative endeavor is a business, through and through, whether youâre working on the side for a few hours a week or full-time.
No matter how and when you start, having the business mindset from day one is critical for longevity.
But what is a business mindset?
- âą Strategic thinking. Itâs knowing what you want, what you need, and how youâre going to get it. Itâs being intentional with your time, energy, and resources to move your business forward rather than reacting to whatever comes your way.
- âą Making money. You have to earn money to keep a business open. There are a lot of ways to make money in your business, but the most common is to exchange your time and effort for client revenue. So you have to be strategic about where money is going to come from. It also means you intend to be profitable.
- âą Having a vision. Youâre getting away from mundane tasks and finally doing something you enjoy, so donât muck it up by doing a bunch of mundane tasks! Dedicate time on a regular basis to think about where your business is going long-term and how your daily decisions affect that vision.
- âą Marketing. You have to talk about what you do to people who may hire you to do that thing. That may be in person, online, or through other media channels.
- âą Being uncomfortable. You will have to make sacrifices to keep your business growing. Being willing to make business decisions, fueled by pragmatic thinking, can be the difference between success and failure.
So, hereâs your first hard truth: this shit is hard. It never gets easy. There may be times when things are going well, and all seems right. Enjoy it, because darkness can and will come. You canât avoid every single pitfall that comes from owning a small business; itâs impossible. Success and sustainability come from mitigating risk and lessening the impact. Think of it as wearing a bulletproof vest but still getting shot. Above all, you have to create the maximum opportunity for optimism. The more control you have over the business side of things, the less panic youâll feel when things go wrong.
Sold Out, Not Selling Out
How do you find the balance between doing great work and making money? And not just some money, not just enough money, but the money you need to find your level of happiness and fulfillment? Money doesnât equal happiness, I believe that. But I can tell you that barely making it from month to month doesnât equal happiness eit...