434: Follow Your Passion (But Not Like That)
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Why do entrepreneurs consider “follow your passion” the most frustrating advice?
Hey, it's Arvid and this is the Bootstrap Founder.
A while ago, I asked my Twitter friends to tell me what the most annoying and most infuriating piece of entrepreneurial advice is that they ever received. And overwhelmingly, follow your passion stood out as one of the most frustrated items there that people just mentioned most of the time. And I've seen this particular piece of advice being given a lot by people who have made it. With specifically people, founders who have had exits, successful entrepreneurs who found success in the field that they're passionate about. And I may have, to be perfectly honest here, from time to time hinted at the fact that this might not be too bad. Bad if followed carefully as well. But today I want to dive into why I think this is actually nefarious and dangerous advice when followed blindly.
And more importantly, what it should and can be decoded into that's actually meaningful and helpful for you as a founder.
What does “follow your passion” actually mean and how is it commonly misinterpreted?
And before we get to that, a word from our sponsor, paddle.com. I'm using Paddle as my own merchant of record for all my software projects, and they take care of all the taxes, currencies, they track decline transactions, they update credit cards so that I can focus on dealing with my competitors and not with banks or financial regulators. If you would rather just build your product instead of dealing with all these weird financials, check out paddle.com. as your merchant of record. Now, right off the bat, this follow your passion advice, it's such an ambiguous term. What does it actually mean? Should I do the thing that I always like doing and try to turn that into a business? Or should I look at what people around me in my, I don't know, hobby or field of expertise are building and then build something like that or something for them?
What does it mean? And for most people, looking at it from their own personal perspective. Follow your passion becomes, well, I have this certain thing that I like to do, a certain field or industry, be it professional or hobby, doesn't really matter. Something that I'm interested in, and I want to do that for a living. I love baking, so I probably should open a bakery. Or I love doing yard work for some reason. So I probably should become a professional gardener. That is what most people think about when they look at follow your passion. And in the field of digital businesses, it often turns into something like, well, should I maybe just become a content creator in that particular field or turn this into a software as a service solution for people who work in that field as well?
And the more you think about this nuanced application of follow your passion, or the more you want it to be nuanced, the more it actually becomes useful advice. But if you only believe that it means do what you love and try to make money, that's where things get problematic. Here's the thing. Most of the time we do things we love because they produce value that's not easily quantified. When we read a book or when I read a book, I don't want to turn this into a monetizable experience, right? It's something internal. I read this book, I enjoy the story, and for many years I'll keep thinking about it, I keep referencing it, I integrate it into maybe the stories that I tell myself or the stories that I tell others when I recommend books or when I recommend stories.
But I can't say like I receive $10 worth of joy from this, or even for a particular Particularly good book, like I received a hundred or thousands of dollars of joy. That is not possible to quantify. It cannot be monetized or monified, you know what I mean, right? You cannot put a value to this. And this is why people who actually love reading often get encouraged to write books themselves, but they're actually not good writers. They're good readers. Or they don't have a good business sense if they are a good writer. Nobody Reads the book they're writing, and all of a sudden they poured their passion, their energy into this, and it's an unmonetizable skill for them.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
Why do entrepreneurs consider “follow your passion” the most frustrating advice?
0:00–1:07
2
What does “follow your passion” actually mean and how is it commonly misinterpreted?
1:07–7:16
3
How can the “follow your passion” mantra be reframed into a useful business strategy?
7:16–12:13
4
Why does turning a personal passion directly into a product often fail?
12:13–13:18