MBA852 Stop Trying To Discover Your Passion [REBROADCAST]

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Today's episode is about a topic that is near and dear to my heart, yet it's so controversial. It's titled stop trying to discover your passion. Discover your passion and build business around it seems to be the most common business advice that's out there on the Internet. I say, no, I don't think that's a good idea. And I explain why. Passion alone is not enough, and building a business around something that you're passionate about and no one else is passionate about is a formula for disaster. At the end of the day, you do not exist without customers and you need to sell something they want, they need. And it doesn't matter how passionate you are if you're not actually conveying value. If you're not offering value, you can't ask for their hard earned dollar. That's just the reality of business. So what do you do? Well, I get into it in today's episode. This episode first aired about 300 episodes ago, but we wanted to rebroadcast it because it was a huge hit and there was a lot of controversy around the topic. Sit back and enjoy this one. If you're not supposed to discover your passion, what should you do? Foreign. Welcome to the $100 MBA show, the business podcast where you're the Karate Kid of business and you get your daily lessons every single day from your personal Mr. Miyagi. That's me. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online. If you haven't checked out our free course on idea validation to make sure you're nailing your business idea, you need to make sure you do. It's completely free, high quality video lessons with a workbook. Just go to 100mba.net free course and get started. In today's lesson, you will learn why you should stop trying to discover your passion. I know this is contrary to what a lot of people are saying. Find your passion, go deep in it and build a business around it. I'm here to say it doesn't have to be that way. A lot of people struggle trying to figure out what their passion is and they don't start a business because of that, because they get stuck right there. And in today's lesson, I'm gonna show you why. If you don't have a passion or you don't know what your passion is yet, it doesn't mean you don't have to have a business. And in fact, I think it's really impractical to think that everybody's gonna be super passionate about something and build a business around it. I'm gonna get into the details of why you have to stop trying to discover this passion that you don't know of yet and start rolling up your sleeves and start doing. And I'm actually going to show you what you should start doing. And through that you'll build a great business with a smile on your face. Don't let the search for passion stop you from building a business. I'm going to get into it in today's lesson. So let's get down to business. If you've been looking to build a business, it seems like the mainstream advice is to discover your passion and build a business around it. Unfortunately, that's a lot easier said than done. Trust me, I've been there in that process. You might be asking yourself, is this really my passion? Can I do this for the rest of my life? Is this something I'm super excited about when I wake up in the morning? These are some of the questions that you're asked when you're discovering your passion. I'm here to say it doesn't have to be that way. You could build a business about something that you're not crazy about. And in fact, I really think it's impractical. There's very few things that I'm absolutely crazy about, and I can't just go ahead and build a business around something I'm crazy about simply because of that fact. Is it a viable business? Is it going to sell? Do people want this? These are factors that are more important. Now, I'm not saying you should just go after the business opportunity. You do have to be interested. You do have to have a curiosity about that topic that you're building a business around. And at the very least, you have to like it. But I think passion is a really strong word, and a lot of people get stuck on that stage where they say, I don't know if I'm passionate about this. And many people don't start their first business because of this. If you're struggling with this, I want to encourage you to take a different approach. I want you to ask a different question. Instead of asking, what am I passionate about and what business can I build around it, ask the question, where can I add value most? What skills? What experiences do I have in life that I can really capitalize on and build a business around it? Let me give you a few examples. Many of you know that I'm an Egyptian American. My parents immigrated from Egypt to America, and I was born here in the States. And I know a fair bit about Egypt because I visited Egypt a whole bunch of times. I think over 12 times. We used to go every summer when I was a child for summer vacation. Now. Now, I may not think that this is significant, but that experience that I've kind of taken for granted, I could build a business around that. I could build a blog that's specific to Americans visiting Egypt. I'm going to come with a different angle completely than if an actual Egyptian, a native Egyptian who lives in Egypt, wrote a blog about visiting Egypt. I have the perspective of somebody who lives in America, has different standards, and kind of understands what the American wants to experience when they come to Egypt. I know the American language, and I'm not just talking about English. I'm talking about the culture. And I also happen to be fluent in Arabic because my parents are Egyptian and we spoke Arabic at home. So I can help people out with a few important phrases when they come to visit Egypt. I can also give them some really good advice on how to bargain for gifts when you're in Egypt so you don't get gypped. I got so much value I can add in this area because of that experience I had growing up. Now I'm not Super passionate about tourism and Egypt and the culture of Egypt and travel. All that stuff is great. I love it, but it's not my calling in life. And who says you have to do a business forever? I can run this business for five, six, ten years. I may want to sell it later on. I may want to just make it a passive business. But the point here is, is that I have a concept here. I can build a business around it, and I have value that I can add. Now you might be saying, well, I don't really have any experiences or things I did in my life that I can really build upon. Well, maybe you're asking the wrong person yourself. Maybe you need to ask somebody else, a friend of yours. Ask them what experiences I've had that you admire. And, and they could be professional experiences. And they might say, hey, you've been in the hospitality industry for a very long time. You've waited on tables. You're a restaurant manager for a very long time. You have a lot of experience in that. Why don't you create a blog, a website, a course on how to double your tips as a waitress or as a waiter, or you can create a course on how to find great wait staff for restaurant owners. So sometimes you gotta think a little laterally, and sometimes you gotta ask somebody else and not yourself. But the point here is that you're focusing on what value you can add to a certain group of people instead of focusing on, what do I love? What is my passion? You can already see how that passion argument is very internal. It's all about yourself instead of the people that you're serving. Another point in this lesson I want to make is that a lot of us, we become entrepreneurs or we pursue entrepreneurship because we're really frustrated at our job. We don't like having limited control on what we do every day. And you want to build something for yourself. So there's nothing wrong with taking your career and making it a business. If you work at a company as a graphic designer, there's nothing wrong with you taking that skill and teaching other people, beginners how to be graphic designers, Monetizing that, making it a business, taking your experience and expertise. If you're a salesperson, why not put together a sales course or a coaching program? If you're in the medical industry, if you're a nurse or a dietitian, there's so much you could teach the individual about how to take good care of themselves, how to take care of their loved ones when they're feeling ill. The point here is that Take your existing experience in the job you're in and you could build a business around it. You don't have to make a dramatic shift and change everything around and try to discover this hidden passion of yours before you start building a business. You see, the point I'm making here is that building a business is not about the idea. It's not about finding the right passionate idea. It's also about knowing how to run a business. Is being profitable, is having an offer that people want that's more important. So by focusing on value and what you can add to your audience, it allows you to understand business and be a better business person. So when you build that first business and it's successful, you can build upon it and build another one. And in that process, if you do discover something that you're very passionate about, you can go ahead knowing that you know how to build a business around it and you're not going in cold turkey.

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I wanna wrap up this lesson with an exercise that you can do. I'm confident that this exercise will really help you out when it comes to discovering the value you can add opposed to your passion. First of all, I wanna preface this exercise with the fact that you don't need to be a super amazing expert. You just need to be a few steps ahead of the common person. The person that's just discovering this topic. So I'm not an expert in Egyptian tourism, but I gave that example because I know a few things that most people don't and I can share those things and I can be relatable because I'm an American, I'm an Egyptian, and I can help them out when it comes to visiting Egypt. So don't feel overwhelmed that you're not the expert in this area. You don't need to be. I want you to sit down and take 30 minutes to list three to four experiences, special skills, things you've been through, things you've done in your life that people have asked you about in the past that are significant, that are a little bit different. One of these things can even be something that you really gone deep in. I gave that example of hospitality. Have you done something for several years, a few years, and know something very well. Don't worry about if it's significant enough or if you can monetize it right now. Just write down. This is a time to just dump down ideas. Now if there's something in these ideas that you are passionate about, things that you do like, no problem, don't worry about that. But I don't try to focus on something that you're really in love with right now. Just focus on the value you can add to others. Once you've list all these things, I want you to read them off and see which ones immediately give you ideas of how you can monetize them. Are some of these ideas just popping up automatically? Hey, I can write a course about this. I can create a coaching program. I could do paid webinars teaching this concept. So once you hone down to two or three, preferably two, think of what's the minimal viable business you can build around this? What is a minimal viable offer? Something that you could sell and it could be something as little as $10. A checklist, a PDF guide, a series of videos. What can you sell that can add value in this area? Get started there. Just make a few bucks. The purpose of this is not for you to see if you can become an overnight millionaire. The point here is to see if you can make money. If it's profitable, you can build upon it once it is. But if it's not, you can easily move and shift without a huge investment in time because again, it's minimal viable. It didn't take you that long to build in the first place. All right, guys, that wraps up today's lesson. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you found it of benefit. The reason why I did today's lesson is because I really don't want you to feel bogged down with this concept of I have to have a passion or I don't have a business. You don't at the end of the day, an entrepreneur is a problem solver, somebody that solves problems for other people. Find a problem that you can solve, be a benefit to somebody and you have a business on your hands. Guys, thank you so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. If you love what you hear, the best compliment you can give us is leaving us an itunes rating and review. It takes two minutes to review us. So after you listen to this episode, you can go ahead and do that. Just go to100nba.net show on the bottom of the page you can see all the instructions on how to review us. If you're on your iPhone, just click on the COVID art and click on the link that says give us a rating and review. That link will send you straight into itunes where you can review us. Thank you so much in advance. Alright guys, I want to leave you with this. Our whole mission with the $100 NBA show is to get you to move forward, is to take action. Ideas are dime a dozen and they're worthless without implementation. So I want you to take action. I don't want you to stop there when you're just thinking about what you should do your business about. Take a look at your experiences. Build something small, get your feet wet. Build something and start being an entrepreneur. Once you start selling something of value in exchange for money, you are now an entrepreneur. And you can build upon that. You can expand upon that. You're on the path and that vision of what you want to be as a business person can start manifesting. But it can't start if you don't take the first steps and start building. All right guys, I hope that helps and hope to see you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then guys. Take care.

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