Why The Money Will Follow If You Do What You Love

Martin

Do what you love and the money will follow. It’s a piece of advice that has more than it’s share of skeptics.

And it’s really easy to see why. It sounds like a very general statement, non applicable in the real world and very assuming in a way, which makes it a pretty easy target for criticism and sarcasm.

The truth is, it’s an incomplete statement and it requires further analysis before we can really make some kind sense of it so let’s delve right in and see what it really means.

If you love doing something, you will naturally become good at it simply because you love doing it and you spend time doing it, more so than the average person. Repetition inevitably leads to improvement. And it’s not like you do the same thing over and over again. You learn each time you do it and get better and better. And if doing what you love incorporates your natural talents, you’re likely to become great at it. Either way, you become better than the average person not only in terms of skill, but in a variety of areas related to what you love to do – knowledge, experience, intuition, contacts made, etc., that you gather along the way.

You start to differentiate yourself from the pack and stand out and that’s when you really begin to put yourself on the path of making money from doing what you love to do.

Second, if you love doing something, you have that natural fuel that goes along with it. It’s easy to hurdle the obstacles, to put in that extra effort, to go that extra mile when you love what you do simply because you love doing it. That passion fuels your perseverance as Steve Job points out.

“A lot of people come up to me and say “I want to be an entrepreneur”. And I go “Oh that’s great, what’s your idea?” And they say “I don’t have one yet”. And I say “I think you should go get a job as a busboy or something until you find something you’re really passionate about because it’s a lot of work.” I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non successful ones is your perseverance. It is so hard. You put so much of your life into this thing. There are such rough moments in time that I think most people give up. I don’t blame them. It’s really tough and it consumes your life….It’s pretty much an eighteen hour day job, seven days a week for a
while. Unless you have a lot of passion about this, you’re not going to survive. You’re going to give it up. So you’ve got to have an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want right that you’re passionate about, otherwise you’re not going to the perseverance to stick it through. I think that’s half the battle right there.” Steve Jobs

So we have above average skills and a natural fuel that helps us go the distance when we consistently do what we love to do.

That’s sounds great and all but here’s where the big stone wall comes into play that the critics always point out.

“Not everyone can make money doing what they love to do.

Just because you love doing something, doesn’t mean you can make money from it.”

My thoughts on that statement are that I think it’s also a pretty general statement that sounds very assuming as well.

The thing is that when people say that money doesn’t follow if you do what you love, it’s usually that the notion of what they love doing is self serving.

In other words, it just benefits themselves. Not other people.

You have to start figuring out how doing what you love to do can serve other people.

It might not become all that apparent at first, but stay with it for a while and the answer will come to you.

For example, young kids these days love to play video games but say that there’s no way then can make money from it and that’s mainly due to lack of experience on their part. They don’t really see the big picture like adults do.

If you love to play video games and you’re very good at it, you can become a professional gamer and play in tournaments for huge cash prizes or help consult the companies that make the games or even just break into the gaming industry from the bottom and work your way up to the job you really want, whether it’s actually coming up with the concept of the games, graphics, marketing, selling, etc. The possibilities are there. You just need to take a step back and look at the bigger picture to see it.

It’s hard to give examples of how people can make money doing what they love to do simply because everyone likes doing different things.

I remember one story of someone who loved traveling and didn’t see a way of making money from it until he opened his own traveling agency for people who wanted to travel like him through Europe on a small budget.

I even read a story of a person who loved making sand castles and made a living out of that while traveling the world, making sculptures for huge events on the beach.

Now the big question on everyone’s mind is probably, if you can make money doing what you love to do – how much money can you make?

Obviously it will differ depending on everyone’s circumstances – how much in demand their skill is, how skillful the person is, how much effort they put in to market their products/services, etc. It’s really hard to say.

But let’s consider the low end of the spectrum.

Let’s say you don’t really make the big bucks. But you make enough for the basics and then maybe a very tiny bit for comfort and savings. And you’re happy with the work you’re doing. When Sunday evening comes around, you can’t wait for Monday to start. There’s not as much stress as before. You feel like you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing. You feel like you’re in harmony with yourself.

It doesn’t sound all that bad compared to the opposite – working in a high paying job you really hate that brings along with it a ton of stress and problems and disharmony that spills over into other areas of your life.

More often than not, you will start making more and more money doing what you love to do simply because you get good at what you do and when you get good at what you do and help people in the process and others begin to see it, they will want to pay you to help them too.

You’ve effectively created a gap in value that can only be filled by you and people will pay for you to fill it.

And once you get a taste of how it’s like doing work you love and getting paid for it, you won’t want to do anything else so you will find a way to financially make it work.

Find what you love to do. Do what you love to do. Get good at it. Get great at doing it. Learn all you can about it. Put in the extra effort. Figure out how you can serve others with it. Then do it.

And then the money will start to come.

And then, it’ll just feel like all you’re doing is having fun.