20. Passion is the secret weapon of successful entrepreneurs. Learn how to identify and leverage it.

People often give the advice to “follow your passion”. Typically, this advice is about personal fulfillment, but passion also provides a gigantic competitive advantage.

Before I became an entrepreneur, I was a physicist. I studied physics because it was the path of least resistance. My father was a physics professor, and from a young age I planned to follow in his footsteps. It came easily to me, so it was hardly a conscious decision to go from a science focused high school, to become a physics major, and to keep on going.

While pursuing my Ph.D. in astrophysics at UCSD, I started to look at the other grad students around me. I realized that, while I enjoyed doing physics, I did not have the same level of passion as the best of the other students. Physics was the first thing they thought about in the morning, and bled into their dreams at night. Not me. Even though I was doing exciting research using the Hubble Space Telescope.
Clearly, they would happily work harder on physics than I could force myself to do. They would write more publications and land the choice faculty positions. I could not seriously compete, so I left to follow something that I was passionate about.

As a child, I remember being asked “what do you want to do when you grow up?” Over and over we all face that question of what we want to do. That question tends to lead to a head type answer, rather than one from the heart. People think about what they think they should want to do. What will make the most money, or provide the most prestige.
A better question is “what do you want to spend your time doing?” Over the next years and decades, how do you want your hours to be filled? What would you do for free? What makes your heart sing?

Some answers are potential businesses or careers, but not all. A passion without possible income is a hobby. However, you can often find a way of transforming a hobby into a viable business.

My company, Anonymizer, came out of a hobby. While in grad school, I became passionate about privacy and cryptography. I spent nights and weekends creating open source software and debating those technologies and their implications with other enthusiasts. At that time, all privacy software was free and open source. There were no privacy businesses. I thought there should be, so I dropped out and started a privacy focused ISP, which allowed me to explore a number of different possible business models all related to that core passion. And, because it was a passion, I was thrilled to work very hard for very little for quite a long time, until it finally achieved real success.

Before you jump into founding a company related to your passion, think about whether you are also passionate about being an entrepreneur. Starting and running a company involves spending much of your time doing things unrelated to the mission of the business. To be a successful founder, you either need to also be passionate about that process, or find a co-founder who is. That is why the technologist and business co-founder team is so common and effective.

Being an entrepreneur is not the only way to leverage your passion. After 13 years, I sold Anonymizer with the intent of moving on as soon as my 2 year commitment expired. The new CEO did not make it easy to leave (in a good way). He let me drop all of the business hassles and simply focus on privacy, cryptography, and anonymity. I spent the next eleven years fully immersed in that passion as an employee.

Passion is not a fixed quantity. It can change and evolve as we discover new interests, and mature. Eventually, I started to feel the need to scratch my entrepreneurial itch again and started getting involved in angel investing and advising startups. My passion for privacy slowly waned over the years while my excitement about the business side grew. This year I shifted to focus full time on Feel The Boot, angel investing, and advising startups. Once again, converting a hobby into a new career direction.

Each time I leverage my passion, I find a huge increase in both the quality and quantity of work I produce. Once again I wake up with new ideas I need to capture. Once again, I scribble notes in the waterproof notebook in my shower.

Don’t start a business because it is a hot area, or because you think you should. Being an entrepreneur involves gigantic effort. If you are passionate, it will not feel like it (as much). Harness that passion to out perform your competitors.

Let me know how you have leveraged your passion down in the comments!