Hollywood Principle

Many people blindly follow their passion, believing their love for it will be enough to make them successful. But they fail to factor in what I call The Hollywood Principle.

The Hollywood Principle states that no matter how passionate you are about something, nobody cares about it simply because you do.

If you want clients or customers, you need to be concerned with why they should care about what you’re doing, even when you’re doing what you love.

People fleeing the corporate world — the world of 9-to-5, dictated eating and bathroom schedules — tend to equate a passion-based business with freedom. They want the freedom to be their own boss, the freedom to be in charge of their own time and the freedom to do whatever it is they love.

With this mindset, they throw caution to the wind and do what they love without regard for The Hollywood Principle. They pursue their venture with the love and compulsion characteristic of passions.

But it all goes horribly wrong because they forget to connect what they love to something others will care about.  They’re so engrossed in doing what they love and why it matters to them that they forget to look up and show others why they should care about it, too.

Don’t be fooled into thinking you have to contort your passion-based business into something it isn’t to find potential clients and customers. You’re not out to find any market need and fill it. That’s the old way of doing business, and also how you’ll end back up with something that feels like a “job.”

The real challenge is to persuasively communicate the gift of your passion, your mission and your unique value.