Do We Need Passion to Start a Business Venture - Research Paper Example

Do We Need Passion to Start a Business Venture? Introduction Passion is an essential element for success in starting and managing any business venture. It originates from the heart of a person and is evident for all to see. Passion is visible in the outward behaviour of a person because it is a highly charged with emotions that compel a person towards something. Starting and running a business is like taking care of a baby. A business venture like the baby requires a lot of love, attention, financial resources and plenty of time if it is to grow into vibrant and productive business enterprise. The love of the business provides an overall support to the growing and developing a business enterprise. A passionate entrepreneur associate their businesses with their lives and in the process, they develop strong feeling of attachment towards it. Passion connects the entrepreneur with the power that makes him or her excel in the business activity. It provides enthusiasm, commitment, and hope that encourage the entrepreneur to press on with his or her business idea even when the circumstances are not conducive. A passionate entrepreneur has intense feeling of love towards his or her business idea and always does things or activities that promote its growth, development and sustainability. Passion leads to the development of purpose in a person. Entrepreneurs must have passion because starting and running a business is not an easy task. The idea of starting and running a successful business is overwhelming. There are so many questions to answer, hurdles to jump, losses to make, wars to fight and successes to celebrate at the course of business operations. All the above activities that occur during the start up and operation of any business requires a passionate heart. However, to be truly a successful entrepreneur, a person must posses other entrepreneurship qualities apart from passion. Passion forms an integral part and do not operate in isolation. Apart from being passionate, successful entrepreneurs are moderate risk takers, opportunists, visionaries, hardworking, innovative, creative, feedback-seeking, concern for excellence, positive thinkers as well as good negotiators. A person who possess all or almost all the above characteristics posses entrepreneurial tendencies and are more likely to create a thriving businesses in any field. Entrepreneurs who plan to achieve or realize their dreams must identify what they like most and develop a framework that guides them exploit the opportunities that accompany those activities they are passionate about. Consequently, a passionate entrepreneur is a person with compelling feeling towards starting and running successful business venture(s) irrespective of the motives behind the decision. What is passion? Every entrepreneur must fully comprehend the power of passion and tap it for the benefit of his or her dream business. Passion is a powerful contagious feeling that originates from the heart. According to Day (9), passion is a very powerful feeling that drives the mind of an individual towards something or an activity. Passion is so powerful because it is a pushing force fueled by the strength of emotions. Furthermore, passion is non-discriminating and is within reach of every person on earth irrespective of age, race or gender. It is always available to a person who is able and willing to follow his or her intuition. Passion is a strong emotion that can be discovered, taught or reproduced at any time. Therefore, it is available for every person who keenly listens to his or her heart. Passionate entrepreneurs are normal people who decided to make a decision to become what they want to be. It is a choice that is available for every living person of the world and no person has an excuse for not being one. There are various examples that describe and explain the true meaning of passion. According to Barringer and Ireland (20), Laura Gasparis who is the fonder and proprietor of Educational Enterprises and Services in Richmond asserts that passion is an entrepreneurial trait that was common in all the entrepreneurs he met and interacted with in his life. He pointed out that passion is enjoying what the person does irrespective of its nature. Laura Gasparis further explains that different people go to business because of various reasons. For example, some do business because they want to make money, others because they want to be their own bosses, other for fun while others want to prove a point(s). However, he discovered that entrepreneurs who had passion succeeded irrespective of the driving force behind their venture. The second example is that of Judi Sheppard who is the founder and proprietor of Franchiser Fitness and Exercise. Sheppard believed that passion is the most important trait that every successful entrepreneur possessed. He equates passion to being madly in love and suggests that each person must love what he or she does to protect it from actions or activities that may threaten to bring it down. He explains that passion develops and nurtures a strong set of work ethics. If a person like something, he or she would work hard enough to develop rules and procedures that will sustain it for a longer period as possible. Therefore, a passionate entrepreneur enjoys working in the business and does everything in his or her power to ensure that the enjoyable activity is sustained as long as it generates pleasure. He pointed out that his success in the fitness career was because of love for the work he was doing. Finally, Sheppard said that for one to be successful in fitness careers, he or she must posses the passion that creates enough dedication to the activity. Therefore, loving what the person does is a recipe towards establishing a growing and sustainable business venture in any field. Lastly, it is important for every aspiring entrepreneur to develop natural passion that enables them generates the power, the knowledge and the determination that is necessary for exploiting business opportunities that comes their way. Why passion is important for every business venture? Passion is a necessity for starting and running any business venture. There are varied reasons that validate the importance of passion in all business undertakings. The greatest message that passion imply is love for something one does. People who have passion about a person or an object always have inbuilt drive that pushes them beyond their wildest imaginations to assist the person or exploit the object in a productive way. According to Strauss (8), people go into business because they love the business idea as well as the work and process needed to develop and nurture it. Passionate feelings are a necessity for every upcoming entrepreneur because they generate enthusiasm for series of actions that are necessary in a business environment. The love for the business idea and its process make the initiators to want to do the work associated with it all times and at all levels. Passion generates impetus that sustains a business idea and its processes. Sir Richard Branson the founder of the Virgin Group started Virgin Music merely because music was close to his heart. As a result, he liked everything associated with the music and ended up establishing a musical company. Mr. William E. Boeing was born in 1881. At the age of twenty-two, his passionate entrepreneurial tendencies presented themselves when he left Scientific School at Yale without graduating to start a logging business in his father’s land in Seattle. He did not have prior knowledge or experience on trees and timbers. However, sheer love for logging business enabled him start and managed Greenwood Timber Company successfully. In 1908, he established Greenwood Timber Company at Seattle. In 1910, Mr. Boeing developed passion for airplanes. He loved flying and when he was old and could not fly properly, he hired a pilot to fly him in his Dolphin amphibian aircrafts that was built by Douglas. In fact, he died aboard his favorite aircraft the Taconite in 1956. Like the timber business, he had no prior knowledge of flying planes. His love for planes made him develop interest in the aviation industry. Initially, he tried to ride on boxy biplanes in Los Angels in 1910 but failed miserably but he never gave up his passion for planes. Instead, he sought information by networking with Lieutenant Westervelt of the U.S navy who provided him with technical and moral support on aircraft issues. Mr. Boeing was so thrilled with airplanes that he enrolled for pilot classes at Glenn L. Marting School of instructions. His passion for planes compelled him to buy his first plane after the training as a pilot. The passion of the planes was so intense that he began thinking of building planes with Lieutenant Westervelt. Both Mr. Boeing and Lieutenant Westervelt marshaled resources and a team of aircraft technicians to develop the first plane B& W model 1 on June 15, 1916. In the same day, they incorporated Pacific Aero Products. Mr. Boeing and Lieutenant Westervelt invented air-cooled engines that replaced the traditional water-cooled engines. For them, excellence and high standards were important for their business ventures. As a result, their products gained wide acceptance across the country and even internationally. They became supplies of aircrafts and aircraft services used in the Second World War. Most business ventures initiated and managed by Mr. Boeing succeeded. This is because he always had passion for all activities he did. Apart from timber and aircraft business, Mr. Boeing breed racehorse, developed real estates and fished. He was also successful in handling administrative issues in both public and private offices. Mr. Boeing was a man who did his job well. He was passionate in everything he did. It is evident that he was able to start and run successfully many business ventures. It was determination and concern for quality that made him a successful in all his undertakings. Determination and love for his jobs explain how passionate Mr. Boeing was. He undertook research before he began any business venture. In addition, monitoring and evaluation formed an integral part of all his business operations. For example, when Mr. Boeing was delivering the Dolphin to his client in Canada, he measured the time it took the aircraft to take off. This was to confirm that the aircrafts complied with its specifications before he delivers it to his client. Mr. Boeing was keen in all he did. He inspected all his projects personally. A good example is how he managed his farms. He inspected each acre of his land and made decision when it was necessary on time. Mr. Boeing also involved himself in fishing. He became an expert in fishing and invented the polar –bear fly bait that led to successful fishing. Mr. Boeing health began to deteriorate in 1954 and on September 28, 1956, he died aboard his favorite aircraft the Taconite. The story of Mr. Boeing was that of a genius entrepreneur. He succeeded in various ventures and was not limited by skills or knowledge. He had a way of dealing with various issues. To sum it all, Mr. Boeing was a passionate entrepreneur and should be emulated by all entrepreneurs. Passion is necessary because it generates a series of characteristics that support the growth and development of business ventures. The characteristics include commitment and determination, necessary knowledge and skills, enhance vision and create excellence. The first product of passion is commitment and determination. If a person likes a particular business idea and discovers that, he or she can create something good out of it, commitment develops in support of the idea. The passionate person commits greater financial resources, time and energy to the venture, which appeals to him or her at any time irrespective of the circumstances. If the resources are not adequate at the time, they commit to develop a plan of action to acquire them for the benefit of the business. Mr. Boeing concentrated on his timber business with an aim of generating more profits that enabled him developed substantial financial resource to finance his aircraft manufacturing business. Passion generates the determination needed to sustain a business enterprise and the entrepreneur when they face rejection during their formative years. Without passion, determination erodes when faced by a series of problems that rocks the business idea and may prevent an entrepreneur from realizing his or her dream. A person must truly like what he or she does because to be able to with stand the challenges that may present itself during the exploitation process. Determination creates perseverance and constant alignment to the business opportunity even during the most challenging times. Day 2004 (9) argued that passion is a feeling that nurtures determination and commitment necessary for long-term operation of a business venture. An illustration that explains the meaning of passion is the one of Jared Ross who is the owner and the founder of Vena that specializes in Italian food. He admits that when he was pursuing Master of Business Administration, he was not prepared for less attractive jobs such as cleaning the floors or scrubbing the bathrooms and toilets (Barringer and Ireland 19). An MBA curriculum does not teach people how to do humbling job or make mail deliveries in cities or other places. Passion fills the gap and trains people to accept any job that comes along as long as one enjoys doing it. This is true especially if the person has a dream of transforming the work into large and most prosperous one. Passion helps a person to do even the most grueling of jobs or activities with an aim of attaining something glamorous. The second thing that passion does to an entrepreneur is push him or her to get the knowledge and the skills necessary for the exploitation of his or her business idea. If a person likes something, the most natural noble step is to understand and interpret the fundamentals of the liked idea. As a result, the person goes to class or any other place to acquire formal training on the areas of interest. This was true with Mr. Boeing, who when he developed passion for aircrafts, he went to Glenn L. Marting School of instructions to be trained as a pilot. He also worked with and learnt from Lieutenant Westervelt who introduced him to more aircrafts issues. In the end, he was able to get skills and knowledge that enabled him advanced his passion. Therefore, an entrepreneur who is willing to learn and acquire more skills is more likely to succeed in every industry so long as he or she develops liking for it. Mr. Boeing did not have prior experience in timber business but he succeeded because he understood the power of passion generated skills and knowledge in ones business. Appetite for more knowledge enables the entrepreneur to develop skills needed to negotiate in the boardrooms, hire and fire employees as well as acquire any other necessary expertise to handle the challenges of the business environment. Furthermore, wide knowledge base provides the skill needed to analyze and interpret financial statements, economic trends and socio-political issues that influence the performance of the business. Knowledge generated by passion provides benchmarks for the entrepreneur, to evaluate the performance of his or her business venture. Knowledge also plays critical role in promoting the development of passions in individuals because as the person become more enlighten about something, their interests towards it also increase. The fourth reason is that, passion enhances entrepreneur’s vision or dream. Passion is usually evident from the outside of a person. If a person truly likes something, he or she works on it day in day out. During that process, the person is more acquainted with the idea and continues to affirm the importance of the business idea to his or her life and the world as a whole. When a person likes doing an activity, he or she begins to create purpose behind that business idea. The purpose magnifies the vision and makes it more compelling. Therefore, passion encourages the entrepreneur to move towards his or her life’s dream. In addition, passion creates and nurtures high sense of ownership and stewardship to the business idea (Chaleff 48). The fifth reason of the importance of passion to the entrepreneur is that it creates excellence. As a person continues to do something, he or she develops some skills and expertise leading to the improvement of the activity, service or a product produced. Mastering an activity forms the basis of its improvement. People who love what they are doing produce the best products and services. As a result, they develop bigger market share because their products and services receive wide acceptance. They also learn to treat the customers with passion because they understand that the basis of their existence is the customer. Excellence is very important for every entrepreneur because the rivalry is very high due to the competition laws that have been enacted. Consequently, excellence set one company apart from the others and make it distinguishable. It creates a competitive edge beyond their competitors. Is passion enough to make an entrepreneur successful? Passion alone is not sufficient to make a person a successful entrepreneur. Therefore, other factors that complement passion include vision, determination, planning, opportunity, good health, profitability, innovation and creativity. First, vision provides a breath of fresh air to the passionate entrepreneur. Every successful entrepreneur has a dream of becoming the best in his or her industry. Vision has the power of creating purpose, genius and energy to do or achieve something. Starting and running a successful business begins with dreaming big and daring to make it a reality. It is the desire of an entrepreneur to live the vision and make the dream real to generate passion towards exploitation of the business idea. Passion created and nurtured by vision directs the processes and activities that enable the entrepreneur to achieve his or her big dream. The founders of renowned business ventures that appear in the current radar screen of the most successful had visions of what their companies would be even long after they die. For example, Mr. William E. Boeing the founder of the current Boeings Commercial Aircrafts envisioned in 1929 a situation when airplanes will be a common means of transport as the train. He believed that through innovations of better planes, the economy and socio-political situations in the world changes for the better. Though he died in 1956, his business creation is booming in the current century and has revolutionarised the air transports industry. It is the vision of establishing something better as well as making the work and world better that drives most entrepreneurs to achieve the vision. Vision provides a bigger picture of a business idea. Therefore, even if challenges threatened to stop the advancement of business opportunity, the vision provides purpose for business’ continued existence. Secondly, determination makes big contribution to the success of entrepreneurs. It is the unyielding hope that drives most entrepreneurs forward. For example, according to Strauss (25), most business enterprises that are leading today experienced problems and challenges during the formative stages. Microsoft experienced serious losses during their first two years after incorporation and the inventor of the first steamboat Mr. Walt Disney became bankrupt before he developed the first steamboat. Entrepreneurs should be in a position to endure the challenges that their businesses experience during the years of establishment. The entrepreneurs who wish to be successful must prepare themselves to revise, evolve or even kill their business before they learn to develop better and bigger businesses. Thirdly, according to Carsrud and Brännback (220), planning is critical for success in entrepreneurship. It is not only enough to have passion, vision and determination. Planning and goal setting enables the entrepreneur to set goals and develop strategies on how to achieve them. Planning assists the entrepreneur to identify, marshal and provide resources to the business enterprise when they are required. Goal setting and planning provides the framework in which the business enterprises will operate and aligns the business enterprise around the vision (Chang 20). Mr. Boeing was known as a person who took his time to gather information about a particular venture and plan for it before he rolled out his actions and processes. Consequently, he was able to develop thriving businesses because planning provided a solid foundation for all his undertakings. The fourth factor that the entrepreneur needs to have apart from passion is an opportunity. There must be business opportunities as well as accessibility and exploitability of those business opportunities. The entrepreneur should be able to recognize, assess and exploit the business opportunities. Availability of opportunities directly influences the growth and development of both the entrepreneur and the business venture. The opportunity makes a business idea worth exploiting it. Most people fail to become successful entrepreneurs because they are not able to identify opportunities in the environment in which they live. Therefore, it is important for all aspiring entrepreneurs to develop ways in which to identify business opportunities in the environment in which they live. The fifth important factor that passion cannot replace is conviction. According to Rich (90), potential entrepreneurs become successful when they have a conviction in their hearts that the business opportunity before them is good and worth exploiting it. Conviction usually emanates from the heart. Conviction is comprised of optimism, principle and passion. Therefore, optimism and principle must be present if the entrepreneur wishes to be successful in his or her business enterprise. Optimism provides hope to the entrepreneur to proceed exploiting the identified business opportunity. Without optimism, there is not future and there is no reason for working today. The sixth important factor that must accompany passion is good healthy. Good health creates energy that enables a person to pursue ambition. Poor health saps the energy and the zeal to work on an idea successfully. Low level of energy negatively influences the level of passion towards something. Therefore, good health allows people to concentrate their efforts to the activities that make their business enterprise thrive for longer period. Entrepreneurs should always work hard to ensure that their lifestyles do not create health complications that prevents or restrict them from achieving their vision. The seventh important factor that must compliment passion is the profitability of venture. An entrepreneur must concentrate on a venture that generates profit in the present and in future. Therefore, profit is important because it dictates whether the business venture is sustainable or not. It is not wise to do activities that do not guarantee a person doing it a decent living no matter how much you enjoy it. The business ideas that Mr. Boeing pursued generated wealth for him. He was able to purchase a decent house, aircraft and had spare time to do what he liked most, fishing. In addition, the product or a service that the entrepreneur produces must be of good quality and affordable to the customers. The Eighth factor that is important is creativity and innovation. All entrepreneurs possess them because this is what set them apart from other business enterprises. Entrepreneurs create new products and services that benefit the society. They also improve existing products and services to make them highly effective and acceptable to the members of the society. Innovation is easy and less costly as compared to creativity. Creativity requires more research and time while innovation is about improving what exists. The ninth factor that is needed apart from passion is good negotiation skills. Negotiations are part of the entrepreneurial process. Therefore, it is very important for an entrepreneur to understand the process and strategies of negotiations. Good negotiation skills cushion an entrepreneur against negative outcomes that may result from bad negotiation. For example, an entrepreneur entering into employ benefits negotiation must take at most care in making sure that he or she does not promise high benefits that may strain the business’s financial resources. On the other hand, negotiation outcomes should not demoralize staff. In fact, entrepreneurs who want to grow their business and realize their dreams must learn to ensure that both parties to a dispute get satisfied. Negotiating skills become a necessity for every aspiring entrepreneur. Every entrepreneur must develop appropriate negotiating skills to be able to influence the opposing parties in a way that favours the business entity. The final factor that is needed to make the entrepreneurial venture successful is moderate risk taking. Risk taking is an important quality that all entrepreneurs posses. Different entrepreneurs have different appetite to risks in their business ventures. Business risks affect the level of performances of various business ventures. Entrepreneurs should always take moderate risks so as not to affect the performance of their business grossly. The entrepreneurs handle risk effectively by ensuring that adequate relevant information is available to the business venture when needed to make informed decision. Information is key to managing organizational risks and every entrepreneur must develop comprehensive information system that is able to track the progress of the business venture at all times. Entrepreneurs should not allow themselves to be driven by passion beyond their risk appetite levels. Are there negative sides of passion in pursuits of business ideas or opportunities? Passionate has its own disadvantages that may cause serious consequences. Passion can choke the wider vision and interfere with rational thinking. This is because a passionate individual is more likely to pursue narrow interests he or she is passionately attracted to rather than look at the bigger picture of the business opportunity. Secondly, passion is naturally a compulsive emotional feeling that may disregard rational thinking. Passionate feelings towards something are driven by unconsciousness and can destabilize people who posses high levels of professional calm and control. Therefore, passion like another emotional feeling has high tendency of clouding judgments and cause unacceptable personal behaviours that may endangers the sustainability of a business idea or opportunity. Therefore, entrepreneurs should ensure that balances exist and should not depend entirely on passion to start and run their business ventures. Passion should be applied as a complement to the other factors that are necessary for successful exploitation of a business opportunity. Conclusion Passion has a tremendous effect on the success of any business undertaking. Its emotional compelling force serves as the driving force during the trying moments in business undertaking. It gives grace and hope to the entrepreneur when both the business idea and the entrepreneur face armchair critics as well as economic challenges. It provides energy and excitement during the processes of exploiting the business idea. However, it is worth realizing that passion alone is not sufficient to make the decision to pursue entrepreneurship. Other factors such as vision, determination, planning, opportunity and conviction are also very important. Therefore, the above factors blend with passion to make an entrepreneur highly successful in the business activities. Potential entrepreneurs need to understand that it is not the business idea that is important, what is important to them is great businesses. They should spend most of their time in designing great businesse. The life and accomplishments of Mr. William E. Boeing illustrates that a person who has an entrepreneurial mind can successfully achieve anything he or she desires to accomplish in his lifetime. It is important for all the aspiring entrepreneurs to identify the areas that they enjoy most in their lives. This is because most entrepreneurs who have become highly successful in the ventures admitted that they enjoy doing what made them successful. People can spend days or even months in working on the activities that that they enjoy doing because of the pleasure they derive. People who love their work do it well and in an organized manner. Consequently, they end up thriving and being the best in their field of operations (Rahim 256-260). Passionate people are resilient. Set backs may clouded the entrepreneur’s endeavor, but he or she rises repeatedly because they have passion. Behind every successful business story, there is a passionate entrepreneur. It is worth noting that a passionate person succeeds in business and non-business ventures. Therefore, any person who aspires to undertake a cause in entrepreneurship must have passion. This enables him or her to succeed in the fast changing world of business. It does matter the field in which a person is passionate about because if a person has passion in one area, he or she can easily develop passion in another area when need arises. If the person likes doing something, he or she can always develop a thriving business enterprise on it. There are stories of people who have created and established successful business in areas considered non-enterprise segments. They rely on their instincts and passion to create products and services that are highly usable. This is because passionate people express their creativity and innovation in what they do resulting to good quality products or services that attracts the buyers in the market. Finally, a person who wishes to establish a business enterprise must be passionate in any field. This is because passion is transmittable when it is available in someone. The good thing about passion is that everybody is born with it. Every person who desires to posses the conviction of passion must learn to enhance it from within him or her. However, the strength of passion depends on personal experiences, available knowledge and conviction. Persons who desire to be successful entrepreneurs must be prepared to accept and embrace the changes that occur in the environment in which they live. A flexible and dynamic person is more likely to harness the power of passion as compared to rigid persons. Every entrepreneur should commit himself or herself to self-development because this helps to harness and improve already existing passion. Sources Barringer, Bruce and Duane Ireland. What's Stopping You? Shatter the 9 Most Common Myths Keeping You from Starting Your Own Business. Canada: FT Press, 2008. 19-20 Boeing. William E. Boeing -- 1881 to 1956. March 2010 10 April. 2010. . Carsrud, Alan and Malin Brännback. Understanding the Entrepreneurial Mind: Opening the Black Box. Germany: Springer, 2009. Chaleff, Ira. 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