Passion Alone Isn’t Enough to Make Your Business Work: How to Improve Your Brand, Marketing, and Finance Skills

Sounds silly, doesn’t it? A superhero telling you that focusing on your passion doesn’t always work.

Allow me to first clarify one thing: I believe wholeheartedly in passion and doing what you love. However, I also believe that passion alone isn’t enough to make a business work. It takes passion plus a whole lot more.

I really, really, really wanted to believe it was possible to be a great life coach and have the money show up by merely being good at coaching. I wanted to believe that if I got skilled enough at my craft, everything else would sort itself out.

I’ve heard a few scattered stories where this has been true. I’ve heard about coaches just coaching and having clients show up. On a very small scale, this happened for me when I was life coaching. I didn’t know how to market, I didn’t know how to reach more people, and I did get some clients. But I didn’t have enough clients to create adequate income.

When I focused on launching jennyshih.com and began taking my business seriously, things started to shift. I spent time working on developing a brand. I got specific about my ideal clients and what I wanted to do. I put effort into getting my name out there and growing my list. And every single day I work on every single one of these things. Still.

I continue to have days where I wish I could just coach and not work on my business. I have days when I don’t want to learn something new about marketing. I have days when I just want someone to tell me what to do for it to all work out.

But at the end of a day when I stretch my brain in a new way and crank out a new sales page, scheme a new product, or push myself to guest post someplace new, and I move forward, I feel unstoppable. And I like to feel unstoppable, because deep down I know that’s who I really am.

It’s not easy being an entrepreneur. There is no manual. There is no paint-by-numbers guide. And most of us who are trained in a craft like coaching or yoga or fine art don’t learn how to run a business when we’re learning our craft. So after we’ve put time into learning our craft, we have to learn how to be business owners.

Your business is unique, just like you. I don’t say that to be cliche. I say it because it’s true. Just because you are unique doesn’t mean your challenges are. Whether your challenge is marketing or bookkeeping or feeling confident, it is the same challenge that dozens or hundreds of other entrepreneurs have faced and solved. So if you feel alone or like you can’t do it by yourself or that there is some secret, inaccessible code to crack for running your business, you’re wrong.

You are not alone. Everyone has been there, is there, or will be in your shoes. And it’s okay. There is help out there for you, your business, and your current difficult challenge.

You can follow your passion and make a living, but to do it you need to learn about business, marketing, and finances. You also must trust yourself and your skills. And all of this is possible to do.

Start by taking a small step today. State one challenge you’re facing, and define then ask for your perfect solution. It’s out there. Someone has it. Your challenge can be solved.

And you truly can save the world following your passions (when you couple it with some savvy business skills).

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