Suhaib Mohammed: Finding Your Passion While Starting An Online Business

“Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember: you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.”~Harriet Tubman

Do you feel that? That moving sensation in your heart? You’re not sure what, but something is pushing you to change.

Not in a pretend-to-be-someone-you’re-not way, but to shift your thinking, to embrace the technology, to finally change your status quo.

You feel the ideas inside you. You imagine them becoming real and successful. You know your job is to set them free, firing them like a trained soldier in the Sambisa Forest. But you’re afraid.

You’re afraid of the scams and the uncertainties of the cyberspace. You’re afraid of concerned; disapproving looks your friends will give you when you tell them you’re done applying for jobs. You’re afraid of telling your family that you’re starting an online business, building your own venture, becoming an Internet entrepreneur, all because of your insecurities.

And most of all, you’re afraid you’re wrong about yourself. Maybe the moving sensation you feel is just a delusion. Maybe your ideas are unfeasible. Maybe you’re just a fool with hallucination of grandeur, and this whole psychotic belief you’re having of running your online business is just that: a fantasy.

So, you do nothing.

You cower in your not-so-comfort zone. You struggle with reading job ads, travelling across the country for job opportunities, and nearly killing yourself at overcrowded NIS aptitude test. You drown your dreams with inaction or false pretence or fear of risk, all the while telling yourself you’re doing the right thing. But are you?

“No,” a little voice whispers inside of you. “No, you’re very, very wrong.”

Oh God…

This is a sad scenario, the kind that’s killing you, holding you back to take the first step to change your life. With this, I’m writing a series on the subject: How to Start an Online Business. The goal is to charge you, yes you – the fresh Nigerian graduate, the veteran labor marketer, the dreamer, the aspiring entrepreneur – to think, brave up, and act to build your home-based Internet business from scratch … and succeed.

Where to begin?

It all begins with finding the most important treasure in yourself: your passion. This article tells you how.

What’s a Passion?

Passion is a strong feeling or emotion about something. It’s like having an intense crush on a girl or a guy. It’s a strong desire about something.

According to Curt Rosengren, “passion is the energy that comes from bringing more of you into [whatever] you do.”

When you have a passion for building a business, for example, that intense love you have for the trade is what will keep you focused, determined, and committed to keep trying, iterating, and going till you succeed. Passion motivates you, helps you in your everyday life:

• It strengthens your cause of action
• It reduces your stress and doubles your effort
• It inspires you and fuels your success

It’s an important asset which needs to be discovered. But the question is this: do we all have passion? Or is it only bestowed to some selected few amongst us?

Everyone Has Passion.

Every human being has passion. You might not know, but you have deep desire for something. And so are your friends, family members, and colleagues.

Many people have since realized their passion. Bella Naija, for instance, founded hers almost a decade ago. You wouldn’t be reading this had she not turned down her appointment in 2006, and followed her passion for fashion.

The key to starting an online business lies in finding your passion. See, building a business is not an easy task. Beyond hard work, your business is going to consume a lot of your time and energy. It’s going to fill your life.

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life,” said Steve Jobs, “and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”

If you’re not passionate about your business, you’ll treat it with contempt. And when you treat it with contempt, you won’t stay committed to succeed.

If you haven’t found your passion yet, here’s how to do that:

How to Find Your Passion

Because “passion is the genesis of genius,” you need to begin the process by searching the root of your talent. And the simple way to discover your talent is to find answers to these three questions:

What do you love doing?
Deep inside you, there is the one thing that, when you do it, you feel happy and contented.

What is it? What’s the one thing that you love doing? Is it watching movies, taking pictures, reading novels, shooting videos, cooking pomo, or doing make-up? You got to find it.

You can achieve that by watching yourself closely. If, for instance, you realize that you spend more time playing with words – texting your boy friend a lot or writing torrent of letters to your family and friends – watch out for this. Writing could be your passion.

What comes easily to you?
Naturally, some things just come to you simply … like a bonus: you love them, you derive joy from them, and you don’t have difficulty doing them.

If you have one or two things that come easily to you, you need to test which one you do better. For example, if you love singing and dancing, you may want to practice performing each and pay attention to the one you do best. Or perform in public and listen to what people say.

The goal is to discover the one thing that you do with ease.

What do people say about you?
We don’t pay much attention to ourselves, because for one thing, we hardly impress ourselves. For another, our mind reflects more on negative thoughts than on positive ones. But people help us point the positive side of us. They help us uncover our passion.

The next time you text your boy, sing that song in school, or design that card to your girl, listen to the uproar, the applause, and the positive feedback coming from them, and remember it. Whatever it is, it could be your passion.

But finding your passion doesn’t end with this. You need constant practice.

Practice some more …

When you finally discovered your desire, it’s vital that you practice it. Why? Because you’re about to solve problems with it, put smile on people’s faces and change lives. So, you must read a lot on the subject.

If it’s singing that you fancy more, for example, you need to sing some more, read a lot about singing, and listen more to a variety of songs to perfect your skills.

Your passion is your goldmine. It’s what energizes you, encourages you, and keeps you going till you reach your successful destination. Uche Pedro of BellaNaija discovered her passion long time ago, and here we are drinking from the well of her genius. I also found mine. It’s writing.

You’ve got to find yours, too. Don’t slack off. Don’t slow down. Don’t settle … till you find it.

We’ll talk about finding a business idea that’s in line with your passion next week. Stay tuned.

Photo Credit: Dreamstime | Andreblais