The Only Thing That Works is Doing Something You Love
A young man introduced himself to me after my presentation at BlogWorld Expo. We sat down to talk and he explained that he was an engineer at an aerospace firm, but wants to get into blogging…
…he was at BlogWorld to learn and explore options…a blog, a podcast, a video podcast…he was trying to figure out what the best thing to do…to figure out something that had the greatest chance of success given the amount of time he could put forth as a side-project…
…after learning about Cheezburger from my presentation, he considered user-generated content…perhaps it would be easier to identify quality content as opposed to generate it. “Maybe that would work,” he wondered aloud.
Until this point, I listened. New to the world of blogging and social media, his mind was brimming with new ideas. I could see the gears turning as he worked out this thoughts aloud. But, when he said the phrase, “that would work” I jumped in.
“There is only one thing that works,” I said, being really forward. “Do you want to know what it is?” Dramatic pause.
The only thing that works is doing the something you love.
Whatever you choose to do, it’s going to be hard. At first, there will be very few people paying attention, if any, and it’s unlikely that you’re going to make any money.
You have to do something that makes you happy all by itself; something that you enjoy enough that you’ll done it for free. Inevitably there are going to be tough times, and as I’ve written before, if you’re not passionate about your project then you won’t persevere because your heart won’t be in it.