Passion

What does passion have to do with it?

As a small business owner, you have probably already figured out what role passion plays in your business, if any. If you haven't yet figured it out, or you are having trouble getting your passion up, here as some questions you might ask yourself to try to figure it out: What gets your engines turbocharged? What do you like to do? What are you good at? What is the one thing in the whole world that you could do better than anybody else, given enough time and practice? What are your ambitions? What are your natural born talents? What would you do even if you were not being paid? What makes you feel good? What excites you?

Passion. Every small business owner would be well served if he or she remembers to chose a business for which they have a passion. Choose a business they would run even if they were not making a truck load of money. Choose a business that utilizes their natural talents. Choose a business that gets their energies revved and turbocharged.

When one thinks of the word "passion" it evokes episodes of romantic desire or lust. Physicality. Heat. Magic. The same is true in business. You can have a lust for your business, and whatever it is you do. You can so enjoy your work, that that simple enjoyment makes your business sucessful because you work harder at what you like, you sacrifice more, you give more, you take less. Having a passion for business also invokes a certain element of heat, magic and physicality. But there is a caveat.

No relationship can survive on passion alone. Passion in business (like in your personal life) must be balanced with hard work, innovation, discipline, adaptation, negotiation, and revenue-creation. Passion alone can't pay the rent. Excitement alone can't pay the creditors. Action needs to be taken that is directed, focused and relevant to take that business idea from the romantic stage, to full commitment.

Creativity

To be creative is to be like Edouard Manet, the French Impressionist of the late 19th Century. His was a style that was innovative, bold, transparent and visionary. He “broke new ground in representation and technique” and was both focused and flexible.

As a small business owner, these are qualities that will serve you well. Your first task is to figure out what your customers want then you’ve got to experiment, look to emerging trends as a guide, be willing to change to capitalize on the trends, and steadily build momentum towards making your vision manifest.

Being creative means using a certain calculus and “visionary leadership” to form strategy and to execute strategy using cutting edge methodologies rather than using a sort of haphazard approach, doing things willy nilly with no rhyme or reason just because it is the status quo. Creativity, therefore is not a euphemism for a lack of discipline. Nor is it an excuse for a totally laissez faire attitude. It is really a "juxtaposition of innovation and imitation." It is where “scandal meets triumph.” It is art.

So get that adrenaline pumping, be true to your values, mission and goals. Creativity, as Manet came to realize, is about purity, a willingness to boldly act on ideas and vision in such a way as to challenge pre-conceived ideas, and the old way of doing things, and to do so with a healthy degree of transparency. It is about risk, daring to “look for the grand light and grand shadow.”