Contrary to what you might think, doing what you love is not the key to making your business a success. The key to success in making your business plan lift off is your passion as the owner of the business.   Sure, doing what you love is a great starting point, but that won’t guarantee your business succeess.

I could spend hours talking about high performance sports cars because I love them, but that doesn’t mean I could make a successful business out of it.  Many people love to eat Italian food, but that doesn’t mean they should open an Italian restaurant or a pizza place either.

As a small business owner, at least in the early days you’ll wear many hats and undertake many different roles. You do this because there simply aren’t the number of staff to do the work for you. You can’t love all the roles you’ll need to do.  I haven’t heard many business owners tell me that they love accounting. I haven’t heard many business owners saying they love being called out to their business in the middle of the night because some toe rag has thrown a brick through the window.

Here’s how to make your business a success:

So, unless you’re passionate about your why – why you’re doing what you’re doing. Then you aren’t going to achieve success. Because you can’t spend all your time doing the one thing you love.  I’ve known many business owners who started doing something they love grow to resent it or even hate it because they can no longer spend the time doing what they once loved.

Being passionate about what you’re trying to achieve however is a different story. Maybe you’re trying to make enough money to educate your kids privately. Maybe you’re trying to escape from working for “the man” or maybe you’re trying to change the world Steve Jobs style.

If you aren’t passionate about your why then youre going to have a  real tough time ahead  and to be honest your chances of success are slim.  Your chances of success will boil down to luck.

Event vs Process

The key to your business success isn’t a single event. It’s not about getting your business mentioned on Oprah or getting featured in The Times. 

There’s a big mistake in thinking that you’re business will be set when you’re featured in The New York Times.  Sure it won’t do your business any harm, but your success will be down to chance and only last a short while.

If you really want your business to be featured in The New York Times then you must commit to the process of marketing.

What distinguishes the most successful businesses from the ones that merely took part are the ones where the business owner is committed to the process of making the business a success. In other words, it’s the daily commitment to running the business.

Success in business comes from systems and repeating those systems over and over again.  If you find that you win every 5th sale on average from your cold calling, then the most successful will be the business owner that calls 5 potential prospects every single day. Not the business owner that calls 50 customers every once in a while.

So you success will come from your commitment to the process.  The same can be said for anything you want to get better at. You have to fall in love with the process of doing it.

Things won’t always go your way.

So it’s your commitment to your passion is the key to ensuring your success which keeps you phoning those 5 potential customers every day, even when you don’t feel like  doing it.