I've been at this entrepreneur thing for about 3 years, and in this line of work, consistency is uncommon. Work dries up, funds run out, teammates move on to other projects, and sometimes it's really hard to keep going. It's not an easy path to take, and it's even harder if your heart isn't in it for the right reasons. There are many right reasons to start your own creative business or join a startup, but one thing that you absolutely need is passion.
I know. Every conference speaker, every motivational speaker, they all talk about passion and doing what you love, and sometimes its just not realistic because you have to do things like pay a mortgage or rent, and eat. It's so easy to dismiss passion as hippy-dippy flowery BS. The truth is, critics of passion sometimes have a fair point. What they often fail to do is discern between what passion is and what it isn't. Passion is what sustains you through dry seasons, through startup failures, through client and team turnover. Passion is what keeps you in the game when failure is paving your way, and it's what separates you from the people who are just looking for a "cool" career and some extra money. It's not simply a feel-good high that makes you want to act. Here is my personal take on what passion is and what it isn't.
PASSION IS...
1. What separates those who are in it for external reasons (money, image of being an entrepreneur, creative, etc.) and the people who are in it for the love of the work.
As I stated above, entrepreneurship isn't stable in the way traditional employment is stable. When you add a creative vocation to entrepreneurship, you add an extra layer of complication to your path. Many people don't understand the value of creative work, and sometimes that means they don't pay, they breach a contract, and you lose the work you were depending on. This can lead to a work drought, and that's when you see a lot of people give up. I had a rough 2017, work-wise. It was really dry after I lost a client. I wasn't sure my business would survive. It was the fact that I love running my own company that led me to stick with it. You have to push through those valleys, those ruts because they will come. If your heart isn't in what you're doing, those ruts are going to be very difficult to recover from. In my driest deserts, I have never once been tempted to go back to traditional employment, and it's because I love my work enough where its worth the desert.
2. An investment.
Creative work is a constant investment in learning your craft. Your business hinges on it. You can't just buy a Creative Cloud subscription, open up shop, and call it good. You have to have a marketable product for one, and two, you have to have the passion to grow and get better as a creative. If you don't grow, you won't be able to compete. Getting a marketable product doesn't mean just deciding that your product is sellable, it means going to school for design after you buy that CC subscription. It means getting an education in some form or another. Getting your work good enough to sell as a service requires an investment in what you're doing. Often this means getting feedback, and yes, criticism from your peers. If you're not willing to learn from others or take advice, it doesn't mean you aren't passionate, but if you never learn to accept criticism, your passion will die and so will your work. Passion drives you to invest.
3. Humble.
This is something I didn't learn until design school. I didn't struggle with pride or arrogance, but I did struggle with insecurity, which was coming from a similar place: I was afraid to suck. I think true passion comes from a very raw and genuine place, and when it comes from that place, it is naturally humble. A passionate person is humble about their craft. I've known some very knowledgeable people who are kind of arrogant, but when it comes to their craft, they don't feel the need to compete or hold other people's work down to make themselves feel better about their own work. They don't boast about their practice or want to make sure everyone knows what they do. Humility is passion for the work, not the image of the profession.
4. Connective.
Creative work requires connection because, without it, we lose our ability to understand our target audience in an empathetic way. I know empathy is a buzzword and is losing its meaning, but if we can't connect with how our target audience feels, we're going to have a really tough time working on anything that serves them. Genuine passion connects. It's charismatic even for people who have as much charisma as a soggy piece of toast. When you're really on fire about something, its hard for people not to take an interest.
5. Suffering
If we look at the Bible, we see the example of Jesus Christ being crucified and hung on a cross to die. This is often referred to as the Passion, most notably in Mel Gibson's film, Passion of the Christ. The word passion is applied to the crucifixion, as the story goes, because of how deep the love of Jesus runs for mankind; so deep, so far that he was willing to suffer and die on behalf of humanity. This gives us some insight into what passion in our vocational life looks like, especially creative professions. Creative work is emotionally intense, it's messy and it's hard. To pursue it is to go to great lengths to, as Ira Glass puts it, make your work as good as your taste. It's maddening, it gets us up at 3 am in the wilderness to catch 6 am alpenglow on a mountain range, it makes us drive insane hours to get to a beautiful scene that we can't catch from home, it makes our feet swell, our backs hurt and hangs us over on a post-wedding Sunday, it robs us of sleep and patience, and its all worth it because we gain from it, we grow from it, and in the suffering, we learn a deeper love for our craft.
YOU KNOW WHAT PASSION ISN'T? (I'm gonna be blunt here.)
1. An image.
If you're in it for the novelty of being an artist, or having a "cool" job, you're not in it because you're passionate. You're in it because of what you want people to think of you, or how you want to feel about yourself. Maybe this is how you get into art, but maybe art is not your passion. If you think the latter applies to you, go find what you're actually passionate about and dive in.
2. A feeling.
Passion is not exclusively a feeling. Passion is active. Passion does. Passion bears fruit. If all your passion amounts to is a conversation, your passion is merely an interest. Maybe it's just not a passion yet. My passion for photography started as an interest. Just because it's an interest, doesn't mean it's not a passion waiting to be born, but in the end there is a difference between the entrepreneurs and the wantrepreneurs.
3. A conversation.
Building on number two, passion isn't all talk. You have to have something to show for it. If you talk a big game, people are going to ask to see what you do. If you want to be taken seriously, have something to show them, even if it sucks. Even if it's not that good, people will see your eagerness to share what you do.
4. Timid.
Passion shows up. Just as I learned to show up in design school, a passionate person shows up and shows what they've got and sells it (I still get nervous showing clients their proofs). But even when it's scary, and you're vulnerable, a passionate person will show up with courage and be willing to have their work torn apart, because they know it makes them better. When someone is really good at this, they are able to not only do it for their own work, but they aren't afraid of making bad art as apart of the process.
Passion is evidenced in the willingness to work hard, to grow, to be vulnerable, to make a lot of work, and make a lot of BAD work. It's understanding and accepting that your work just won't be that good at first. I know mine wasn't. Some of the stuff I got the most excited about was the stuff that was received with heavy criticism (and that was from my own father). All of those things are what makes me good at what I do today, what keeps me getting better, and holds the understanding within me that I have a lot I can improve on. The difficulty of learning things will be your asset in the creative life. Enjoy it.