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For Love or Money: What Role Does Passion Play in
Starting a Business?
When you’re thinking of starting your own business, you often hear the
advice that you need to be passionate, determined, and hungry for success. But an entrepreneur has to do more than just sell a product or service that they care about. They’re also responsible for a hundred other tasks like paying their taxes, planning their days out and marketing their business. So is passion alone enough to get a new business off the ground?
Jason Setzer, host of the Local Talent: The Entrepreneur’s Handbook, recently interviewed San Antonio-based entrepreneur Dr. Derek Sanchez about the two very different businesses he runs, and Derek shared some interesting insights into the role of passion in the life of an entrepreneur.
A Boss Has to Care More Than Their Employees
Derek got into physical therapy because he really cares about healing people, and healing them in the right way. He was inspired to take up the profession by spending time with top-level college athletes and seeing the demands that their sport made on their bodies. This passion for healing got him through a masters and a doctorate in physical therapy, and drove him to want to start his own clinic.
When talking about his treatment philosophy with Jason, he touches on how he feels about his business compared to the PTs he hired to work in his clinic, recognizing that “No-one will care for your business like you.” Other PTs might jump around from one clinic to another in search of a higher paycheck or a different kind of clientele, but as Derek’s deeply involved with running and growing his business, he wants to stay the course and make his clinic a success.
Perfecting the Product
When he’s not putting in the hours at his clinic, Derek has an all-consuming hobby that takes up much of his time: making pizza. Derek’s passion for pizza borders on an obsession. The recipe he uses is the result of years of experimenting with different kinds of dough, playing around with the fermentation process and making infinitely small tweaks to recreate his favorite pizza recipe from his childhood. The result? An amazing pizza that’s received the ‘Best Pizza in the World’ prize not once but three times.
This love for truly excellent pizza led Derek to set up a food truck to sell his creations and he’s soon going to grow from the truck into a pizza restaurant, which he’ll manage alongside his PT clinic.
Derek definitely couldn’t have gotten to pizza perfection without his passion for the product, but equally he knows what’s worth his work and what parts of the process he needs to outsource. He confesses to Jason that his love of pizza making is really a love for making dough, and he trusts others to provide quality ingredients. Trusting others and building up great relationships with them has allowed him to focus on other areas of the business.
“Be Tough”
As Derek says when he’s asked to give advice to would-be entrepreneurs, “Be tough… you’re gonna have to work when nobody else is working. You’re going to have to give extra and do extra and not sleep and sacrifice sacrifice sacrifice”.
So if the passion drives you to work hard, just as it has for Derek, then you’re all set, but if it’s passion without the desire to follow through and put in the long hours, you might not make it as an entrepreneur.
To find more lessons about life, business, entrepreneurship, and the secrets to success, head on over to the Local Talent website. You’ll find Derek and Jason’s full interview, plus a ton of previous episodes and blog posts.
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