Be passionate about your business

I am always blown away when I watch Gary Veynerchuk talk about his businesses. Fact. His love of what he does is very inspiring. His excitement and passion means that he is a very likeable personality. Set aside the bad language (naughty, naughty Gary), he has a real love of his work and it’s something that I think a lot of businesses lack.

Now I don’t mean business owners don’t love what they do, they obviously have passion for their companies, otherwise they wouldn’t have started up their business. What I refer to is the business owners who don’t go above and beyond to tell everyone they can about their business, what they do and how much they love it.

I personally believe that it is one of the most valuable things a business owner can do. To be passionate about what you do and to be able to convey that passion to your clients and prospective clients is, especially in what I do, one of the most important things that we have. How is your client supposed to get excited about the product or service you are providing for them, if you aren’t.

Over the last few days I have been at the Sage World 2010 conference in Telford meeting other business owners and listening to some amazing speakers (we’re writing a number of articles on this over at our WildFire Blog – go check it out). One point that came up several times over the two day conference, by several different speakers, was that to run a successful business you need to really love what you do and that your passion will be seen by your prospective clients and will help build trust in your brand.

Karren Brady said “If you don’t love what you do, then change it”, which seems like the easiest thing to do, but in practice is a big risk for some people to take. Will King of King of Shaves also made the point “You need to have passion and persistence to get ahead in business” in his talk about taking on the big boys, and Andy Lopata spoke about gaining trust in order to secure referrals.

I sometimes get told that I get too heated about the “cowboys” in my profession, about the clients who think that our prices are too high and about people who think that what we do is easy. I get told that I shouldn’t put forward my point of view or call a person out on things when they steal peoples work, or they tell me that their brother in law fixes computers and can make them a 10 page website for a hundred quid.

I say why not. Why shouldn’t I, I am only being political in my own profession, only trying to educate people who think that web design is an easy way of life.

I would love to hear your thoughts on why you love your job. Send me a comment