Should you focus on your passion or grab the money when building your online business empire?

Here’s an idea: Let’s do both!

I read this story about Zvi Schreiber, a Jerusalem-based entrepreneur, who is on his fourth successful startup. That’s an amazing track record when most people are lucky to win with one.

He has sold 3 of the 4 startups to slightly larger companies…like Google, IBM and General Electric!

What’s the secret to his success? He’s passionate about solutions to problems.

This is the quote from Forbes Magazine:

“Successful entrepreneurs often follow their passions as they found their companies. You have greater insight into something you love — and you’ll enjoy working on it.

I think what sets serial entrepreneurs apart from successful entrepreneurs is a passion not for a field or a particular pursuit, but for solving knotty problems. For that rare breed, it doesn’t matter what the problem is; just that it is interesting.”

The big debate in the online business community is about Passion vs. Money?

We don’t believe it has to be one or the other. In fact, we believe at NAMS it MUST be both!

Eventually…

Sometimes, when you’re first starting out and you’re not really clear yet about what floats your boat, it’s okay to go for the money, as long as you do it with the understanding that it’s just practice and that it’s probably not something you’ll stay with for a long time.

I’m talking from experience here.

I bounced from thing to thing for a very long time.

My first big success came with my hosting company. That was Niche Simple Hosting. It’s long gone now.

What a nightmare.

The service details involved in a hosting company are horrendous – if you’re doing it yourself.

I had 25 servers hosted in a data center somewhere through a one-man data center reseller who serviced all the accounts for me.

Yet, I got all the emails and account setups and “What’s cPanel?” questions. And I had a 1000 or so clients paying way to little for the service I was providing.

Then the one-man reseller died unexpectedly and I no longer had access to the servers. Everyone’s accounts were dead and so was my business.

We went from about $35k per month to $0 and a whole lot of justifiably angry clients in about 48 hours.

Nightmare!

What did I learn?

Passion for your business matters.

Otherwise, you may as well have a job in a cube in a large corporation.

There’s nothing wrong with that. I’ve done it. I know people who are doing it because it’s getting them to the retirement at 65 with a good package.

But if you’re like me, it’s like treading water in the middle of an ocean filled with garbage that you’re dodging everyday.

I always felt constrained in the corporate world.

So, this is taking a bit of negative turn so let’s come back to: What did I learn?

I could fill this page with stuff I learned because I had a hosting company, but here’s the big one:

I don’t like or want a hosting company!

There’s no reward there for me.

The money was fine, but I never felt like I was fulfilling my purpose. And I didn’t even think I had a purpose except to make enough money to stave off the bank.

But I noticed something else. I loved helping people solve their problems. At the time I had that hosting company, I was still a consultant in the corporate world helping big corporations solve their problems.

I loved that.

I loved standing in front of a whiteboard with a pen in my hand extracting information from the stakeholders, drawing solutions, and helping them embrace it as their own idea.

That was having an impact that I could see and feel.

When I had the hosting company, my mentor at the time suggested I do a weekend workshop to help those people do a better job of niche marketing, which after all, is just finding and selling solutions to specific problems big enough to have a hungry market.

We did that.

That was NAMS1 in 2009.

I loved that!

Within 6 months, the hosting company was gone and NAMS was born.

My passion was helping other people solve their problems.

So, fast forward to today…

Some people come into the Insiders Club or a strategy call and say, “I just need to make money fast.”

I let out a deep breath and sigh, because I know this person doesn’t have a clue about how real business works. And in today’s online world, you’re building a REAL Business or you won’t be around long.

Some people join and say, “I’ve got X years experience doing this and I really want to help more people solve X problem.”

I’m jumping for joy when that happens because you’ve done the groundwork. All we have to do now is find the market, focus on the buyers, decide how to talk to them, and be of service.

It’s really that simple.

So, let’s look at those 4 areas real quickly.

We’re not going into too much detail here because we’re devoting an entire Insiders Only training to this topic (which you can sign up for here for a $1 trial), but here’s the high-level scoop.

Where Your Market Hangs Out

Keyword research.

There it is. I know. Research is time consuming and tedious. And full of dead ends. But keyword research is the ONLY way to confirm markets. Fortunately for you, there’s a ton of ways to do FREE Keyword research with a lot of great tools available.

And once you get serious about your market, you may actually want to spend a little money for tool or two that give you great insight about your market.

Confirm That Market Buys Solutions

This is really important. You want to make sure that people will actually pay for your solution to their problem.

Why wouldn’t they?

First, it could be that the market is saturated with free information. Some markets are.

Second, the solutions in the market may not be valued. That’s probably a market where the problem is not a desperate problem. In other words, it’s not costing them money or taking too much time.

Remember, all solutions to problems must:

• Save money
• Make money
• Or save time

But weight loss or dieting solutions don’t make people money or save them time, right?

Wrong. It’s all in how you frame it. If I’m overweight and out of shape, statistics show that I’m probably making less, getting fewer promotions, and generally seeing less revenue.

And a person who wants to change that wants to change it as fast as possible. That’s why most weight loss solutions talk about “losing X pounds in X days…”

That market will pay.

Communicate In Ways They Understand

Find out what the problems are, which ones are the most desperate and the most common.

Which products are people trying now? And with how much success? Purchase those products if you can to find out how yours can be better.

To get this information, hangout in the Facebook groups or other social media groups. Some markets still use the forums. And they’re great for connecting and asking questions.

But mostly, you want to listen and read. What’s the specialized vocabulary? Who’s the guru in the group? Learn how to talk to him or her about the problems they’re experiencing. This becomes an important part of your sales copy.

Be Most Helpful

My wife and her best friend and next door neighbor used to have a running competition. They would dress up for an event they were attending. When they arrived, one would say to the other, “Well, aren’t you the cutest one!”

When you’re investigating a niche, you want to be the cutest one. And the most helpful one.

You don’t roll into a community, hang out a shingle, and announce your intention to sell everyone your product. And frankly, if that’s your intention, you’ll fail.

Your motive has to be that you are the most helpful person. You give, give, and give some more.

You invest enough time and energy in the community that you become known as the expert because other people dub you as the expert.

They address you by name, and tag you when a question pops up with your expertise.

And when it’s time to run your product by them, you reach out to a few and ask them privately about checking it out. And you ask them to talk about it in the group.

People will ASK YOU for the product. You won’t be selling it, until you have to sell it in response to the overwhelming requests.

See how that works?

We’re going into this is in a LOT more detail in the 12 Steps to Building a Better Business training that is exclusively for our MyNAMS Insiders Club.

You can start today for just $1 for a 14-day trial. We’ll see you on the Inside!

You can cancel immediately if it’s not for you, but this is the kind of training that we share only with Insiders.

(If you’re already an Insider, you can register for the training in the MyNAMS Insiders Club Private Facebook Group)