Lesson 1: Start With What You Love

Books - My Passion!

Following on from yesterday’s post, I announced a one week Commit or Kill campaign for Book Rapper. During this seven day campaign I’m going to share seven lessons I learnt from doing Book Rapper. Here’s the first in the series…

Start at Step 1, not Step 2

Book Rapper was born out of sitting down and thinking: What do I like doing?

This is not usually where you start your business planning from. Typically, you’re told to start by finding a market need and fill it. I think that’s step 2.

Laughing at Oprah

I’d always laughed at Oprah and friends who told us that you’d be more successful if you started with your passion. I just didn’t think life was like that. I thought I had to slog away at something people wanted. And, Book Rapper turned this around for me.

Without the passion, I believe you’re simply going to run out of energy and motivation at some point.

I love…

I love reading books. I’ve read 40-50 books every year for the past 10 years. That’s more than 400 books.

And, I always thought it was a guilty pleasure to sit down in the middle of a working day to read a book. I knew it helped my business and my thinking about my business and still I found it hard to justify.

And, then I had a great thought: How can I get paid to read books?

And, this was the question from which Book Rapper emerged.

The Lesson

The first big lesson I learnt doing Book Rapper was to start with what I love. And, I think this is the key for all great businesses. Yes, you do need to translate this first step into a business offer that helps others – and I think that’s the second step.

More Updates

Why On Experience Exists

For most of my career, I’ve been wrestling with the same question: How do you turn what you know into something of value? And inside

Mark Molony - When Your Training Fails

When Mark Molony walked into his first day as a social worker, he thought his training had prepared him for anything. Then a grieving widow

I just need to say it better

When you’ve spent years building experience, and you get to the point where working harder isn’t changing anything, you start to wonder if the issue