Lesson 1: Start With What You Love

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.