You Know Where Your Success Lies

I’ve put a lot of hours into World of Warcraft. Maybe some would say that I’ve put too many hours into World of Warcraft. But I enjoyed that time, so those people are wrong.

One thing that is probably right though is that if I had put all of those hours spent playing computer games into making them, it’s possible that I could have had a pretty big computer games company right now.

But I don’t have a big computer game company because one of the first decisions that I made when I started using computers was that I like playing games. I don’t like coding them.

That’s just the way I am. I know what I like, and if I had tried to build my own version of Blizzard or Electronic Arts back when games came on floppy disks, I’d probably have failed. Even though it’s proven to be a huge market, even though the industry is worth billions, I wouldn’t have been able to take a share of it because my heart wouldn’t have been in it.

That was one of the best and the most important decisions I ever made. It was also one of the easiest.

And it’s a simple decision for any entrepreneur to follow.

Online marketing takes time. You’re not going have a million-dollar business overnight. You’ll make money right away — from the moment you have ads on your website and people reading that website, you’ll have cash coming in. But you won’t make real money, the kind that allows you to ditch the day job and become a professional blogger, until you’ve been doing it for a while.

You’re only going to be doing it for a while if you do something you enjoy.

I see this all the time. Not one of the top Internet entrepreneurs I’ve met is passionate about making money. They’re all passionate about their field of interest. They’re passionate about their products. They’re passionate about what they do. It’s that passion and that interest that’s defined their business — and it’s that passion that’s brought them their success.

The most important decision you can make as an entrepreneur then is always the first one. Ask yourself what you want to do — what you really want to do. Your first answer will tell you where your success is going to lie.