Do you care about your work? “Follow your passion”. “Do what you care about”. “Your best place is where your greatest passion meets the world’s greatest need”. Have you heard these phrases before? To be honest, I think they are usually nonsense. It’s often elitist, because most people can’t pay the bills from their passion. It’s often wrong in timing, because you may lack the experience necessary to work out your passion with skill and diligence. And it over-inflates the importance of any one individual to the resolution of the world’s greatest needs. Even Scott Harrison at Charity:Water isn’t going to solve the water crisis himself.

I’ve been reflecting on passion this week and what it means for work.
Finishing up the story of Tom Hayes and the story of the LIBOR manipulation, as well as re-watching the classic Margin Call, reminded me of the many days (and nights) spent in front of 6 screens, hundreds of flashing numbers and that constant fear of making a mistake on an investment call for my employer.

Once in 1997, the investments I looked after went down £100m in a day (to be fair, it was £3bn of investments so only a 3% move). It bounced back over the next 2 days but it was a bit of a wake-up call about capital markets and the future of returns.

Remembering the joys and the pains of the stockmarket led me this week to download a fantasy day trading app and I’ve been playing about with “trading” Bitcoin, Copper, Oil, GBPUSD and various shares. I was explaining trend lines and resistance levels to my five year-old son and he seemed excited we might make fake money. So far I have managed to turn $8000+ into $7166. It’s amazing what you can do with a hobby and leverage…..

What is the Passion Economy?

The phrase, Passion Economy, was coined by Li Jin who is a venture capitalist and General Partner of Atelier Ventures (and ex a16z, a top tier VC). Her 2019 thesis is laid out here.There's a growing belief that the masses (“regular individuals” as Li Jin calls them") can now monetise their passion and live from it.

In essence there are now tools available that can enable the average individual to bring their passions, creativity and influence to the market and monetise those. Historically this has predominantly been a local phenomenon (the artist) or for the exceptional (Sean Connery) but new tools enable the levelling, or at least flattening a bit, the playing field. Production and distribution tools open this door - leaving the challenging part being found by your audience and the monetisation.

Substack, the tool I use to write and distribute The Weekly Distillation, is one of those tools. Stripe and its simple integration and enabling of payments is another. Etsy, the marketplace that enables sell of craft products, is one too.

How do you define a passion?
I think most of us have several things we call passions. A good way to assess your passions is to look at how you use your spare time - what are the themes in what you listen to, what you read, what you watch, what you talk about and where you go. It doesn’t mean that all of those are passions - some of them are mindless time killers, but the themes will help some stand out.

My Dad (sorry Dad, I need to use you as an example without asking you as this is the perfect analogy) recently casually and humbly dropped into an online conversation that he has been playing the card game Bridge online. We got talking numbers and upwards of 30,000 players can be online globally in one day and sometimes he finishes no.1. In the world. I am a proud son. He has zero interest in monetising this and so we, as responsible children, were trying to figure out how we could monetise him….a dangerous path! This is a great example for me - a passion, an expertise, a platform - all it would need is a podcast, a blog, a website, a course on Teachable - any of those and that could be a full-time career. This wasn’t possible in 1990, 2000 or even really in 2010 because the tools weren’t there.

This article was originally posted here by Duncan McFadzean

I believe that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. And I also believe that if we were to examine our hearts and minds, we would find we spend a lot of time and energy often seeking ways to be satisfied (outside of Jesus), looking to things on this earth for fulfillment, and searching for purpose and meaning to all our work and toil—and all our activities.

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"Discovering your purpose isn’t always easy, and it isn’t always what you expect it to be. You doubt yourself, you question your passions, and you don’t take your experiences into consideration. But God has given you everything you need to hear His plan for you; you only need to listen."

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