Page 56 - The $100 Startup_ Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love

disappeared into the postal service void. “It was terrible,” Megan told me. “I had
to refund money I didn’t have, and the worst part was thinking about the brides
who now didn’t have flowers for their wedding.” But she did what she had to do
—refunded money, wrote teary apology notes, posted the whole story on her
blog for others to learn from—and moved on.

Aside from vowing never to use USPS again, Megan loves her business and
wouldn’t want to do anything differently. “I spend every day learning from
people who inspire and motivate me in the co-working space,” she says, “and I
interact every day with customers who are in the midst of their own love stories.
I have a young daughter who I am able to bring to work. My earning potential is
unlimited, and I am free to reinvest in my happiness with every dollar that comes
in.”

It all sounds so simple: Pick something you love and build a business around it,
the way Gary and Megan did. Cha-ching! But is it really that easy? As you
might expect, the real answer is more complex. Building a business around a
passion can be a great fit for many people, but not everyone.

In the rush to pursue a passion, a number of things tend to get left out. First,
you can’t pursue just any passion—there are plenty of things you may be
passionate about that no one will pay you for. Remember the all-important
lesson of convergence we’ve been looking at throughout the book. You must
focus continually on how your project can help other people, and why they’ll
care about what you’re offering in the first place. I like to eat pizza, but no
matter how passionate I am, it’s doubtful I could craft a career around my love
for mushrooms and black olives. Instead, I had to find something more
interesting to the rest of the world.

Sometimes a false start precedes a successful microbusiness. In Reno,
Nevada, Mignon Fogarty created the QDT Network, best known for her
signature show Grammar Girl. The show was a huge hit almost from the
beginning, spawning a line of books, related programs, and non-stop media
attention. But before she was Grammar Girl, Mignon pursued a similar idea in
an unsuccessful attempt to build popularity through podcasting. Here’s how she
tells the story:

Before I launched the successful Grammar Girl podcast, I was the host of a
science podcast called Absolute Science. I loved doing that show and I was
passionate about it. I actually put more effort into promoting that show than
I did for the Grammar Girl podcast, and although Absolute Science was
well received, after doing it for nearly a year it was clear that the show was
never going to make enough money to make it worth the time required to