Episode 6: Passion
Would you walk 65 kilometers (about 40 miles) on stilts to make an impression and earn funds to launch your business idea? Find out which team of founders did just that, and about the other flaming hoops they jumped through to not only launch their business, but to transform an industry. Oh, and Doug and Glenn take on the topic of Silicon Valley’s Fake it ’till You Make It ethos and the fates of some high-profile entrepreneurs. This episode is about the steak AND the sizzle.
Transcript
Glenn Suart 0:00
But you know, it’s all about passion. It’s not a guarantee of success. But passion will get you past the low points and the challenges. And that’s why I think it’s really important to have passion. If you’re just doing something for the money, or the return, you might be successful. I’m not saying you wouldn’t be. But when you have a passion for something, you’re always looking for some way of doing it better or make it more exciting. And that’s what you need to follow.
Doug Ross 0:38
Welcome to Conversations on Startups, a podcast brought to you by Douglas Ross, author of the book SPARK CLICK GO How to Bring your Creative Business Idea to Life, and Glenn Suart of Today’s Great Idea, a radio series featuring over 300 origin stories of businesses, brands and inventions that have changed the culture. Welcome to today’s conversation.
Doug Ross 1:00
How ya doing, Glenn?
Glenn Suart 1:01
I’m doing great, Doug. I think this week, we’re gonna talk about passion.
Doug Ross 1:07
We are. We’re going to talk about passion and how important it is. Great topic, I think one that you hear debated, most people think, absolutely, you need to have passion to be an entrepreneur, some don’t. But there’s a lot of positives. What are your thoughts on this?
Glenn Suart 1:23
Well, I’m a big believer in you got to have passion, and you got to have it because you need the passion to get you over the inevitable problems when things don’t go well. And when you’re thinking about giving up, the passion will continue to drive you forward. And I got a great story to tell you about somebody, hopefully you can guess who it is.
Doug Ross 1:44
Well, Glenn, you know, I’m not very good at guessing these things.
Glenn Suart 1:48
Well, Guy is a guy who dropped out of high school, and he wanted to be a busker, and a street performer. And he never really made much money. And so he reluctantly sort of gave it up and went back to get a hydroelectric job, which was good, except three days in, the company goes on strike, and Guy gets fired. So, he’s thinking to himself, well, maybe this is a sign. So, he decides to he and some partners to go back into the busking world. And, you know, he tries to stuff in there, okay, they’ve had some success. And then, the Quebec government announced a million and a half dollar grant, if they can apply for it. And so Guy’s partner – this is talking about passion – walked 65 kilometers, on stilts…
Doug Ross 2:42
…so, about 40 miles…
Glenn Suart 2:46
…to impress the committee. So, they get the grant, they build a troop, and they put on the show, and it does very well, but not super well, they make a modest profit. And that’s when great Guy had a really good idea. He decided to take the whole, the whole troop lock stock and barrel and go to Los Angeles to perform at an art festival. Now, they want to drum up more business as a result. The thing is, he didn’t tell anybody, but they invested everything in getting there. And he had no money to bring people home.
Doug Ross 3:23
I love that. A one-way ticket.
Glenn Suart 3:25
Exactly, so like burning your bridge, but obviously it was very successful, the sun was shining on Guy and huge, huge hit right in the center of the entertainment world. Well, today that Company Guy started with his found partners. You know, after that long walk on stills, you know, entertains millions of people a year with multiple shows all around the world. Any idea which company I’m talking about, Doug?
Doug Ross 3:50
Yeah, I’m gonna have to go with Cirque du Soleil,
Glenn Suart 3:53
Cirque du Solei. And Guy is a billionaire.
Doug Ross 3:57
I didn’t know that part. I wasn’t aware of that. It’s obviously a huge show, but I wasn’t aware it was that big. In this case, because I’m Canadian, that gave me a little bit of an edge when you said Guy and busking right away I thought of that. The way that name is pronounced in a lot of the world, certainly in the US. Oh, is typically, guy.
Glenn Suart 4:18
That’s right. So maybe I should have said a guy instead of Guy.
Doug Ross 4:24
Yeah, you might, you might have held me off there for a little while longer.
Glenn Suart 4:27
But you know, it’s all about passion. It’s not a guarantee of success. But passion will get you past the low points and the challenges. And that’s why I think it’s really important to have passion. If you’re just doing something for the money or the return. You might be successful. I’m not saying you wouldn’t be. But when you have a passion for something, you’re always looking for some way of doing it better or making it more exciting. And that’s what you need to follow. Even if it takes you into crazy, crazy territory, that people say, Oh, this can’t work – that passion could get you through and help you figure out stuff.
Doug Ross 5:04
Well, in my experience as well, good that you mentioned this, Glenn. Every startup I’ve been a part of, I have seen the ups and downs and it is pretty much inevitable that you’re going to have these difficult times you’ve just referred to so, totally agree having something that drives you beyond just, ah, am I making money from this business, will I make money from this business and when. You do do need motivations to get you through? So I think a passion for the subject matter, for your customers, for the product that you’re making, or the service that you’re providing, in this case you just went through was really inventing / reinventing the circus, wouldn’t you say?
Glenn Suart 5:46
Yeah, very much. So yeah, I also think…passion can be infectious. You want to hire people that are also can become passionate about your idea or vision too – not that they have to buy in completely and just be yes, people not suggesting that.
Doug Ross 6:04
Hey podcast listeners, we’re going to take a short break now. If you’re enjoying the show, feel free to invite your friends, remember to subscribe, and if you want to help spread the word, leave us a review on Apple podcasts or your favorite podcast app. Each episode of conversations on startups focuses on a single topic, if you want to comment on something you’ve heard on the podcast or suggest a topic for us to cover in a future episode, send an email to go@todaysgreatidea.com or douglas@sparksclick go.com. Glenn, and I appreciate you and hope you find our uncut and unrehearsed stories, perspectives and tips helpful. And speaking of helpful stuff, let’s pick up where we left off.
Glenn Suart 6:50
What I’m suggesting is you want people who can can get passionate about an idea once they hear about it or learn about it, and they’re supportive – that helps you build a business as well.
Doug Ross 7:00
Well, it definitely will help you attract people to your business such as you just mentioned, people that are going to join you, maybe a co founder, we…we’ve already done an episode on finding partners as founders, so that could help but early staff, I could see even investors potentially, obviously, they’re gonna want to look under the hood and make sure that you’ve got a sensible business model and decent product, maybe some customer traction – all of those sorts of things as well – but passion will certainly help to attract people to your business which is essential if you’re going to be an entrepreneur. No question.
Glenn Suart 7:37
Very much so. But you know, I think you probably know this, too. We always talk about the positives. There’s a lot of negatives too – downsides to having passion, right?
Doug Ross 7:46
Well, I think one of them, you may have alluded to a little bit just reading between the lines. But when you’ve got the sizzle and not the steak, I think that’s when we get into difficult territory. You see it all the time in Silicon Valley – fake it till you make it. There have been some recent very high profile examples of this. If you think about the Theranos case, as an example, I might even think of We Work as well. Very different situations there. We Work was an actual business. It had customers members, it was bringing money in, no question about that, but it was spending at such a rate that the patient…the patient was bleeding so much it was going to die, if…if not rescued in a certain way. And so I think that that’s where there’s a little bit of a downside where it’s all passion but there’s nothing there concrete to back it up – you don’t have the goods – so to speak. And, I think that’s where it can be a problem. Because if you think about the Theranos situation. I think the vision that Elizabeth Holmes had was incredible, and very much attractive to a lot of people. And we will get there – we as society and entrepreneurs, scientists and so on, will get there to what her vision was. The problem was, doing 200 diagnostic tests with a single drop of blood, she was so far away from delivering on that promise, that the gap was just too wide, and she fell in it and many others as well.
Glenn Suart 9:22
Yep. So passion can maybe overtake you a little bit for what you’re doing, and maybe drive you in a direction or flip to a place, that is unsustainable.
Doug Ross 9:37
Agree. And, you can start to believe your own PR is the way you get this sort of criticism. So, you got to have the goods – you got to have the steak and the sizzle. I think it’s going to help you in your business in tons of ways. I’ve said to you before Glenn, my definition of sales is a transfer of enthusiasm. And that is certainly the case if you think about anything you’ve got to excited about and you either bought or bought into maybe a show that you love to watch or a certain product that you… that you wanted to buy. You become enthusiastic about it yourself, and then you become an ambassador for whatever that business is. And that’s the kind of thing that we’re talking about in the positive sense. So I concur, Glenn, definitely a key ingredient if you’re going to be a successful entrepreneur. Just make sure you’re delivering on the promise that you have put out there to the market. And, you are, you’re selling it, but you’re selling whatever it is your business, your… your vision, and so on, based on some reality, and I think you’re going to do great.
Glenn Suart 10:40
Well, Doug, I agree. And I think the lesson here too is… you and I are both doing things that we’re passionate about, which is helping people figure out what to do with their great ideas. Give them a way to take that spark and move it forward… at the end of the day. So we’ve discovered our passions, and that’s why we keep doing things, even when things may not go right.
Doug Ross 11:05
Yeah, I love it. Glenn and I love doing these podcasts, just having these conversations with you. I learn from you every time and then thinking about the topic, it makes me look into it and reflect on some of these things. So we’re really…we really do have a passion for startups and helping entrepreneurs and we hope that these conversations help you along. We hope they inspire you and inform you, this is why we do them, and other things that we do to help entrepreneurs – so we were definitely passionate about that. Glenn, what do we have coming up next week? Do you remember? If not, I do.
Glenn Suart 11:39
Good. Well, I’m passionate about what we’re going to do next week, because I forgot.
Doug Ross 11:46
Yeah, we have inventions on deck. So we’re going to talk about inventions.
Glenn Suart 11:51
Inventions are very important, build a better mousetrap, all that kind of thing. They form the basis of a lot of successful businesses. But inventions are only the first step in a lot of cases to creating a successful business.
Doug Ross 12:07
Yeah, I think I think it should be a great topic. I look forward to getting into that with you next time, Glenn.
Glenn Suart 12:12
Sounds good. See you later.
Doug Ross 12:24
Conversations on Startups is a production of Glenn Suart and Douglas Ross. We hope you’re having fun listening, but mostly that you take action on your business idea. For more inspiration, visit our websites Today’sGreatIdea.com and SparkClickGo.com. Another episode of Conversations on Startups will drop soon or is already available to binge. Thanks for joining us, and remember to subscribe and invite your friends. See you next time.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai