We often hear that passion is a key ingredient for the success of a business. What we hear is half-truth. While passion does help you in defining your business goals and broader vision, it does not necessarily guarantee long-term success. For a start-up to become a brand name to reckon with, what would really matter is not just your passion for your venture, but your passion to make the venture a success through hard work, dedication and sincerity.

Passion is not a constant motivator. Our passion for things keeps changing as well. You might be passionate about engineering today, but may find writing better tomorrow. There is not guarantee about what you would be passionate about five or ten years down the line.

Sometimes, passion can be unwise and obsessive. Entrepreneurs often carry on a venture, refusing to give up, despite business rationale dictating otherwise. While entrepreneurs passionate about their businesses do find creative solutions to most of their problems, they may run the risk of not able to see the flaws in their own company. The company might be in red for long and despite apparent loopholes, passionate business owners, most often, do not want to re-look at their venture and undertake a course correction. This further bleeds the brand, resulting in a painful closure.

The trick, therefore, is to look beyond passion. Being dispassionate at times and taking logical decisions to safeguard the interest of your business is an essential part of the process to sustain business for long-haul. To drive the growth engine of a business you need to oil it with proven strategies, customised marketing and promotional activities and constant funds.

Further, a start-up entrepreneur is also required to oversee day-to-day operations, hiring the right team and even managing the office. Only passion would not drive you every day to work on your venture, you need to have the perseverance and dedication to work on every other activity as well to create a holistic brand.

Building a brand from the scratch requires hard work and sincerity, as well as lot of sacrifices. While it gives a different high to see your brand grow and achieve milestones, attaining success comes at a cost. As an entrepreneur, you need to be ready to pay the price.

If you are passionate about your work and want to turn it into a venture, go ahead do it. Passion may help you kick-start your start-up, but you need the fuel of perseverance, sincerity and logic to sustain a business. It’s time to look beyond passion.