<story><title>Don&apos;t Follow Your Passion: A Smarter Way to Find a Product to Sell </title><url>http://www.shopify.com/blog/6187532-dont-follow-your-passion-a-smarter-way-to-find-a-product-to-sell</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>imgabe</author><text>I guess the formula for a mildly viral blog post is just to misinterpret a popular saying so you can disagree with it. I really dislike it though.&lt;p&gt;&quot;Follow your passion&quot; is not advice given in response to the question &quot;What product should I sell?&quot; Usually it&apos;s in response to &quot;What should I do with my life?&quot; It doesn&apos;t help people differentiate between selling Star Wars figurines vs. something else. It&apos;s meant to help you decide between selling products online &lt;i&gt;at all&lt;/i&gt; versus, say, writing novels or being a carpenter, or social work or some other calling.&lt;p&gt;Yes, if you take the advice outside of the context it&apos;s intended, it does become quite terrible.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>DanielRibeiro</author><text>Or, as Bret Victor said once[1], you can also follow a principle:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;There are many ways to live your life. That&apos;s maybe the most important thing to realize in your life, that every aspect of your life is a choice. There are default choices. You can choose to sleepwalk through your life, and accept the path that is laid out for you. You can choose to accept the world as it is. But you don&apos;t have to. If there&apos;s something in the world that you feel is a wrong, and you have a vision for what a better world could be, you can find your guiding principle, and you can fight for a cause. So after this talk, I&apos;d like you to take a little time, and think about what matters to you, what you believe in, and what you might fight for.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://gumption.typepad.com/blog/2012/03/principle-centered-invention-bret-victor-on-tools-skills-crafts-and-causes.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://gumption.typepad.com/blog/2012/03/principle-centered-...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Don&apos;t Follow Your Passion: A Smarter Way to Find a Product to Sell </title><url>http://www.shopify.com/blog/6187532-dont-follow-your-passion-a-smarter-way-to-find-a-product-to-sell</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>imgabe</author><text>I guess the formula for a mildly viral blog post is just to misinterpret a popular saying so you can disagree with it. I really dislike it though.&lt;p&gt;&quot;Follow your passion&quot; is not advice given in response to the question &quot;What product should I sell?&quot; Usually it&apos;s in response to &quot;What should I do with my life?&quot; It doesn&apos;t help people differentiate between selling Star Wars figurines vs. something else. It&apos;s meant to help you decide between selling products online &lt;i&gt;at all&lt;/i&gt; versus, say, writing novels or being a carpenter, or social work or some other calling.&lt;p&gt;Yes, if you take the advice outside of the context it&apos;s intended, it does become quite terrible.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>spiredigital</author><text>I&apos;d respectfully disagree.  The original context of Cuban&apos;s advice is here:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogmaverick.com/2012/03/18/dont-follow-your-passion-follow-your-effort/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blogmaverick.com/2012/03/18/dont-follow-your-passion-...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;..and an especially relevant excerpt related to your comment:&lt;p&gt;&quot;Why? Because everyone is passionate about something...  ... [things] that we really really want to do with our lives. Those passions aren’t worth a nickel.&quot;&lt;p&gt;His overall point is that instead of blindly following after your passions and &quot;hoping&quot; things will work out, you should count on effort and hard work.&lt;p&gt;Technically, you&apos;re right - Cuban wasn&apos;t talking about specifically picking an eCommerce niche.  But he does make the great point that if you&apos;re successful at something - regardless of what it is - you usually become passionate about it.&lt;p&gt;The problem faced by many new entrepreneurs is that their passion-based business plan doesn&apos;t get traction, and they give up.  But if you start with a effort and market based business plan, a new entrepreneur is much more likely to succeed.  And when they&apos;re successful with their business, they&apos;ll become very passionate about it.</text></comment>