By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker 

Startups founded on passion can miss the mark if they are not also established on the bedrock of distinctive competence – your set of proven skills, knowledge, and expertise. I bootstrapped multiple startups. The first one, USI, was founded using my distinctive competence and was so successful that we generated a profit in four months. The second one, purely a Passion Project, failed to generate a profit after three years. It is now a case study in how distinctive competence trumps passion when it comes to launching a successful business. (I tell the full story of my failed venture in Chapter 8 of The Purpose is Profit.)

Despite all the entreaties you hear that you should follow your passion and do what you love, others share my belief that passion alone will not make you successful. The best of all worlds is when you can combine passion with your distinctive competence. And often you will find that you build your expertise best in an area you really love.

Passion Can Overrun Common Sense

Real estate mogul, investor, speaker, author, and consultant, Barbara Corcoran, is a “Shark” investor on ABC’s Shark Tank. She has listened to a lot of passionate entrepreneurs pitch for startup funding. In the Business Insider article, “Being Too Passionate is Bad for Business,” Corcoran advises that overexcitement can drive a business into the ground. She speaks to the allure of enthusiasm that once led to her own investment in a business model clouded by the entrepreneur’s passion. “After giving him my $100,000 along with my truthful, experienced feedback about what needed to be improved – like a needed design change and offering a lower-priced model that everyone could afford – he didn’t listen and changed nothing.”

Passion can overrun the common sense of listening to advisors. In contrast, the marriage of passion with distinctive competence can lead to solid business decisions. So how do these two vital startup ingredients meet?

Our micro-decisions in life often lead us to business arenas we like. We may find our fit by a circuitous route of trial and error, but if we are deliberate about our choices and gravitate to a niche we enjoy, our distinctive competence will grow with the everyday diligence we invest. As an entrepreneur at heart, you can look through your visionary glasses and see unexplored market potential and customer needs. At the same time, you observe and learn from your market; your distinctive competence evolves and you gain confidence to leave your job and start a new business.

Blending Distinctive Competence With Your Business Vision

Entrepreneur turned angel investor and mentor, Amy Reese Anderson, merged her passion for untangling dilemmas by designing software to simplify and streamline the problem. She also had a passion to be a good leader of people. In a Forbes article, “Does Being Passionate About the Work You Do Increase Your Chance of Success?”  Anderson explains how she blended her passions for software design and leadership with her expertise. She said, “Note that neither of these passions required industry specificity. The truth is that I could have fulfilled them in any type of business, but with my past experience and knowledge, healthcare technology became the industry of choice to pursue my passion.”

Many times, an entrepreneur will find the passion of starting and running his or her own business is the only passion that matters. Combine that with your distinctive competence, and you’ll have a winning combination. Passion can give us purpose, but our skills, knowledge, and expertise can deliver profits. Without profit, our vision cannot create a sustainable business. Passion involves an emotional commitment and can certainly boost your tenacity when you meet the bumps in the road, but foundational business decisions are better fueled by decisions rooted in your distinctive competence, not emotional passion.

I invite you to share your journey.  Have you successfully merged your passion with distinctive competence? Or are you on a circuitous route looking for light at the end of the tunnel? We welcome your comments!  

Ed McLaughlin is currently co-writing the book “The Purpose Is Profit: Secrets of a Successful Entrepreneur from Startup to Exit” with Wyn Lydecker and Paul McLaughlin.

Copyright © 2014 by Ed McLaughlin All rights reserved.