In every start-up business book I've ever read, there is a big
discussion about passion in the first chapter. The same is true for
many speakers I hear at conferences and events. It's a feel good
concept. The mantra is "Passion is the key to success."

So I'm asking you. Is passion really the key to success?

This week I was on MSNBC's "Your Business" with Nell Merlino, founder of Count Me In, and Larry Winget who is the star of A&E's "Big Spender" and the author of "It's Called Work for a Reason!" The topic was work/life balance, something Winget completely poo-poos.

Winget also believes "Passion is a bunch of crap." In one of his blog entries
he writes, "I know many passionate people. They are passionately
stupid, passionately wrong and passionately incompetent. Passion and
success have about as much to do with each other as gravy and Raisin
Bran. But this is the trash being dumped on us by the ill-informed
motivational idiots who know little about true success but are quick to
tell you how to achieve it. No business ever makes it based on passion.
No successful business person every made it to the top based on
passion."

Nell and I argued that it is important to be
passionate about what you do. Certainly, Nell's passion has helped
thousands and thousands of women. She created "Take Our Daughters to Work Day." Against the odds, she founded Count Me In, an online micro-lender for women business owners. Her latest endeavor -- Make Mine a Million Dollar Business
– has the goal of helping one million women reach the million dollar
revenue mark by the year 2010. Nell pours her heart and soul into
everything she does and she works hard to make it a success.

Like
Nell, I'm passionate about helping all small businesses succeed. That's
what motivates me every day to continually create small business news
and information, as well as enhance and improve SBTV.com's
community and resource offerings. I don't think anyone can work as hard
as you must to build a successful business if you aren't passionate.

As
brusque as Winget's delivery may be, there is a great deal of truth in
what he says. "To tell people that passion is the key to success does
those folks a great disservice. Because somewhere down the road, they
will discover that no one cares or shares their passion. They will find
out that while they are passionate, they haven't done the work to be
really good, they know nothing about selling or marketing, leadership,
management, finance, their competition, serving customers or all the
other facets of a successful life or business. All they have is their
passion. Try cashing that at the bank," he writes.

I realized the three of us are really on the same page, we simply articulate it differently. In fact, in my book The Girls' Guide to Power and Success"
I put a short discussion of passion in one of the last chapters. Why?
Because building a business takes business knowledge, excellent
execution, determination, discipline and sweat equity.

There
are passionate individuals who are really good at delivering a
particular product or service, but they don't have the commitment or
desire to build a really successful business. They can produce an
income for themselves – hopefully one that they can live on – but they
don't have the right stuff to execute a strategy to build a sustainable
enterprise.

So where do you stand? Is passion the key to success? Let me know what you think.