Very often when I'm working with established professionals it takes some real in depth probing to uncover the high payoff idea that no one else has spotted. 90% of the time those ideas come from my clients' personal passions and interests.



If you want to spot the results of passion and personal interests, you won't find better examples than Barcelona. Barcelona was home to the renowned Antoni Gaudi. His designs have shaped the public and religious spaces and the character of the city itself for over a century. Barcelona is a city filled with soaring spires and cool places that enliven the days and nights of every person living in or visiting that city for a day, a week, or years.

Straight edges curve, building walls and corners swoop, and banisters beg your had to run their length. Cathedrals, apartment buildings, public parks. Each of them are mind blowing examples of the results of his relentless pushing beyond what was common, familiar, the expected use of materials and shapes.

The character of the city has been permanently taken into a burst of creativity in public spaces seen nowhere else in the world. Moreover, any visitor to that city is immersed in the results of his passion and vision and the artists and architects who followed him. And the result of his vision and it's realization is that tourism is magnetized to that city and employs thousands of people daily.

Being in that city made me want to wander for hours, sit and relax and gaze at amazing vistas, and made my own hands itch with the desire to design things for my own home and yard. It wrote emails to more people telling them "You've got to see this! Get yourself here!" than I've ever said in my 30 years of travel.

It also reminded me that the renegade few who will break the mold often create the highest payoff results all of us run to experience!

One of my clients, Michele, is successful for the very same reason. Her profession is law. In her early career she found herself doing transactional work that was identical to her colleagues and peers. That was simply how law was.

Through our work Michele voiced her passion for working on personal matters with the analytical rigors of the law. Once she named that personal vision, she was able to create a new direction, and a blend that was unique at that time in an arena that had no name and today is called Elder Law. Her result: her clients do her marketing for her. They are passionate about taking their parents, children and friends to her for a constantly expanding range of services.

Another client, the owner of a moving company, carved out a niche in the shipping industry. His personal passion for luxury furnishings lead him to create unique offerings: in addition to white glove handling of those items, He discovered that safe handling of expensive goods was only one opportunity. Often the new owner had construction work at the destination and needed been purchased. He added long-term secure storage of those same items. The result: buyers refer each other to him and vendors refer their buyers to him as well. He doubled his income. In a year.

Each of them broke the mold in their industry and did it in a way that prevented others from easily copying them. And each time it was the result of them incorporating their passion into their work.

Antoni never shared his thoughts about his passion until his 70s. In fact we only know them because his disciples recorded his spoken thoughts and visions. Even so, his concrete and iron buildings and wooden furniture stand as statements of his passion.

They act as a question across the decades for all of us: what passion have you been holding off to the side? And how might you bring it to the forefront in your work and life?

Copyright (c) 2008 Linda Feinholz