What Is Your Passion?

Fun Is Good : How To Create Joy & Passion in Your Workplace & Career
by Mike Veeck, Pete Williams

Chapter 1

Where do your passions lie? What brings you joy? Consider for a moment where you are at this stage of your life. If during your childhood years you had received a visit from the Ghost of Christmas Future and were able to see where you are right now, how would you have felt?

I bet you might have been at least a little disappointed. (I know I was for a long time.) You probably would not have liked the idea of toiling through your workdays the way you are now. Maybe you ended up exactly where you'd hoped, only to have it not live up to expectations. Either way, you're now wondering where the joy in your life went, at least professionally.

If you're at a point in your career where you're able and willing to make a drastic change, consider using Fun Is Good as your starting point. What would bring you professional happiness? Could you parlay a hobby or leisure interest into a career?

Most of us take the wrong approach to our career. We look at what's out there, and then try to fit ourselves to a role. Shouldn't it be the other way around? We ought to examine what brings us joy, and then find the role where we can best put those passions to work.

I understand that some people have financial responsibilities that make a midlife career change difficult. For you, we'll talk at length about how you can introduce Fun Is Good to any workplace, no matter how seemingly miserable.

Passion is the motivation that drives us to be creative, productive, and efficient at work. Passion keeps us going and helps us accomplish goals and overcome the most difficult challenges.

You might find this hard to believe, but it's possible to combine passion with everyday work. We should all be striving to do that. When we're able to incorporate passion into our work, the benefits are immense. Admittedly, it can be challenging. When faced with a lot of responsibilities and not much time, we can lose focus. By concentrating on more menial tasks, we lose energy, enthusiasm, and sight of the overall vision.

Passion does not mean being a workaholic or forcing yourself to enjoy some of the tedious elements of your responsibilities. But with passion, we are better able to understand the big picture and the purpose of these everyday tasks. Having passion enables us to enjoy our work in alignment with our values.

If you're someone still trying to find your way, let your passions serve as your guide. Look for environments where people are having fun. When I hire people, I seek out passionate folks with an array of interests, no matter how eclectic. If I need an accountant, for instance, I don't look for just someone with the proper credentials. I go in search of an experienced accountant with other interests, someone I know might not only be fun to be around but perhaps have nonaccounting skills that might be valuable. Perhaps this person is a fly-fisherman or guitar player. That kind of focus and creativity manifests itself in the workplace.

We've forgotten how important people are. Businesses tend to think it's the product or the technology that's most important, but it's really the people.

It's always the people.

When I conduct interviews, I look for passion, and I can tell within 2 minutes if a person has it. Résumés mean little in our organization. Someone with the most impressive background won't fit if he or she doesn't have passion. At the same time, someone with a modest résumé might be a perfect fit.

I run minor league baseball teams. We're not especially significant in society or even in the world of sports. As an employer, I offer long hours and modest pay, yet I have the pick of the litter when it comes to hiring people.

The reason is that I can offer a precious commodity rarely found in business: laughter. People want to work for us. If you can't make your organization fun, you're going to struggle to attract and retain quality employees unless you can offer large salaries and extensive benefits (and those pale in time). People love working in a relaxed environment and having a job that leaves them smiling.

I was disappointed to see the Internet bubble burst because it was a time people seemed to be having fun in the workplace. Maybe most of them were chasing unrealistic dreams, but that's okay. They had a vision and pursued it with passion. It was a time when ideas were valued, and even though people worked ridiculously long hours, they were having a great time.

When the boom ended, the traditional brick-and-mortar executives smirked at the dressed-down Internet wannabes with the casual offices and Ping-Pong tables in the conference rooms. Yep, the market proved that it was no way to run a business.

Actually, the downturn merely proved that they needed sounder business plans and that the market for Internet commerce wasn't as strong as had once been thought. There was nothing wrong with the Fun Is Good attitude.

I admire the people who took the risk of joining Internet companies. Sure, maybe some of them got what they deserved by hungrily following stock options, but most of them wanted just to be part of something special.

We hear from these people all the time. They're immensely talented but feel disenfranchised from the corporate world. These are the people who will lead you to the money.

Most middle managers hire people who are not as smart or experienced as they are. After all, they don't want anyone to take their jobs.

We take the opposite approach. We hire people who ultimately can take our jobs, who have the smarts and the passion but just need the experience. I've always been fascinated by the Kennedy White House. Even if you're not a fan of JFK, you have to concede that he was a master of assembling talent. He wasn't afraid to hire people intellectually and artistically more gifted. As a result, he ended up with a cabinet that was a combination of these great talents. It was a group of supremely passionate people that contributed to this perception of the White House as Camelot.

Most of us allow life to beat us up and then down. We fall into routines, especially at work, and over time we sleepwalk through much of our lives, especially at work. It's time to shake ourselves out of this mediocre existence.

Let's begin with a trip down memory lane. When you were growing up, what made you happy? What did you gravitate toward in school? Identify strands from your life that brought you happiness. What were your dreams?

Life takes dozens of twists and turns. The one constant is your passion—at least it should be. I start every job interview with the same question: "Do you love baseball?" I run minor league baseball teams, and it stands to reason that if someone wants to work for me, it's probably because they love baseball.

Sometimes someone replies, "Yeah, I like baseball. But I really love football."

That's fine. I'm fortunate to have contacts in the NFL and at various colleges, and if this seems like a passionate person, I'll direct him or her toward the appropriate person because chances are they're going to be more effective and happy working in football than with one of our baseball teams.

The same is true in any field. If you run a flower shop, it seems logical that the people you hire should feel strongly about flowers. They should be passionate about creating arrangements that will produce strong emotional responses from the recipients. They should feel those responses as they construct the arrangement.

Maybe you're in a career that you're not especially passionate about, but you enjoy certain elements of it and want to remain in it for those reasons. Make a list of the 10 things you like about your job. Maybe you're a numbers geek, someone who really enjoys statistics. We have an accountant in our organization who, believe it or not, loves dealing with audits. He lives for battling the IRS and, not surprisingly, is very good at it.

Another accountant might not find the work so fascinating, but maybe that accountant has a passion for sailing. She loves plotting courses and collects old treasure maps. She ought to be helping the company and its clients plot growth, making 3-year and 5-year projections. If that's not enough, maybe she could open up a freelance accounting business that allowed her more time to pursue sailing. Perhaps she could live on a sailboat docked near some of her major clients.

If you can't come up with even a few things you like about your career, then it's time to find something else. It's probably impossible to match your passion with your career, and that's okay. Career change is good, and the sooner you make the commitment to change, the better.

In fact, if fun is good, change is better. We must always keep evolving.

I frequently hear from attorneys who want to work in our organization. They're burned out from working in the legal profession. Maybe they went in with altruistic visions of helping the little guy. Maybe they were mesmerized by Gregory Peck's performance as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird or attracted by the glamorous portrayal of the legal profession in television shows such as L. A. Law, Ally McBeal, and The Practice. Maybe they just wanted a decent, well-paying job.

What they come to realize is that they have to work like animals for 8 years to become a partner, and that means they're going to spend 80 hours a week on the job and have no time for their families.

They arrive at age 32 or 35 and get the partnership, yet there's this huge void. They're competitive beyond belief, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but they have problems with personal relationships and have forgotten how to have fun because they define their lives in terms of billable hours and stamina and haven't engaged in what could be defined as a leisure activity in nearly a decade.

Even professionally, the work isn't fulfilling. They start out with this wide-eyed hope that they're going to make a difference, perhaps engaging in some Hollywood courtroom theatrics, but soon realize most of what they do is just paperwork. Any Fun Is Good elements seen on law-themed TV programs don't exist in real life.

When the lawyers reach their mid-30s, that's when they start looking to escape. It's not just lawyers; it's anyone who has toiled tirelessly to climb the corporate ladder. They get to the point where the money no longer matters. They're willing to trade that six-figure salary to work for $25,000 in minor league baseball or wherever their true passions lie.

Believe me, I know what it's like not to have that career satisfaction. I spent a decade in advertising and worked to the point where in 1989, at the age of 38, I earned $90,000. But I wasn't happy, and when I got the opportunity to run a minor league baseball team for $25,000, I grabbed it and never looked back.

If you're just getting out of high school or college, there's no better time to pursue a career based on your passions. You're so much more technically savvy and immersed in media than previous generations that you have a much better idea of what's out there and what you want.

Maybe you've seen one of your parents unceremoniously released from a job after many years of service. Maybe you've seen one of them lose a pension or 401 (k) because the company squandered it or did something unethical that resulted in the stock's becoming worthless.

There are people who have lost millions in retirement funds because of corporate mismanagement, and suddenly they have to rebuild their lives. At least if they had a good time amassing that fortune, they'll have the energy to do it again. If they hated it and were counting the days to retirement, they're left bitter and feeling hopeless.

It's never too late. Colonel Harland Sanders did not begin actively franchising the business that became Kentucky Fried Chicken (and later KFC) until the age of 65.

There comes a time in everyone's life where you must take a hard look at where you've been and where you're going. We have a lot better recall of our emotions than facts. We know when we were happy and when we were depressed. There were times when we were carefree and childlike and willing to take chances.

If you're unhappy, you might think you can't afford to take that chance. In reality, you can't afford to stay where you are. Even if it means you'll take a short-term hit financially or move to another part of the country, the upside in terms of your happiness will be worth it tenfold.

We see this all the time in our organization—one that offers long hours, hard work, and modest pay, but also a Fun Is Good atmosphere that unleashes passions. Many people who have worked for our organization have gone on to successful careers in every industry imaginable. (This isn't because they didn't like working for us, but because they saw a way to apply our formula to other businesses. In fact, our average tenure is much longer than in a typical workplace.) Others came to us after struggling to find professional fulfillment elsewhere. The common denominator is they never gave up on the dream of finding a career and a workplace where they could have fun.

When most people enter the job market, they rarely use passion as a guide. They follow in the footsteps of a family member or pursue a career because of its financial upside or perceived value in society.

As college students, they fill out those vaguely worded standardized tests that are supposed to match personality traits with jobs. Inevitably, they're told that their skills and personality traits make them best qualified to become, say, an astronaut or funeral director.

© 2005 by Mike Veeck and Pete Williams. All rights reserved. No Part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any other information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

About the Author

Mike Veeck is president and part owner of six wildly successful minor-league baseball teams. Son of the late Hall of Fame club owner Bill Veeck, he has followed his father's lead, with innovative promotions that have been profiled by 60 Minutes, USA Today, Sports Illustrated, Fortune, People, and countless other media outlets.

Pete Williams is a contributing writer to USA Today Sports Weekly and Street & Smith's SportsBusiness Journal and has written about fitness and performance for many publications.