Contributed by Marcia Wieder

In our careers, dreaming is serious business and the driving force for transformation. Without vision companies fail, and without our personal vision, our dreams, our lives can become mundane, redundant, even stagnant. When we are in touch with our passion we have more energy, enthusiasm, and creativity. In a business context “passion sells.” Wouldn’t you rather do business with people who enjoy what they are doing rather than someone who is just doing a job? Passion and productivity go hand in hand. Happy people make happy employees and happy employees go the extra mile, producing greater results.

How do you turn passion into profit? Do what matters and has meaning for you and the money will follow. But do it with passion and it may become easier to accomplish. A visionary leader articulates their vision with clarity so people understand what it is and with passion so others want to join them. Passion is contagious. It can help you sell your ideas or products to others. Passion inspires people to do great things, to go beyond normal limits and to soar to new heights.

Consider these tips for success:

• The people who are the most successful and satisfied with their work and life know that passion lives inside of us. The secret is to intentionally bring more of what you love into your daily life.
• Bring your passion to your work, and you’ll manage your team differently.
• Tune into what excites you and you will show up differently in your relationships with others.
• Bring your excitement and enthusiasm to your customers and they will buy more from you.
• Focus your passion and use it to compel your business forward. Passion without focus can be wasted energy. But passion with clarity and commitment can be an unstoppable life-changing formula for success.

Passion is the fire in your belly. It is when you are compelled to action. Passion is the juice that will help you move mountains to accomplish your dreams and goals, personally and professionally. Passion without a plan can be wasted energy, but used to move your dreams forward, it is dynamite. Also, passion is a time management tool, because when you are doing what you love, it often gets done faster. The secret to a joyful life is to schedule more things into your everyday life that have heart and meaning for you.

People are inspired by enthusiasm. Find your passion and bring it to your work and life. Here’s how:

1. Find resources to help take you and your team to new heights, like my project DreamUniversity.com.
2. Use passion as the barometer to say “no thank you” when you have a choice. Clear away clutter to make room for your dreams.
3. Passion Quest – take a period of time a day, week, month (you don’t have to put the rest of your life on hold) to discover exactly what is it you are passionate about.
4. Think of three times in your life when you were truly feeling passionate. Find a common thread. Were you learning, teaching, risk taking, helping others, and having fun, problem solving? What was it that you were passionate about in all three memories?
5. Explore how you can bring more of this quality to your work. How can you make your work more fun, educational or adventurous? Bring more of what you love into your every day life.
6. Proactively inspire your team to do the same. Encourage people to bring their passion for fun, success, creativity, helping others or trying new things, to their business.

On the subject of money, it does not have to be the obstacle stopping your from pursuing your dream. People often say, “I’d pursue my dream if I could only afford it.” So I ask, “How much money do you need?” The most common answer is “I don’t know… but I know I don’t have enough.” It is the fear of failure that keeps us from sitting down with a pencil and assessing our needs. It is doubt and concern that keep us from exploring other creative options such as bartering or trading services.

Grow your career, your team, your family and your own well-being by igniting your passion and sharing it with others. Increase profit and productivity by inspiring people to dream big. Demonstrate that your company is a unique and fabulous place to be, because you encourage people to bring their passion to work. When this happens, everyone wins.

Marcia Wieder, CEO/Founder of Dream University is the author of 14 books and an acclaimed speaker on goal setting, visionary thinking and team building. To receive 3 powerful ebooks go to: DreamUniversity.com/gift

by Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)

 

Much like the Monarch butterflies she loves so dearly, Monika Maeckle, vice president of new media at a large media company, has a personal journey spans many different regions. Her parents are German immigrants, who, like so many others, came to this country in search of a better life. The butterfly enthusiast grew up in suburban Dallas, where she loved the outdoors.  “As a kid I spent a lot of time by a creek we called ‘the crashed up car.’ We’d have big, wild adventures. I’ve always been like this; I’ve always preferred the outdoors to anything else. I think it’s just a personality thing … well, that and the fact that mosquitoes don’t like me,” Maeckle said.  

 

A career in communications hasn’t really proven to be the ideal profession for a self-described “Monarch maniac” who loves the outdoors, as a majority of Maeckle’s time as vice president of new media is spent in an office working at a computer. It actually may be a blessing in disguise that Maeckle discovered her passion for Monarchs so late in life; making this discovery any sooner may have derailed the illustrious media and marketing career that took her far from “the crashed up car” in her Dallas neighborhood. After her first job as a reporter, she moved to New York for a copy editing position, which eventually led to a long stint in Costa Rica where she worked as a freelance writer while her husband was employed by Newsweek Magazine. Upon returning to the States, the couple wanted to get back in touch with nature and be more “outdoorsy,” which was impossible in New York City. 

 

Acquiring their Lucky Boy Ranch in Texas Hill Country has been one of the greatest things that could have ever happened to Maeckle, especially after she discovered it was located on the Monarch flight path.

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by Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)

Amanda Zompetti can wear jeans to work every day if she chooses, but comfortable clothing doesn’t ensure that an office won’t get stuffy after being sat in for eight hours a day, five days a week. The twenty-four-year old works at the successful trial law firm Quinn Emanuel and, despite enjoying her job in New York City, she knows that sometimes a girl’s got to run wild and work up a sweat playing Ultimate- frisbee, that is.

Zompetti has always flirted with athletics. The Massachusetts native discovered her competitive streak early on as a five-year-old child equestrian. Twelve long years of horse riding led to forays into cross country running, softball, and volleyball as a high school and college student.

Admittedly, Zompetti did not come from an athletic family. “I don’t know where my love of sports came from,” Zompetti said. “My dad was outdoorsy, but definitely not athletic. As a matter of fact, I think he’d get winded just chasing after a ball.” It wasn’t until attending college as a history major at Dartmouth that Zompetti would discover a game that encompassed some of the best qualities from her favorite sports: the endurance necessary in soccer, the teamwork in volleyball, and a setup similar to football.

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by Elizabeth Harrin (London)

Connie L. Lindsey joined the Girl Scouts almost forty years ago at her church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her mother couldn’t afford to buy her uniform, but her church and her troop leader ensured that she had one. She credits Girl Scouting with helping her understand that she was a young girl who mattered. Today Lindsey exemplifies an approach to servant leadership that tells girls what her troop leader told her over forty years ago: “Young lady, you matter – and don’t let anybody in this world tell you that you don’t.”

“I became a Girl Scout because it provided a place where acceptance was the norm and opportunities for personal growth were plentiful,” says Lindsey. That was about 40 years ago. Lindsey is now the organization’s highest-ranking volunteer: National President of Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA). “The values Girl Scouts embraced matched my own and reinforced my desire to learn about others and our world.”

As National President, Lindsey serves the girls and the Scout Movement by providing guidance to GSUSA’s executive team and the board in three vital areas: policy, fundraising, and strategic direction. “My role affords me the opportunity to visit our Girl Scout councils, which is one of the most rewarding parts of my work,” she says. “I love talking with our girls, volunteers, and staff—and understanding how they put the principles of servant leadership—leading others by first helping them to be their best—into practice among themselves, their families, and their communities.”

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By Heather Chapman (New York City)

Jennifer Flaa is a very busy woman. You might think that being the CEO of Vettana, a software quality assurance (SQA) company she founded twelve years ago, would be enough to keep her occupied. But, for this woman, it’s not. She has started a second company, teaches at the Silicon Valley Small Business Development Center, and has written a book. Oh, and in her spare time Jennifer sings in a rock band she started a few years ago.

Despite the passion she has for technology—Jennifer was a Technology Management student at the University of Maryland University College (UMUC)—this field wasn’t Jennifer’s first love. That was music. Jennifer says she sang throughout high school in choirs and musicals, played three different instruments, and was her high school band’s drum major and conductor. Still, despite how much she lived for music, Jennifer says that she consciously did not focus on that when she went to college. “I consciously turned the music switch off when I went to college and started an engineering curriculum. I loved music but did not want to be a ‘starving artist’. ”

After graduating, Jennifer went on to work at NASA, writing and researching test cases for an experiment that was conducted via space shuttles. It was her experiences there at NASA that led Jennifer to eventually leave and move to the Bay Area, working for several startups. It wasn’t until after she burned out working for various startups, spending all her time and energy there—literally sleeping under her desk at times—that she went back to music. Jennifer took two years off from her professional career and spent her time singing with a local garage band, belting out blues tunes, and performing for six months in a local musical, where she played four different characters. But then, as Jennifer says, “she did it again,” starting Vettanna and “deep ended into work again, shutting off the music valve that majorly fed my soul.”

It took a divorce for Jennifer to actually stop and take a look at how she was living her, realizing only then that she wasn’t doing what really made her happy. “That’s when I started singing again and sought out a rock vocal coach that would help me develop a professional quality sound.” She also became the manager of a friend’s band, teaching herself about the music industry from the inside. She took the knowledge that she learned from that experience and started her own band, Urban Fiction, with her friend, Francois Didier Bouvet. Planning only on singing the songs that other artists had written, the suggestion by her coach to write her own songs took Jennifer completely by surprise. Hesitant at first, Jennifer disregarded his suggestion, but her coach didn’t stop there. “He told me to come back next week with not one but four songs…and I did. Of course they were crap. But we worked with them and he really taught me the [song-writing] craft. I write the melodies and lyrics and Didier Bouvet [her partner in the band] adds the groove and the awesome guitar!”

Jennifer says that she still struggles to find an acceptable balance in her life. “I work best in bursts and still ‘deep end’ into tasks, looking up and [realizing] it’s 4 a.m. and I’m still on a roll! It’s not a long-term strategy but it’s actually fun and rewarding to do from time to time. The truth is, the balancing is a process. I haven’t figured out yet if ‘having a balanced life’ means that the ‘balance’ happens each day or in a week, or in a month or over the year!”

Balancing act notwithstanding, Jennifer is always on top of her life and priorities by forming a clear vision of what she wants to accomplish. Then, she says, she “take[s] it and get geeky with it. I write a plan, map out what it will take to get from here to there, how long and what the tasks are along the way.” By prioritizing her tasks and taking things one-step at a time, Jennifer says, “by the end of the year I find I’ve accomplished quite a bit.”

Jennifer has found that since she’s again made music a priority in her life, she’s much happier. “The singing is my passion and I get so much juice, happiness, and energy from playing in that sandbox that it really feeds my soul and gives me energy for other things.”

Jennifer has a website, with links to her four different blogs, and she’s also on LinkedIn and Twitter, where she can be reached at any time.