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WHAT YOU
LOVE
N AOM I S I MSON
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Title: Live what you love : when passion and purpose change your life / Naomi
Simson.
ISBN: 9781743569917
Subjects:Self-actualization (Psychology)
Change (Psychology)
Career development—Australia.
Success.
Dewey Number:158.1
DRIVEN BY PASSION
Passion is a strong and barely controllable emotion, a compel-
ling enthusiasm or a desire for anything. I know passion when
I feel it because all of a sudden I simply cannot think about
anything else. It is as if something has taken over my life. The
first thing that pops into my busy brain when I open my eyes in
the morning will be connected to my passion — almost as if for
some hours my sleep took me away from my mad obsession.
You may have felt like this when you were working on a
school assignment that ignited your imagination, or maybe with
your first love, or a book that you could not put down. Passion
happens to us. It is not something that we can make up. You
can’t ‘fake it until you make it’. Passion is when your strengths,
insights and emotions align.
‘Passion is energy.
Feel the power that
comes from focusing on
what excites you.’
– Oprah Winfrey
Passion | 7
How we operate has a massive impact on our experience of
life, whether we are available to our passions or whether we hide
them because we are fearful of ridicule or failure. But passion
is not a dirty word — it is truly exciting. Finding your passion
reveals the real you. You may already know what drives you but
your life’s true passion can be hidden from you. In fact, it might
take some exploration to discover what your passion truly is. And
maybe you have more than one. You might be a world cham-
pion poker player but also love working in a team. You might
be a great chef but are also deeply passionate about collecting
antique clocks.
I knew that I was passionate about working somewhere that I
felt valued, doing a job I could believe in. I did not want to waste
my life by giving the ‘best years’ to a cause I did not believe in or
working with people I did not respect (or like).
My work has always been important to me. I have always
been passionate about the contribution my work made. Yet when
I became a mother I was passionate about being ‘good’ at that too.
I knew, for instance, that being a great mum was about having
time to listen to my children, and if I was always racing because
my career was so important to me I would struggle to find the
time to be truly present and in my children’s worlds. How many
times do you find yourself where you wanted to be — at a party,
for instance, or a concert — and you still find yourself checking
your phone for ‘updates’? When you operate from your passion it
is very easy to be truly present.
It seems really crazy now in hindsight but I thought if I ran
my own business I would be able to spend much more time with
my children. I did go to sports days and do reading in the class-
rooms, but the reality is that my passion for the difference I was
Passion | 9
When I started RedBalloon back in 2001 it never occurred to
me that all these years later I would still be driven by such a deep
passion to make a difference. Those days now seem like ancient
history. Life was a blur. I was always rushing; everything was
urgent. That urgency has not diminished with time. There is still
so much to do. This is how I know that I found my passion —
because I have never tired of it. This is not to say that at times
things aren’t exhausting or frustrating or very challenging. But
that is business. I’m sure if I had found my passion inside a cor-
poration I would have all those things in buckets.
Passion | 11
could imagine. For me, colour has always represented happiness,
vibrancy and vividness. Colour gives me energy and inspiration.
I named my business RedBalloon after a beautiful 1956
Oscar award-winning French children’s movie called The Red
Balloon, a beautiful tale of friendship and adventure. Balloons
are a symbol of ‘party time’ — and red is the most memorable,
the most evocative colour of all.
In the early days of RedBalloon I was at an event and just
happened to be wearing a red dress. I had only one or two back
then — not my whole wardrobe, as it is now. My colleague
Jemma Fastnedge had recently given me some pretty frank feed-
back about my dress sense. At the time the business was still
operating from the front room of our home and we had about
seven employees. ‘If you are going to call yourself the CEO,’
Jemma said to me, ‘I think you need to start dressing like one.’
Confronting? Yes! But she had a point. Sometimes I would rush
to my desk still in my gym gear. ‘You dress for others, not your-
self,’ Jemma lamented. ‘How do you want to come across?’
So at this event someone asked, ‘Do you always wear red?’
These two separate comments landed at about the same time.
Passion | 13
the impact it had when he did not in the presence of the
American president. Steve Jobs only ever wore a black skivvy
and jeans for launches, and I’m sure it was so the press talked
more about the technology and less about him as a person.
I definitely don’t wear the red dress for me. I wear it to help
people identify me. I took Jemma’s point and have invested in
my uniform ever since. (Wearing red also makes it easy when I
go clothes shopping!)
Passion | 15
Simple dress sense?
Passion is infectious.
SHARING PASSION
I like to share my passion for making the world a better place,
for sharing what I have learned about happiness, customer expe-
rience and creating a successful enterprise. To do that means
allowing myself to make mistakes. People appreciate the human-
ness of my authenticity, even though I am not one to wear my
heart on my sleeve.
Passion | 17
then asked, ‘Has anyone heard of RedBalloon?’ Again, no hands
went up. I thought to myself, ‘Oh my, I am in for a ride here.’ At
that moment a person with grey curly hair suddenly appeared
in front of me. I thought I would be funny and act as if I were
a school teacher. ‘And where do you think you’re going, young
man?’ I queried. The person promptly responded, ‘Last time I
looked I was a woman.’
I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me. There were
500 people in the room — I was there to speak on ‘Customer
Happiness’ — and I had just made the biggest error and insulted
the customer to boot. There was complete silence as I found my
way to the stage. It was a painful and humbling lesson.
I learned long ago that most people in an audience are just
glad — indeed grateful — that they’re not on stage. If people see
you stumble or make a gaffe they will feel pity for you, quickly
followed by relief that it is not them. To make an error is human –
we are not perfect — and most audiences are respectful of the
fact that you are just the same as them. It is about being our
authentic self.
OVERCOMING OBSTACLES
Many people feel a calling to entrepreneurship — to ‘run their
own show’. They think that they would thrive in that world.
Many people have approached me, sharing their idea for cre-
ating a great enterprise. Their passion is barely containable — it
is physically infectious. I love hearing stories from start-up
founders about how they see the world and where the idea for
their business came from. Their passion energises me — and I
want to be a part of that excitement too.
Outsized entrepreneurs are lionised daily. We hear their names
again and again, people (mainly men, too few women if you ask
me — but that is a personal bias) who founded a business, a move-
ment or a cause. People like Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, and
Larry Page and Sergey Brin. These names can be both inspiring
and alienating (they’re ‘special’ or super human in some way) at
the same time. But every one of these people started at ground
level and had to face setbacks, obstacles, challenges and defeat.
Passion | 19
Very early in my start-up online business I was tackling the
reality of doing business when no one had ever heard of us. One
day I received a phone call from a potential customer querying,
‘How do I know you’re real and not just a fake business front?
How do I know you’re not the janitor rather than who you say
you are?’ As troubling as these questions were, I realised pretty
quickly that what was missing was trust. This was early in the
online selling days and there was good reason to mistrust the
internet. Unless you were dealing with a big, well-known com-
pany, there was mistrust.
I had no brand or name that was recognisable. Of course the
caller was justified in asking whether we were really a business.
How to build trust is a real challenge for any start-up but back
in 2001 internet marketing and online sales were still very early
in their evolution.
The brand needed to live, so I needed to get out from behind
my website and be accessible. Reputation is everything. I knew
that advertising could not build relationships with potential
customers. The community is smart and discerning. When busi-
nesses pay for advertising it stands to reason they are going to
speak well of themselves. And advertising is often met with con-
sumer cynicism.
Passion | 21
action has ceased. How many failures did Thomas Edison have
in discovering the light bulb?
We talk about failure in academic terms — but, if and when
it happens, it is deeply confronting and harrowing, no matter
what. Failure needs to be grieved too. The notion of what was
possible has changed.
Experiencing failure
Nikki Durkin, the founder of tech start-up 99dresses,
vividly shared her experience of failure. She wrote for
News.com:
Passion | 23
if someone had said, ‘Do you want to play with us?’ I would have
jumped at the chance. I wanted to be a part of the group — I just
found I got better results on my own.
In these recollections I can see how my passion — and my
worldview — was developing. Even as a young child, the obsta-
cles I faced only set my personal compass to ‘I’ll show them’.
Passion | 25
pay money to put these pictures in the magazine to try to get us
to buy, buy, buy the product.’ She goes on to complain, ‘It takes
12 pages before there is anything to read.’ The child looks at her
quizzically. He has just received his first lesson in how to tune
out to promotional messages. The mother did not tell her son
that if there were no commercial messages in the publication
then there would, in fact, not be a magazine at all. But she made
her point well. People are overwhelmed with commercial mes-
sages and they want to filter them out. It has been a very long
time since a business could launch a product on Sunday night
television and have everybody talking about it the next day.
Apparently we are bombarded by around 3000 promotional
messages every day. There are logos and banner ads on every-
thing. You cannot even have a cup of takeaway coffee without
finding some message on the cup. We live with it — and we tune
out. We are taught that ‘it’s just advertising’. This is why we value
our friends’ opinions so much. If someone tells us that a product
is good then it must be.
Passion | 27
Passion is vivid. Vivid stories bring passion to life. Being able
to re-live and re-tell tales which touch, move and inspire others
gives life to your passion. When you tell a story vividly you impact
on your audience’s senses, bringing them with you on the journey
so they feel something: joy, fear, sadness, whatever. Our ability to
feel our passion for our chosen cause is amplified when we share
it. Our passion is solidified. Choose your words with care.
Passion | 29
words. They may be so vibrant that in fact they attach them-
selves to your passion — like branding it.
When I started up, I consistently used the same words over
and over again to anyone who would listen. In time, this cre-
ated a ‘brand’ for my passion. ‘I imagine people seeing any red
balloon,’ I would say, ‘and smiling as they remembered the first
RedBalloon that they either gave or were given.’ The red balloon
is a vivid reminder of my passion — and once in the neuro-
pathway of the listener, it is difficult to dislodge.
I came not so suddenly to the realisation that the red balloon
was my brand. How I talked about it — the positive, powerful,
passionate words I used to describe my cause — took practice,
time and patience. And it took being respectful. One thing that
I cannot abide is the unprepared speaker. There is no excuse.
No one arrives to deliver a TED talk without hours and hours
of preparation. Why are other audiences not honoured in the
same way?
Have you ever found yourself at a seminar or conference,
doing your absolute best to listen to the speaker on the podium,
but your mind wanders? You have spent time and money getting
there, you know that the topic is relevant and of value to you, but
you struggle to listen — simply because the speaker is getting
in the way of the content. The room is dark, you begin to doze,
you feel ripped off. It is the rudest, most self-serving thing for
a speaker to abuse the position they have been given and take
people’s most precious resource, time.
Being unprepared and not respecting your audience does
impact on your reputation. And it is hard to share your passion if
you are reading from a PowerPoint stack.