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Do what you love, and the money will follow. I have a quote with the same gist on Stesnet. My version comes from Oprah Winfrey. Her quote certainly makes you feel good, and gets you motivated. Plus Oprah is one of the richest women in America so maybe there’s something to it. Or maybe not.

There’s some logic to the proposition that if you do what you love, then you’ll be persistent and get good at it. It also makes sense that people are willing to pay for a service that’s well done. But it’s not always true that you’ll get good at what you love to do. There are plenty of people who love to write, sing, and play golf who have no chance of ever getting paid to do it. At least not enough to make a living. This is particularly true in fields where the market is oversaturated, like directing movies, where even being good at it won’t necessarily sustain you.

Or maybe what you love to do has no market at all, no matter how brilliant you are. You can build the best snow forts ever. But who’s buying?

Perversely, doing what you love and getting paid for it can quickly kill the love. Do you think that you’ll still feel the same way about cooking after putting in 10 hours a day, 7 days a week at the restaurant you open?

Now let’s look at the flip side. Will doing something you don’t care for particularly prevent you from making money at it? The answer is no. The money may follow even if you’re doing something that you don’t love. My city is full of Korean nail salons. I can’t believe that Koreans love doing people’s nails that much. Or that orthodox Jews love selling photographic equipment. These businesses are built on providing a product or service with no regard to personal fulfillment.

In fact, doing something that you love can get in the way of a business. Your love of what you do can blind you to ways of getting it done faster, or less expensively. Or you may not notice when that thing that you do is on the decline. Take the Hit Factory, a recording studio here in New York as an example. Bruce Springsteen recorded “Born in the USA” there, and Stevie Wonder recorded “Songs in the Key of Life”. They made platinum albums for the biggest stars in music and loved doing it. I say made because the place closed recently, the victim of the changing economics of music recording. They did what they love and the money went elsewhere.

So is there a lesson to be learned here? Well, to quote a well-known sneaker company, just do it. Do what you love. Do what you don’t love but think you can make money at. No matter what you do, there is no guarantee that the money will follow. But if you don’t do anything, then there’s nothing for the money to follow and you won’t get anywhere. And you can quote me on that.

Fred Stesney is the Host of Stesnet, the only online community created exclusively for business owners. If you own your business, you can join the Stesnet community at http://www.stesnet.com