Maybe you should stop listening to some people. Seriously.
Because one of the biggest problems I see with people who dream of being entrepreneurs is this:
Early ideas that are brilliant get killed way too fast because they’re judged through the lens of a business model and not through the lens of originality.
And if you’ve ever had an idea that lit you up, but you killed it because someone told you it wasn’t “practical,” you know exactly what I mean.
Here’s a list of bad advice I got early on. If I had listened, I would have lost hundreds of millions in revenue:
- “You’re selling meditation CDs online? That’s not a real business. That’s a hobby.” — from a well-meaning aunt.
- “That’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.” — on my festival idea, from an investor I met at Summit Series in 2010. If I’d listened we would not have A-Fest, Future Human or Mindvalley U, festivals that attract thousands and are now in their 15th year.
- “That will never scale.” — from an early Twitter investor in Silicon Valley. The business in question Mindvalley Mastery, is now at $30M in revenue in year 3 and grew 60% year on year.
If I had listened to any of these people, Mindvalley wouldn’t exist.
Because business isn’t just about logic.
It’s about heart. It’s about Intuition. It’s about Passion.
And nobody knows this about you better than YOU.
And to show you why, let me tell you a story about a man with a weird passion for fonts.
The daydreamer at Reed College
This young man was the son of a Syrian father and adopted American parents.
He enrolled in Reed College, a small liberal arts school in Portland, Oregon.
But he struggled.
He couldn’t focus on classes. He was restless. A daydreamer.
Except for one subject.
One class completely grabbed his attention: calligraphy.
He became obsessed with fonts. The curves. The flow. The way letters could feel elegant or clumsy, depending on a single stroke.
His friends thought it was strange. Useless.
But to him, it was art.
Years later, he and a buddy started a small personal computer company.
Nothing unusual. There were 20 other computer companies in the late 1970s.
But their machine was different.
It came with fonts. Beautiful fonts.
An obsession that came directly from his calligraphy class.
That “useless” hobby became one of the defining features of the product.
And this wasn’t his only edge.
He had three:
- Design. He cared deeply about beauty and elegance.
- Storytelling. He could inspire people with vision.
- Consumer tech. He had an intuitive feel for what ordinary people wanted.
The fusion of those three passions created Apple. That font-obsessed man was Steve Jobs.
And years later, Apple became the world’s first trillion-dollar company.
Now imagine if someone had told him: “Nobody cares about fonts. Just build a computer.”
Apple wouldn’t be Apple.
The magic of your dots
Steve Jobs famously said: “You cannot connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backward.”
So the question is: what are your dots?
What were those passions, weird obsessions, little sparks that lit you up?
Those may be the signposts for the business you were meant to build.
Your dots may have magic in them.
Connecting my own dots
When I look back at my life, I see them clearly.
- I loved meditation. So in 2002, when the e-commerce boom hit, I built my first website around meditation CDs. People told me there wasn’t much money in it. I told them I didn’t care. I wanted to do what I loved. Boy, were they wrong. Meditation blew up in the 2010s. Today, the Mindvalley app alone is a $100M revenue business.
- I loved festivals, music, and travel. So I created A-Fest. Critics said it was a terrible idea. Today, it’s in its 13th year and has expanded into Future Human in Dubai and Mindvalley University.
- I loved books. So I wrote one. That first book, The Code of the Extraordinary Mind, hit #1 globally on Amazon.
- I loved dabbling in AI. So I started an AI training company. That evolved into Mindvalley Mastery, which crossed $30M revenue in its third year.
These weren’t logical career moves.
They were dots.
And when I fused them together, I built not just one business—but an ecosystem of businesses.
What are YOUR dots?
What are those weird passions, quirks, obsessions, hobbies that you love but others find weird?
There might be GOLD in them.
Here are the five principles that guided me. I hope you find these useful too.
1. Don’t quit your day job (yet). Build on the side.
Quitting too early is the fastest way to anxiety.
Because now you’re not creating. You’re panicking about rent.
I stayed at my job.
As hard as it was, when I came home, I gave myself a rule:
- 90 minutes every night to teach myself the skills I needed. I learned PHP coding. Built checkout flows. JavaScript. Everything by hand.
- Six hours every weekend were sacred building time.
Six months later, my first website went live.
One year later, it covered my expenses.
Only then did I quit.
That’s how Mindvalley started: slowly, but safely.
2. Master one skill—then fuse it with what you love
Here’s a secret no one tells you: the fastest way to build a career around your love is to marry your passion with a craft.
I call them two types of passions:
- Craft-Passions: skills you can master through practice (like sales, design, Facebook ads, Instagram ads, humorous video ads, comedy, vibe coding, or AI prompt engineering).
- Cause-Passions: the ideas and movements that light up your soul (like meditation, health, education, or sustainability).
Your real leverage comes when you fuse the two.
For me, sales was a Craft-Passion. I didn’t “love” it at first, but I loved mastering it. I studied it, practiced it, read every book I could.
Meditation was my Cause-Passion.
When I fused them—sales + meditation—I created copy so compelling for meditation CDs that I became the top affiliate in the world for the company I was reselling for.
Eventually, that led to Mindvalley.
That’s the breakthrough: I wasn’t just into meditation. I was into the alchemy of passions—turning Craft into Cause.
3. Redefine success beyond money
The Mindvalley model of entrepreneurship has always been about balance. And the data now fully supports it.
Shawn Achor, in The Happiness Advantage, shows that:
- Doctors are 19% more accurate in their diagnoses when they’re happy.
- Optimistic salespeople close deals 55% more effectively.
Happiness isn’t a side effect of success. Happiness drives success.
Hard work is hustle porn.
It works if you’re 20, living on Red Bull and ramen.
But for adults? It’s incomplete.
Humans need joy. Meaning. Connection.
So when you’re building your business, set boundaries:
- Maybe you stop work at 7:30 p.m. so you can have dinner with your family.
- Maybe you block 4:00–5:30 p.m. every day for exercise.
- Maybe your first task every morning isn’t email—it’s meditation.
These boundaries don’t slow you down.
They fuel you.
4. Question the rules
In my book The Code of the Extraordinary Mind, I introduced the idea of Brules—bullshit rules.
Here’s the thing: humans create rules to feel safe. Passed from father to son, mother to daughter.
But the world changes fast.
And old rules often don’t apply anymore.
What rules might you still be following?
- “You need a steady paycheck before you try anything.”
- “Don’t start unless you have investors.”
- “Stick to one career your whole life.”
- “Keep your ideas realistic.”
Each one sounds safe.
Each one kills originality.
That’s why extraordinary entrepreneurs question the rules.
And torch the Brules.
5. Build identity, not just goals
Most people set goals like:
- “I want to start a business.”
- “I want to make X amount.”
But goals without identity are fragile. They collapse under stress.
The real breakthrough comes when you adopt an identity:
- I am an entrepreneur.
- I am a creator.
- I am a teacher.
James Clear, in Atomic Habits, writes that identity is the deepest driver of behavior. When you embody the identity, the actions follow naturally.
When I started identifying as a teacher—even before Mindvalley existed—I began to notice opportunities to teach everywhere. That identity pulled me forward.
So don’t just set goals. Ask: Who am I becoming?
Because the universe responds not to what you want, but to who you are.
This (and a lot more) is exactly what we’ll dive into at the Entrepreneurship Summit.
Your next step: Join the Mindvalley Entrepreneurship Summit (free)
We’ll torch Brules. Explore your dots. Learn how to fuse Craft-Passions with Cause-Passions.
And you’ll hear from some of the world’s greatest teachers in entrepreneurship, storytelling, influence, and business building.
- Naveen Jain – How to design a $10M vision so clear it pulls you forward like gravity.
- Shade Zahrai – How to eliminate limiting beliefs that quietly sabotage your growth.
- Sara Al Madani – Turning your love into your career (without burning out).
- Kim Perell – The Execution Factor: how to move from ideas to results faster than anyone else.
- Dave Asprey – How to build a brand so unforgettable it practically markets itself.
- Daniel Priestly – Proven business models that actually work (and which ones to avoid).
- Sonia Ricotti – Million-dollar funnels (yes, the exact strategies that generate revenue while you sleep).
- Ajit Nawalkha – Frameworks that can add instant money to your business.
- Miki Agrawal – The art of soft power: how to win influence without hard-selling.
And I’ll share about revenue models Mindvalley used to scale past $100M (and how you can adapt them).
Key Highlights of what you will learn at the summit for free:
- How to create offers so compelling, people line up to buy
- How to find the dots you’ve been ignoring—and fuse them into your business edge.
- How to stop killing ideas too early by forcing them through business-model thinking.
- How to design boundaries so your business fuels your life instead of draining it.
- How to scale passion into profit without losing joy.
- How to win deals without losing your relationships
And so much more..
It’s 100% free. It could be the most important 3 days of time you invest this year.
Reserve your free spot now
Waiting to build from your passions? This is it.
See you at the summit,
Vishen
PS: I just shared a post about this idea of “Jobbing Your Love” and connecting your dots. Follow me on Instagram to see it.
I’d also love to hear from you directly:
What resonated most for you in today’s newsletter?
Which of these 5 principles are you ready to apply right now?
Scroll down and leave a comment below.
We read every comment — and your words may inspire someone in our community who needed to hear your story today.
22 Responses
Vishen
This was such a timely post I received in my email today. As a creator in the middle of figuring it out, it was reassuring to hear your perspective on passion and originality. Thanks for keeping me going.