Forget passion. Work hard and get good instead! - By contributing writer, Larry Winget. Larry is a TV personality and Best Selling NY Times and Wall Street Journal author. He’s known as the Pitbull of Personal Development and the world’s first irritational speaker.

Recently I appeared on Donny Deutsch’s show, the Big Idea that airs on CNBC. I made the statement, “Passion is a load of crap.” The poor guy grew pale under his stage make-up and his heart pounded hard while he gasped for air. To say the least, he disagreed. My point to him was that passion is little more than a starting place but true long term success is based on excellence and hard work. Again, he disagreed. That’s fine. He has the right to be wrong. And he clearly is.

I know many passionate people. They are passionately stupid, passionately wrong and passionately incompetent. Passion and success have about as much to do with each other as gravy and Raisin Bran. But this is the trash being dumped on us by the ill-informed motivational idiots who know little about true success but are quick to tell you how to achieve it. No business ever makes it based on passion. No successful business person every made it to the top based on passion.

Back to my earlier point: Excellence is what moves you to the top. And hard work doing the right things is what makes you excellent. To tell people that passion is the key to success does those folks a great disservice. Because somewhere down the road, they will discover that no one cares or shares their passion. They will find out that while they are passionate, they haven’t done the work to be really good, they know nothing about selling or marketing, leadership, management, finance, their competition, serving customers or all the other facets of a successful life or business. All they have is their passion. Try cashing that at the bank.

A guy after a speech I gave a couple of weeks ago caught me in the bar (another reminder to RUN to my room after a speech!) and told me how lucky I was to have found my passion in life through my speaking. I told him I was NOT passionate about my speaking. I have a good time doing it. I enjoy doing it. I am really good at it. But it is not my passion. It is my job. Period. It pays well. Really well. And if it didn’t pay really well, I would find something else to enjoy and I would figure out another line of work to be great at that would pay me well. The guy just stood with his mouth open looking at me.

I told him my passion was sitting on my patio watching the sun go down over the horizon, with a glass of Johnny Walker Blue next to me, a great cigar in my hand, my big ol’ sweet bulldog, Ralph on my lap slobbering on me, my wife sitting next to me having a great conversation and a little Merle Haggard playing in the background all while I am enjoying the smell of a great big bone-in big eye grilling a few feet away from me. I can get passionate about that. Standing on a stage thousands of miles away from home and going back to a crappy hotel room only to eat one more room service cobb salad is nothing that creates any passion in me. It’s my job. I’m good at it. I like it. It pays well. My being good at it is why people hire me. If I was only passionate and not amazing at it, no one would ever hire me.

Passion qualifies me to stand on the street corner and preach my message, but it doesn’t allow me to make a living. Excellence gets me paid. And twenty years of hard work, study and practice made me excellent. The same applies to you. Set your passion aside and get really good at what you do. Got it? Forget what you are hearing about passion and just go to work.

A note from The Zman: Larry Winget’s books and tapes: Shut up Stop Wining and Get a Life, It’s Called Work for a Reason, and You’re Broke Because You Want to Be, will kick you in the ass and make you re-think just about everything. I highly recommend that you familiarize your self with this truly great human being.

Find out more about my friend and cigar buddy, Larry Winget at http://www.larrywinget.com