One thing I’ve never said in my coaching is “Follow your passion.”
Not because passion is bad. But because passion doesn’t know where it’s going. It only knows that it’s going. And “follow your passion” is how agency owners end up three years in with eight different service offerings, no clear positioning, and a growing sense that they’re building someone else’s business by accident.
What I say instead is: “Get clear on your vision. Then let passion do its job.”
Those are two different forces that play two different roles. The words themselves tell you why.
Vision comes from the Latin vidēre: “to see.” It’s the act of perceiving something clearly. In the 1200s, the word meant something you saw in a dream or a supernatural experience, a picture so vivid that it felt more real than reality. By the 1900s, it had expanded to mean “statesman-like foresight,” the ability to see something that doesn’t exist yet.
Vision is about sight. It’s external. It’s out in front of you. Ahead of you. A destination. A fixed point.
Passion comes from the Latin pati: “to suffer, to endure.” When the word entered English around 1200, it literally referred to the suffering of Christ on the cross. It didn’t mean excitement. It didn’t mean enthusiasm. It meant pain that you were willing to endure because something mattered more than your comfort. It’s the same root word as “patience.” Patience is literally your capacity for suffering.
Passion is about feeling. It’s internal. It’s a force. It’s fuel.
Vision pulls. Passion pushes.
Picture a lighthouse on a rocky coast and a wave rolling toward shore. The lighthouse is vision: fixed, visible, doing nothing but being seen. The wave is passion: raw energy, pushing you through the water. The lighthouse doesn’t move the water. It doesn’t have to. It just has to be visible. The wave will carry you, but without a lighthouse, you don’t know if it’s carrying you toward the harbor or into the rocks.
If you only have passion, you’re a ship with no lighthouse. The waves will carry you, surge after surge, but you’ll end up wherever the ocean takes you.
If you only have vision, you’re a ship with no wave. You can see the lighthouse, but you’re dead in the water. That’s the agency owner with the beautiful strategic plan collecting dust in a Google Doc somewhere.
Being pulled by a vision feels like clarity. You wake up and you know what to work on. You don’t need a motivational podcast to get out of bed. The work might still be hard, but there’s no confusion about why you’re doing it. It feels like walking toward something, the beam from the lighthouse, drawing you in.
Being pushed by passion feels like intensity. There’s energy, but it’s restless. You’re productive, but you’re not sure you’re productive on the right things. You need the excitement to keep going, and when the excitement fades, so does the momentum.
You need both: to be pulled by a vision and pushed by passion.
When you’re being pulled—vision—the friction is behind you. It’s the stuff you’re leaving behind: old clients, old habits, old pricing, the version of your agency you’ve outgrown. It’s uncomfortable, but you’re moving away from it. Every step forward puts more distance between you and the resistance.
When you’re being pushed—passion—the friction is in front of you. It’s everything you haven’t figured out yet. Every obstacle feels like a wall because you don’t know what’s on the other side. You’re running into resistance, and without a clear picture of where you’re headed, you can’t tell if it’s the kind of resistance worth pushing through or a sign you’re going the wrong direction entirely.
Most agency owners think they need more push. They don’t. They need more pull.
You need both forces. But you need them in the right order.
Vision first. Passion second.
Here’s what that looks like in practice.
Don’t start with “what am I passionate about?” Start with “what am I building?” Be specific. Not “I want a successful agency.” That’s a bumper sticker, not a vision.
A real vision sounds something like this: “In three years, I run a 5-person agency that does brand strategy for Series A startups. We charge a minimum of $50k per engagement. I work four days a week and take home $400k a year.”
That’s a vidēre—something you can actually see. You could moodboard it. You could describe it to someone and they’d be able to picture it.
Test your vision: Can you describe a random Tuesday in 2031 for your future agency? What time do you wake up? What’s your first meeting about? Who’s on your team? What kind of client is on the other end of that Zoom call? If you can’t see it, you don’t have a vision. You have a wish.
This is where vision earns its keep. Once you can see where you’re going, it becomes a filter for everything.
Should you take that $8k WordPress project from your cousin’s friend? Does it move you toward the vision? No? Then it’s a no. (Unless you’re in the cash reserve building phase, in which case, yes.)
Should you hire a junior designer or a project manager? Which one does a Tuesday in 2031 assume? A project manager, because in the vision you’re not managing timelines anymore. Done.
Should you launch a podcast? Does the 2031 version of you have a podcast? If yes, great. If no, it’s a distraction dressed up as an opportunity.
Vision makes decisions fast because it gives you something to measure against. Without it, every opportunity looks equal, which means every opportunity looks good, which means you say yes to everything, which means you’re back to riding waves with no lighthouse in sight.
Here’s where passion gets its job back.
Vision is the what and the why.
Passion is the how. How do you get there? Do you build your pipeline through a weekly newsletter, a YouTube channel, or cold outreach on LinkedIn? Do you grow by hiring generalists or by partnering with specialists? Do you establish authority by speaking at conferences or by publishing case studies? Those are all valid paths to the same destination. Passion picks the one you’re most likely to endure long enough for it to work. Which one are you willing to suffer for? Which one are you willing to be patient with?
“What am I excited about?” isn’t the right question when it comes to passion.
Passion is about which suffering you choose because something on the other side of it matters to you.
Writing a weekly newsletter every single Tuesday isn’t exciting. Recording more YouTube videos when your current ones only get a dozen views isn’t exciting. Cold outreach to your 50th startup founder this week isn’t exciting. But if the vision is clear enough—if you can see the thing you’re building—then the suffering has a point. And suffering with a point is the original definition of passion.
When agency owners hit a wall, they often say, “I’ve lost my passion.” Nine times out of ten, that’s not what happened.
What happened is the vision got blurry. You stopped being able to see where you were going, so the suffering stopped feeling purposeful. And purposeless suffering isn’t passion. It’s just pain.
When you feel stuck, don’t try to “reignite your passion.” That's like trying to make the wave bigger. The wave isn't the problem. You just lost sight of the lighthouse.
Instead, sharpen the vision. Go back to that Tuesday in 2031. Can you still see it? Is it still what you want? Has it changed? Get it clear again and the energy comes back, because now you’re not just enduring for the sake of it. You’re being pulled toward something again.
Write down your vision for your agency three years from now. Make it specific enough that you could describe a random Tuesday in 2031: your schedule, your team, your clients, your take-home pay.
Then look at everything on your plate this week. For each thing, ask: does this move me closer to that Tuesday, or is it just a wave I’m riding?
Cut one thing that’s just a wave. Replace it with one thing that gets you closer to that Tuesday.
Seeing Tuesday is the vision pulling you forward. Doing the work to get there—even when it’s not exciting—is the passion pushing you from behind.
That’s both forces, in the right order.
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