Studies and world-class examples show that passion remains an integral part of entrepreneurial success. Without it, entrepreneurs may find it difficult to overcome the long hours, as well as the turbulences that come with building a business from the ground up. A founder’s passion contributes to increases in buy-in rate from investors and the general public.

It was the late Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, that once said “People with passion can change the world for the better.” He attributed much of his success to dedication and passion for what he was doing.

It’s taking that first leap and getting started that is often the hardest. It’s not uncommon for entrepreneurs to fall ‘accidentally’ into their businesses. Many can turn their hobbies or side gigs into a full-time income. However, this requires a bit of fear elimination. Dismantling the constructs that prevent us from pursuing something, just because it seems uncertain. Becoming an entrepreneur not only takes passion but also grit and experimentation to find the right fit.

One entrepreneur drew inspiration from throwing her son’s first birthday party and turned it into a multi-digit full-time entertainment business. Arisineh Hoonanian is the CEO of Little Artist Party. The Los Angeles-based party planning company attracts the likes of well-known names such as the Kardashians, Jessica Simpson, and Lily Ghalichi.

Her advice to aspiring entrepreneurs is to cultivate their passion and don’t be afraid of using creativity to inspire their future businesses. You never know where it can lead to.

Identify your Passion and Become Meticulous About It

Let’s assume your passion is sports. You desire to create a career that has something to do with sports. Now, go attempt to find a job with that in mind.

The fact is, you’re going to have a difficult time because you’ve failed to narrow down your passion to something tangible. What is it you enjoy about sports? Is there a particular sport you favor? Is there a specific element you want to influence? 

Start by identifying something that brings you joy, that you have a fair degree of aptitude in, and most importantly brings value to others. Now your goal is to become the best at it. And to become the best at something, you need to be meticulous about the details and not let yourself become a ‘generalist’. 

Little Artist Party went from throwing one birthday party per weekend to now being booked for 20 on average. This monumental growth didn’t come overnight. A lot of the success, Arsineh attributes to long hours and meticulous preparation. Despite having an entire event planning team, Arsineh ensures every single detail is executed to her standard of quality for every party. 

It’s this level of dedication to quality and customer satisfaction that has driven countless testimonials and allowed the company to expand its services. If Arsineh didn’t have the passion for kids and cultivating the best experiences for these precious years of their lives, it would have been extremely hard for her to pull off this level of execution. It wasn’t just parties she wanted to plan, these were niche parties catered towards challenging the creativity of kids.

Let your Passion be Showcased in the Branding

People will often buy into the entrepreneur, more than they do the product. Don’t be afraid to showcase what you’re passionate about and what you’re working towards. Social media can help business owners establish a more genuine connection with their audience. 

Your passion can be embodied through your branding and messaging. For example, the Little Artist Party website is exuberant with bright colors, images, and headings that reflect creativity, joy, and trust. Its logo is a paint palette reflecting its value of letting kids express their innermost creativity through play. 

“Focusing on marketing is also a big part of expressing my passion. Without having a platform to show our creativity and events, it would have been difficult to present our vision,”, Arisineh comments.

Find the Right People that Align with Your Passion 

It takes a village to build a successful business, but if that village is comprised of the wrong fits, it might come down like the Jenga game.

When you’re ready to take that step to bring on people to assist you in building your company, make sure you’re explicit about your passion and outcomes. People that share your vision are more likely to be more loyal and have higher performance than those who aren’t. It also reduces potential conflict and tension in the workplace if everyone is aligned on the same goals.

Allocating responsibilities can be difficult for an entrepreneur, but is necessary for growth. As Little Party Artist grew, the additional staff and event planners brought on helped monumentally in sustaining the level of quality Arsineh wanted for the parties. She’s especially keen on taking the time to find the right people for the task.

Conclusion

Betting on passion alone won’t get you to the finish line of starting a business, however, it can give you the fuel to persist in the long haul. Passion can also help entrepreneurs identify what they value and set up standards for their businesses. These standards can be reflected across their branding, marketing, to their teams, and final product. The more you hone down on your passion, the greater quality you can produce for your customers, and the more likely you will achieve successful outcomes for your business.

The post Personal Success Tips from the Go-to Celebrities Kids Party CEO & Mom appeared first on Grit Daily News.

Grit Daily: What’s behind the Double A Labs name? 

Amber Allen: Double A is me. Amber Allen. Daddy always said you can lose it all and get it back, but not your reputation. I used my name to ensure we always upheld the right values as a company. We used to be Double A Events, but would always integrate technology into every experience. Our first digital world was built in 2017 for a hybrid experience we designed for Blizzard. Fans were able to immerse themselves in the on-site experience from home. Creating a metaverse for the average user was still a bit before its time, but the insights along the way are all baked into our new platform, Double A. 

Along the way, we changed our company name to Double A Labs to better represent who we are — a team of engineers, analysts, creatives, producers, and project managers. Double A Labs felt more fitting for a company that is innovating and creating technology to optimize experiences and engagement.

Grit Daily: For the uninitiated, what’s your background as a ‘gamer girl’?

Amber Allen: I grew up a bonafide gamer girl in East Texas. Mario Bros, Zelda, Halo, Mortal Kombat – you name it, I played it. I’ve always loved to play games. I still do. I’m even having a board game night with my friends tonight. Gaming gave me an outlet to think in new ways and connect with people who live all over the world. I found my people through games. This sparked my desire to be a part of the industry and figure out a way to leverage technology to solve complex problems and connect people. I worked in the gaming industry and when I started Double A Labs, we focused on serving gaming and tech companies. Being a gamer girl prepared me to expect the unexpected and attack problems head on! 

Grit Daily: How do you know where to start when you “build a virtual world?”

Amber Allen: The biggest benefit of a metaverse platform for a brand is to get direct feedback and insights from your audience in real time as they connect, learn, play and collaborate! In order to build a virtual world, you need to first understand your audience’s needs and the use case for your metaverse. Are you selling a product, training a team, producing a brand experience or all of the above?  Virtual Worlds can look and feel a million different ways. Our metaverse platform is focused on strengthening human connection and boosting productivity. It turns work into play. Many people automatically think Fortnite when someone says virtual world, but the reality is that businesses are starting to find great value in integrating virtual worlds into their workflow. Here are some questions we ask clients when they’re mapping out their metaverse:

• What are your overall goals for the project? 
• What data is most important to collect along the way? 
• Who is your audience, and how tech-savvy are they? Understanding the devices your audience is most comfortable using, and getting buy-in along the way, is essential for user adoption.  
• What current tools and assets would you like to integrate into the experience (e.g., collaboration tools, CRM, vIdeos, white papers, survey tools, 3D assets, etc.)?

Next, evaluate which platform would best match your audience, needs and goals.

Grit Daily: What is one of the wildest “use cases” you’ve been asked for so far?

Amber Allen: We are working with a team called TRISH out of Baylor University who focuses on space travel safety. I am a big advocate of STEAM, instead of just STEM, and their world combines Science, Technology, and Art for everyone from space enthusiasts to NASA engineers. Their goal is to make their white papers and hard to understand research more fun, inviting, and easy to understand. What’s a better way to educate people about space travel safety than a space shuttle metaverse! What’s wild is how cool it is to bridge the gap across many audiences to tell a powerful and important story.

Grit Daily: Sight and sound seem more obvious. How do you evoke taste, smell, and touch, at a “hybrid” or full-on Metaverse? 

Amber Allen: We’ve designed events before for clients like YouTube, Blizzard, and Dell where we sent items to influencers to accompany their experience so when certain things happened digitally, the physical products could enhance the moment in real life. Join a virtual cocktail party and share a cocktail – watch a screening and eat some popcorn. Combining digital moments with real-world senses can definitely heighten the experience. We’ve also executed hundreds of hybrid events and found that empowering the at-home audience with tools to impact the live event gave them a sense of experiencing it directly. For instance, we produced an interactive obstacle video experience where the at-home audience could vote on what would be thrown at the subject. They could then watch it happen live on Twitch. Bringing together the physical and the digital is the best way to amplify your reach and engage a much larger audience.

Grit Daily: What do you love most about your job?

Amber Allen: I love building tools that empower creators to create! By making Double A super simple and easy to access, it bridges the gap across generations and demographics for all people to find ways to connect, have a voice and share their vision. Building a product that helps bridge the understanding of the metaverse is my passion.

Didn’t catch Amber at Grit Daily House 2022 during SxSW? Check out her panel with Celsius Network’s Tal Bentov, Twitch and Fortnite gamer Cynthia Bahati, and Miami NFT Week’s Julie Lamb.

The post Amber Allen Gives You a Glimpse of Your Future Metaverse appeared first on Grit Daily News.

When you roll the inception of the Community back, it’s no coincidence that the bright light of change was borne of Phan’s darkest day. Undaunted, she stayed strong, “Every hardship that you go through, every mistake that you make, leads you to who you are.”

Employed by Fortune magazine, Phan leveraged her expertise in marketing and operations to drive high growth. Around one year ago, the executive team at Fortune tasked her with mobilizing a team to launch a new business – within six months. A formidable task on a good day made impossible with the onset of a pandemic.

Phan ramped up quickly, rapidly hiring and expanding her team. Then, without warning, barely out of the gate, Phan was given her 30-day notice and told to release her new team. Devastated, she questioned everything, “Whenever I tried to use other people’s models, I’d get stuck.” So she realized that she needed to stick to her own advice, “Focus on your values. Focus on your purpose.” To recalibrate, Phan anchored herself in her four core values: family, friends, faith and helping people.

The pandemic started and I had my a-ha moment: I realized that I needed to focus on my values.

Lan Phan, founder of Community of Seven

Turning things around, when asked how people can help Phan, she requested that people sign up for events at Community of Seven and to join in the conversation. Participating in the dialogue can spur innovation. Collaboration with other community members can drive change. Phan shared that her life-long philosophy was at the core of her new venture. “My philosophy has always been that people are like raindrops; what we do seems small and inconsequential but when we come together, we become the ocean. And the ocean creates ripples and the ripples create waves. This is how movement happens and how things change.”

Lan Phan shared her journey, her insights and her message of inspiration on our Grit Daily Like a Boss podcast. Find it anywhere content is streamed. It’s snappy, informative – and uplifting.

The post Aligning Purpose Passion and People to Drive Change appeared first on Grit Daily News.