People always say to find your passion, do what you love and find a way to make people pay you for it; “Choose a job you love and you’ll never have to work a day in your life”. Makes sense at face value but the problem is that most people don’t have or don’t know what their passion is. Passion is when you can’t go to sleep and when you do, you can’t wait to wake because you want to be up as soon as possible to work on your passion. Passion is when you’re doing what’s considered “work” and the hours fly by but you don’t notice because you’re wholly submerged, consumed by it. Passion is when you’d do the activity for free; even pay others to be able to do it, because it’s exactly what you want to do and every fibre of your being is ignited in the process. How many people can claim to exist in that state, especially for their job?

Make no mistake — passion is not permanent by any means. It’s a wildfire which erupts quickly and burns for as long as there’s fuel and can simmer to ashes as quickly. My passion was aggressive inline skating that started when I was 12 and still smolders to this day but its moved to the backburner. What fires me up out of bed these days is the desire to inspire and enable others to do what they love. I have seen my friends spend a fair few years in the working world and while the majority of them and by extension, Singaporeans, enjoy their jobs and would tick at least “somewhat satisfied” on a feedback survey, there is no flame in their eyes. They might be in challenging jobs that pay well but they lack complete fulfilment.

I found my professional passion 5 years ago, when I started getting massive hangovers. As most "hangover cures" in the market were totally ineffective, I built my own brand, undertook 5 years of R&D, and today NO RAGRETS has come into existence, simply because I felt passionate about the concept. Everything I do now is to inspire and enable others to do what they love. I’m constantly looking for more people who are fueled full throttle by the roar of their engines, to share their spirit in hopes that it might spread. Profit has hardly crossed my mind (though it probably should, to make sure I don’t bankrupt myself doing this). I didn’t need to brainstorm and write down 10 business ideas; I knew this was The One and went all in straightaway on it.

Work is the base activity and the setting decides the emotions it elicits. Work done for something that you don’t believe in results in stress, while work done towards a cause you do believe in is called passion. So to those still looking for their passion, the question to be answered is: What do you believe in?