A tale of two passions: a passion for the 'profession' and a passion to 'develop' the venture'

Understanding how entrepreneurs self-identify their role and experience passion through exercising that role is of particular importance to understand firm heterogeneity. Our study identifies how professional identity, in addition to their identity as an entrepreneur influences their passion when striving for goals. Analyzing data from 205 nursing practices, we find that those who run their own nursing practice, both identify themselves with the professional community they belong to and the entrepreneurial community they had entered. Both identities shape the way they see their roles in the venture, and lead to the experience of passion. Professional passion encourages the entrepreneur to strive for goals that are centered around services offered to the client, whereas development passion fuels the ambition to realize financial goals. Service oriented goals partially mediate the impact of professional passion on profitability in a negative way, although the overall impact on profitability stays positive. Development passion leads to venture growth, but is not mediated by individual financial goals. We discuss the implications of our findings for the literatures on founder identity, passion and professions.