Best friend, peer, and colleague of mine, Angel Guo recently wrote a post on her takeaways from Class 18: Sauder Alumni.

Her two main ideas revolve around the importance of being open minded and taking note of the organizational structure pertaining to one’s company of choice.

In this post, however, I want to emphasize another key idea I assume is crucial in the life of an entrepreneur: the ability to follow one’s heart.

I took the liberty to ask jovial superstar Ian Crosby, CEO of Bench Accounting, how his charisma had (or had not) guided and supported him in his rather serious career. His response? He deems it a “necessity” formulated over time; both him and Nolan Watson (CEO of Sandstorm Gold) admit to throwing on their sweatpants and ripping out their contacts after work. Crosby also confesses he’s a hardcore gamer, something I admittedly rushed to tell my mother, whoops.

As for my takeaways? Follow your heart: you can be an accountant by day and gamer by night, you can become Canada’s #1 CPA accountant and still dive into the mining industry.

This lovely image, retrieved from a teenage girl’s romance Tumblr (whoops again) effectively recaps the emotion and notions experienced by entrepreneurs worldwide; ultimately, the pursuit of innovation can be defined impossible, risky, or pointless depending on who you ask –

but give it a try or you’ll never know how far you’ll go.