I recently had the pleasure of a having deep dive discussion with a very successful young man, who I now consider a friend, who started his business a bit more than 10 years ago. He commented on how his life had gone through a period of personal transition – which in turn resulted in incredible growth in his business. When asked about that change he commented it was simply focusing on his “why”.

Rephrasing that – by focusing on his WHY – he grew his business.

Maybe that sounds too simplistic to you, but in my view and experience – it isn’t. His response reminded me of the philosophies expressed by thought leader and author Simon Sinek. About 15 years ago he wrote a book title “Start With Why – How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action” which profoundly changed my paradigms.

Every business in the world knows what they do – most know how they do it (unique value proposition), but very few truly understand WHY they do it – their cause, their belief – their passion. And profit is always a result – never the “why”.

Inspired leaders and inspired organizations regardless of size or industry all think act and communicate in reverse order – why, how, what. They “start with why”.
To illustrate the importance of why – Sinek compared Samual Pierpont Langley with Orville and Wilbur Wright. Both were laboring to create powered controllable flight. But that’s pretty much where the similarities stopped.

Langly, an American aviation pioneer, astronomer and physicist had ALL of the traditional components we think of as required for success – capital, talent and market conditions. He was highly capitalized with a $50,000 grant from the War Department of the United States (that’s the equivalent of $1.8M today), he hired the best minds possible to work with him, and the market conditions were incredible – the world wanted him to succeed.

So, whereas Langly had ALL the requisite conditions – Orville & Wilbur Wright had literally did not. They ran a bicycle repair shop – they literally had no money. Neither of the them even graduated high school.

To bring this back to the conversation with my friend – Langley was in this to be famous and to be rich. Orville and Wilbur were driven by a belief, a cause, a passion. They believed they could change the course of society if they could figure out this machine.

My friend was exactly right. “The goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe.”