Know Your Why

One of the most common questions we get asked in business is “What do you do?”

You go to a networking event, you’re chatting to someone, you’re approaching a new customer and they always ask “what do you do?”

“What do you do?” is about job descriptions and activities that set you up to give the kind of answer that doesn’t sell what you do, it doesn’t motivate or inspire anyone (especially you).

There is a better question…

The question that will really help is “Why are you doing it?”
By the way, throughout this course, we’ll develop your question formation skills, because asking great questions will help you make faster progress, build your resilience and ultimately build a better business.

Anyway back to the ‘why’… there are some questions we want you to consider.
Firstly, Imagine you’ve succeeded in building the business you want:

What would life be like for you?
Where would you be living?
What would you be wearing?
How would you be spending your time?
What would your holidays be like?
What would it be like working in – and on – your business?
How would your friends and family react to your success?
How would you give back and who would you help?

Here’s the important bit.
Our brains work through stimulus from our senses. We can build a really strong vision of ‘why’ by paying attention to – and then amplifying the ‘data inputs’ from our senses. If you were to answer the questions above, what would you see? What would you hear? What would you feel?

What tastes and smells would you experience, tucking into that delicious meal at your Caribbean hotel? Pay attention to these visions and revisit them regularly; notice the colours, the sounds and how it feels. It helps you build the inner desire to get things done and create your business! And it’s fun.
As you proceed through this course, we want you to build this picture using all of your senses because there are going to be some challenges. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it, but strengthening your ‘why’ will help you navigate the challenges, build your resilience and ultimately help make your business succeed.

If you have a large enough ‘why’ then any ‘how’ is surmountable.
‘Why’ gives you the motivation to get out of bed in the morning and make things happen. The ‘why’ doesn’t just have to be personal gain either. Some of us find that a ‘why’ outside of ourselves can be more motivational. For example, Alan’s ‘why’ is to help other people, to change the way entrepreneurship is taught, to have an impact on the people we teach. This is what gets him out of bed in the morning. (That and a terrifying amount of coffee.)

It doesn’t really matter what your ‘why’ is, just as long as you have one that’s strong enough to get you over the obstacles that are coming towards you as you start-up.
Write down your answers. Imagine your answers (your imagination has no limits).

We met another cake maker at a recent course and he wasn’t that inspiring when he described his business. In fact, he was quite boring! After three or four days of the course he revealed why he was building the business he had a vision of, which was a cake business with no refined sugars at all that kept people healthy and the ‘why’ was that he was getting fatter eating normal cake and needed to change his diet. He had built his business to tackle a problem he had in his own life and had a compelling ‘why.’ The ‘why’ inspired us to taste his cakes. The ‘why’ bought us into what he was doing. The cakes and brownies were DELICIOUS! We needed a compelling ‘why’ to get us engaged, then we wanted to try the cakes.