If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my many years as an entrepreneur, it’s the importance of starting from the heart.
Too often, when we want to start a new business, we just look at promising business opportunities: What’s the value chain, where’s the money going, how can we capture a big chunk of it? Nothing wrong with a promising business opportunities, of course. Except we could aim so much higher.
Seriously. Some day, not too long from now, you’ll be dead. At that point, the money doesn’t matter. At all. The only thing that will matter as you’re about to die is how much you gave. How much love did you give your family. How much did you love yourself? What positive impact did you have on the world in your lifetime?
So forget about the money. Just let money be the largely irrelevant little pieces of paper or numbers in a computer that they are, and start focusing on how you want to uniquely contribute to the world. And often you’ll find that you’ll be richly rewarded. You’ll have all the money you need. But don’t do it for the money. Do it for the contribution to make this world a better place for all. Do it from the heart.
When you start from the heart, three things happen: First, the vision gets bigger. Second, you’re more likely to succeed. And third, you’ll be fulfilled.
Why? The vision gets bigger because it’s no longer limited by your egos, which tends to think only in terms of what you already know is possible.
It’s more likely to succeed because it will be deeply meaningful to you, which means that you will be much more powerful and inspiring to your customers, employees, investors, partners, media, spouses, and kids.
I’ts fulfilling because you’re doing something that’s deeply meaningful to you, you’re fulfilling your life’s purpose. You’ll be able to live your life fully on your own terms.
That’s the realization behind Start from the Heart.
It may seem obvious to start from the heart, yet time and again I see this neglected. I see new ventures launched and funded with due dilligence covering market size, competitors, and barriers to entry, but with no due dilligence of the heart.
I contend that starting from the heart is the best correlation to success you’re going to get.
Start from the Heart is an online training program and support network that will take you through the process of finding that vision, overcoming whatever is preventing you from seeing it and pursuing it, and then take you all the way through making that vision a reality.
Sign up now to be the first to know when Start from the Heart lanuches.
I have a couple Kinesis keyboards, a tray, and a foot switch that plugs into the Kinesis keyboard. I’ve stopped using it, because I use a laptop as my only computer, and the keyboard it comes with, so if anyone’s interested, those items are for sale. Get in touch.
I’m putting together a product to help aspiring entrepreneurs find out which business to start, and I’m looking for people to do a trial run of the process with me.
The background is that in order for a business to be a success, not just financially but also in a way that’s personally satisfying for the founder, the business has to do something that’s deeply meaningful that plays to your strengths.
The process will take you through a series of exercises and material designed to discover your qualities, strengths, activities you love, people you love to work with, etc., as well as overcoming the ways in which we prevent ourselves from discovering and pursuing this vision.
Contact me at lars@pinds.com if you want to test the process with me.
Sign up to be the first to know when the product launches.
Just came across this gem from Tony Robbins: “Anthony Robbins has dedicated his life to creating and implementing strategies to enhance the desired lifestyle of individuals and organizations all around the world. ” (Emphasis mine.)
It’s good to know that that he won’t enhance your lifestyle, merely your desired lifestyle.
It’s most likely an unintentional error, but the reality is that he tends to fuel the desire more than the fulfillment of that desire, so it’s disturbingly accurate. Freudian slip?
I happened across some internet marketing sites today, specifically something called Product Launch Formula (linked by the otherwise esteemed Copyblogger), and something called the Butterfly Marketing Manuscript.
I feel dirty.
Check out this review of the Butterfly Marketing stuff. One technique is a page pretending to be something it isn’t. “The person landing at the page thinks they have bypassed the payment part of the membership site and have been given direct access to the members area.” Truly deceptive.
And the site that sells the product that the review is about his plenty of lies, including a claim that the introductory price of $97 is about to go up to $197 (the review is from 2006, so if he were going to raise it, he probably would have raised it by now).
And when you try to leave the page, an alert box shows up saying “Wait! A live agent would like to talk to you about last minute savings. Please hit ‘Cancel’ on the next window to remain on this page…”. That also seems to be a lie. It’s not about last minute savings. Everyone trying to close the page gets that alert, and probably have for years.
I’m all for being smart about how you market things, online or off. But there must be a way to do it that isn’t deceptive, that doesn’t leave people like me with a foul taste in my mouth.
It reminds me of how I was told that Tony Robbins upsells at the end of his live events. It’s the last day of a multiday event, with not enough sleep and hardly time to eat or drink, let alone think. At this moment, he asks you to think about all the things you hate about yourself and your life, and really visualize what will happen if you stay on this path for another 10, 20 or maybe 50 years, what’s the worst that can happen? Really paint the details. People start breaking down, there’s crying, sobbing, the children have long ago been escorted out of the room. And then Tony tells you that he has another live event that’s even more expensive, where he’s going to fix all of those problems for you, and you’ll get a huge discount if you only sign up today.
I hear it works. People pull out their credit cards en masse. But it sure as hell feels dishonest.
There must be another way.
Would Apple do it like this? Would Google? 37signals?
If the product is worth its price of admission, leave the price of admission alone, and let people chose to buy it when they find the time to be right. Sure, offer a discount every now and then to speed things up. But go easy on the emotional Hammond organ.
Any signs of a backlash yet?
I’ve tried to schedule meetings with a handful of people over the past few weeks, who haven’t been able to find a spot in their calendars in the next 4-6 weeks.
It struck me as distinctly uncool. I sincerely hope it’ll never happen to me.
It would seem to me that either you decide that someone is not worth meeting with, and then you flat out and honestly say that you cannot make that a priority. But if people are worth meeting with, I’d want to be able to setup a meeting within at the most 3 days. Sure, sometimes you’re traveling or busy with an all-day conference. But that’s the exception, not the rule.
For the rule, I hope to be able to be spontaneous and move quickly. If you have to wait 6 weeks for a quick tete-a-tete, it’s impossible to maintain momentum. If my calendar was booked solid for the next 6 weeks, I’d die inside.
Is this naive?
Adding to the discussion about startups and penny-pinching on Techmeme, I concur with Dave Winer, and want to add this:
A product that people understand and want is crucial.
But something equally important, at a different level: It has to be something that’s deeply meaningful to you.
If you start a business you don’t fully care about, something that’s a mental construct rather than a personal imperative, something that’s not truly alive in you, if you will, something you’re doing just because it seems like a nice business opportunity, then you’re just not going to give it everything you’ve got, and you’re not going to keep going when it gets difficult and be creative when that’s required, which is about 20 times a day.
And by giving it your all, I do not mean working 80-hour weeks. Au contraire! Hot products and profitable startups come from creativity, and creativity requires stillness and peace, so you’ll be able to hear the voice of your inspiration through the cacophony of startup life.
p.s. I’m working on a simple and elegant way to help you discover what’s really meaningful to you, if you’re one of the many people for whom that isn’t totally obvious. Stay tuned.
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When you’re selling through some kind of sales channel – a partner, an agent, super markets, stores, OEMs, value-added resellers, etc. – it’s common to want them to increase sales for you, that is, to create demand.
But demand creation is always going to be your job. Demand creation, also called lead generation, is the process of getting people interested in your product or service and get them to make an initial contact: Go into a store looking for your product, get on the phone with your reseller, etc. You can’t leave that to your sales channel, no matter how badly you would like to.
The sales channel can convert leads into paying customers, if you have set it up right so the leads that your demand creation activities generate match the capabilities of the sales channel. They may add value by handling the relationship, adding services on top, and all kinds of other things.
It’s especially common for technician-come-entrepreneurs, such as programmers, photographers, writers, etc., to want ot hire an agent to do the heavy lifting of generating more sales for them.
But in order to increase demand, you must have a clear positioning, a credible and compelling story to tell. In short, you must get your marketing straight so people will know when to buy and when to recommend you.
And that’s your job. No-one can do it for you.
(But I have a program in the works that can help you. Stay tuned.)
