People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it . . .
July of 2008 changed my life for a number of reasons. One of them was I met Simon Sinek at an Entrepreneur’s Organization university experience, and was exposed to his concept of The Golden Circle.
“This little idea explains why some ideas and some organizations are able to inspire, and others not,” he said. And I listened. He said, “Inspired leaders and inspired organizations all think and act from the inside out,” he pointed out—something obvious now, but also something I had been oblivious to.
The idea is that we are accustomed to communicate features, or whats—nouns. Instead we should communicate why’s, or causes. The critical idea is that people in every industry buy, instinctively, the why behind the what. People do business with those who share similar why’s—in other words, it’s all about values. “People do the things that they believe.”
So how do you juice your industry leadership messages to take advantage of this?
I’m sharing Simon’s TED talk below, and hope it inspires you to think about they why inherent in your business. Write2Market uses Simon’s book, Start with Why, to help build our clients’ industry leadership messages around this core concept of “why.”
So here’s why . . . pay particular attention to the Law of Diffusion of Innovation about 75% of the way through…