What’s your reason for doing what you do?
How to use that reason to find motivation and direction and engage with your marketplace
Why did you choose the business or profession you’re in – and not something else?
All of the effort and heartache and the joy of when it works are so closely tied in to your reason for choosing it.
Research suggests that on the inside people often chose their business or profession, in their words: “Because I had to.” Often people interpret this as a lack of choice or perhaps a kind of compulsion. We find that when you dig a little, there’s usually a great story involved, of determination, resourcefulness and dreams for the future.
If you look at that story as an outsider, once things have clicked into place and people understand the reason behind it, it tells you lots of things about what’s important to the founders and the people around them – and what they want to leave behind, their legacy, what they want to be remembered for.
And one of the really brilliant things about uncovering the reason, is that the story behind it and the legacy you’re aiming for is a great way of standing out in your marketplace. It says something unique about you and your business and lets other people feel the strength of your “why”. Clients and customers who feel aligned with your reason will engage with your business in a deep and enduring way.
The exercise we sometimes use to work with the reason behind your business is the Blue Plaque Game – that’s mine in the picture. To think about your own, imagine what a third person might have to say about you?
You might also like this link, to a Telegraph article about “Britain’s Best Blue Plaques”.
