Being in business isn’t about creating money – it’s about creating meaning.

Guy Kawasaki told me that. Not personally. I saw it on a video presentation.

If you are doing something that has meaning to you, there’s a fair chance it will have meaning for someone else.

And that’s where the money comes from.

The best result? If the thing you’re doing not only has a meaning, but addresses a yearning.
You see, people will give up all sorts of things to feed a yearning.
The life they have. The wife they thought they wanted. Jobs. Sleep. Self-respect.

To yearn is to know desire.

If it answers a yearning inside yourself , you may go unfed but you’ll never go unhappy.

If it addresses a yearning inside your customers, you won’t go unfed.

Discovering what your customers yearn for – and then figuring a way to give it to them – that’s a business model right there.

But, it’s often not what they say they want.
Rather, it’s what they lie awake at night dreaming about. Find a way to find that out.
(Just be sure to ask their permission before slipping under the doona with a notepad and a microphone.)

Because, if you can answer a yearning – or, better yet, create one – they’ll gladly give up what they have to get what you’ve got.

It’s all about The Yearning.

Before looking at your business and asking about The Earn – ask about The Yearn.

You’ll be glad you did.

 

Originally published by Brand Clarity, July, 2010