Trending
The old formula: love + business = disaster.
The new formula: love + business = brilliance.
Love is a word business schools—not to mention consulting and advisory firms—shy away from. We are taught to make our case with value propositions. With analysis. With cold-hard logical facts.
But here’s the thing.
No matter how we decide to (analytically) justify it, we humans make decisions based on emotion.
We make flash-point choices, sometimes with tens of thousands or even millions of dollars hanging in the balance, based on how it makes us feel. Strong, proud, excited, smart…
So what’s love got to do with it?
Plenty as researchers have proven over and over and over again.
Your sweet-spot clients need to feel the love. What entrepreneur/angel investor Wendy Lea calls “an intense feeling of connection”.
They need to feel you care about what you do. Not just by your words, but also through your actions: what you share, how you share it, how you evangelize for your big idea.
They need to feel you care—that you actually feel for them. That you’re focused on how you can best serve and even delight them in ways both professional and personal.
They need to feel your love.
Love as in your drive—your calling—to plow through obstacles and face down fears because you have a bigger purpose.
Because when you’re not afraid to show your love—even when it’s not perfect—that’s when your work and your business start to change. When your trust opens new relationships or sparks a re-flowering of those beginning to stale.
It’s not what they taught us in school or the big (and small) firms where we learned our craft.
But mixing love with our business is how we become brilliant.
How you become a lustrous, shining light in your world.
How you build a tribe that shines that light into corners you only dared dream of reaching solo.
How you build a sustainable business that produces work that matters far beyond yourself alone.
Love + business = the new path to success.