Bill Canady explains why business goals need to be framed in money, not meaning. He uses Columbus pitching gold and spices to investors, then compares spices to salt: both preserve food, but spices add flavor, the differentiator that sells.
I thought we'd talk a little about what it means to get a goal. The big difference between a life goal and a business goal is that the first may require some sort of spiritual or metaphysical self-examination, where the second requires nothing more than some fluency in the language of business, which is the language of money. Take Christopher Columbus. Now, proof of this was his audacious self-proclaimed goal of finding a new world. No, Columbus had in fact a straightforward business goal, and he always framed it to potential backers in the language of business. In his day, the breakthrough must-have products were gold and spices. Now, while spices given gold a real run for its money, spices were essential to making food last longer by retarding spoilage. You could use a load of salt for this purpose, but the problem with that was whatever the food in question, salt tasted exactly like salt. And like salt, spices retard spoilage. Unlike salt, spices made the flavors better. In marketing, we call this a relevant differentiator.
