A short excerpt of a Simon Sinek talk arguing that data-driven decisions rely on past information and cannot predict the future, whereas values-based decisions enable better future-oriented predictions and longer-term business relationships. Sinek illustrates with client examples contrasting high-spending but abusive customers versus lower-spend, value-aligned customers who build loyalty and referrals.
Chapters
When you make data driven decisions, there's actually no way to predict the future. You can only sort of get the snapshot from now or by looking backwards, right? Because that's where data comes from. Data. Data comes from what has already happened. And you measure the results. And a lot of the companies in good to great are either bankrupt, don't exist anymore, or the CEOs are in jail. And.
True.
And you know, if you think about when you make values decisions, it's actually much easier to make predictions about the future. And it's not dissimilar to one's own business. If you look at a client.
Let'S say somebody gets your number, right? And the person is wealthy and the person spends tons of money on vacations and you're thinking Cha Ching, right? And you get on the phone with this person and this person is abusive and mean and dismissive, can't keep a, you know, doesn't show up to scheduled calls to discuss their vacation, right? And you keep saying to yourself, think of the money, think of the money, think of the money, right?
This person may look good on paper, this person doesn't actually help build your business over time. They're not going to become loyal, they're not going to recommend you and it'll be torturous and sometimes not even feel like it's worth the money versus when you meet someone who gets you your number the same way recommended they call you out of the blue and you know, you get along with them. You could imagine yourself being friends with them, you enjoy the phone calls with them. And they may not spend as much, but clearly they're using virtuoso. They're spending enough.
The long term value of that client is exponentially more regardless of what they spend on that one, that one trip. Because they're going to recommend you, you're going to get more clients, it's going to feel more joyous to your return on Life Metric. And at the end of the day, they'll probably expand what they want to do because I'm going back to what I said before. They feel safe, they feel cared for and they trust you. And when we feel trust, we give more. And I don't mean just more money, though that is true too. We give more of ourselves, we give more time. It.
