PNTV: Make Your Mark by Jocelyn K. Glei (#276)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes TV Today, another great book, make youe Mark by Jocelyn glei and the 99U team, make youe Mark, subtitled the Creative's Guide to Building a Business With Impact. This is the third book in the 99U book series. Last episode we featured the first book in the series which was Manage youe Day to Day. I'll feature the second book in the next episode which is on maximizing your potential. So we kind of go from time management to optimizing your individual potential to this third book, building a business that matters. As a creative individual, how do you create a business that has deep meaning and and significant impact and of course, profits that sustain you in your creative pursuits? Philosopher's Note Bunch of big ideas. I've gotten a lot of requests to do a business series. I'm going to do that. I'm excited about it. I do a lot of this teaching my background. I raised $10 million and I built and sold two different Internet businesses in my past lives. So I integrate a lot of those ideas into these chats. But I'm excited to do so more concretely via business books. So thanks for your suggestions and I'm excited to do that. First big idea on making your mark by creating a cool business is you got to start with purpose. The greatest businesses. And really in this next generation we see more and more purpose driven businesses. It's the first tenet of conscious capitalism that John Mackey and Raj Sisodia talk about in their book Conscious Capitalism. Great. Conscious businesses are purpose driven. We'll do a whole episode on their book. But they also say that they have a multiple stakeholder orientation. Not just the shareholders, but all of their stakeholders. Right. They have conscious leadership and conscious culture. We'll talk about that another time. But the first element is they're purpose driven. Great businesses are purpose driven. They're committed to making a significant impact and changing the world. Now of course, we need profits in order to sustain our business. But the metaphor I love and I forget who came up with this, but the idea is that a business needs profits. No question about that. But it's kind of like a human body. A human body needs red blood cells to live, but we don't live for our red blood cells. So a business needs profits to live. But a business isn't all about profits. It's about making a difference, being, being purpose driven. One of the best ways to discover your purpose that we talk about in the note a little bit. I've used a Little different example that I'm going to use here. But Jim Collins, one of the great business writers, talks about the Hedgehog concept and he says great businesses are created at the nexus of these three circles. And same with great individual lives, right? So you kind of have a business purpose and a personal purpose. And in the book they help us discover what our purpose is. But basically you have the nexus point of these three things. And I've done this exercise dozens and dozens of times literally over the last, I don't know, 15 years or so. What do you love to do? That's our first circle. The second circle is what can you be great at? You have some natural skills on that you can cultivate and you can be truly great at, perhaps even the best in the world at it. That's our second attribute. And then what does the world need a purpose driven business Realize it's not all about us, right? It's not all about, follow your passion well, become a craftsman and figure out what the world needs and what they're willing to pay for. It's the nexus point of your love, what you can be great at and what the world needs that forms the essence of your purpose. So I highly recommend that exercise, or an exercise like it was, what is your business's purpose? What is your purpose? Get clear on that. Be driven from that place. And then the magic of the whole deal is all the data shows that purpose driven, conscious businesses are more profitable at the end of the day, somewhat paradoxically, by not putting it front and center and just doing the right thing, serving as profoundly as they can, they generate more shareholder value. Second, big idea. Dog food. You need to eat it. So there are four different sections in the book. One of them is on creating a product that people actually want to use. And Jocelyn quotes Steve Jobs, the product guy. Right, Just the quintessential product guy who says, I've never seen a great product that wasn't built by a group of passionate individuals building something they actually wanted to use. Stated positively, if we want to create a great product, we need to use it. We need to be excited about using it. We're not building it because we think other people might like it. We're building because we're excited to use it. And in the note, I referenced my own experience when I was running my first business at 25 years old, we'd raised 5 million bucks, going from two employees to 45 employees. And I read Guy Kawasaki's Rules for Revolutionaries. I'll feature that one at some point as well. Great book. Guy was the former chief evangelist at Apple, so he was all about the product. And he said, you've got to eat your own dog food. And in my own business that we were running, this time last year, when we're making a big decision to change our business and to make a significant pivot, I realized, wow, we had 250 professors in our academy. We had produced hundreds of classes, I think over a thousand classes at that point. And I had only taken one of the classes. Yet at the same time, every single morning before I would start my day, when I was more in CEO mode, I would read a philosopher's note that I had written years ago. So I was eating one dog food, but serving another dog food. I wasn't using the product that I was building. Not a good idea. So now, as I go through these philosopher's notes, I'm creating them in large part for me in the future me, I'm reading these books passionately, looking for ideas that can change my life and my family's life, in our community's life. And I'm thinking about the future me, who can come back and read these notes and pull out my favorite big ideas and reflect on this wisdom literally in 3, 5, 10, 25 years. That's what we want to do with our product. Build something that you're excited about and make it usable for not just you, of course, but for your broader community. Eat your own dog food. Are you. Are you eating one dog food and serving another? Are you passionate about what you're creating? If you're not and you're not excited to use it, check in on that third big idea. Jocelyn has a section on serving your customers right and acquiring them and engaging them and enduring relationships with your customers. And she says the real question is not once you build your product, once will they come? That's not the right question. The right question is, will you serve? Are you ready to serve? Once you've built your product, you just started, then it's all about the service. And too many people go for the short hit. And she says, look. And her contributors say, you've got to be in this game for the long run. And building relationships takes time. It's done. One little touch, one little value that you've created in someone's life, day after day, week after week, month in and month out, year in and year out. That's how great relationships are formed. That's how great businesses are formed. And you can only do that if the primary question you're asking yourself is, how can I serve? In the note, I talk about my coach. When I worked with him, Steve Chandler, for a couple years, he taught me profound service. Just love that phrase, profound service. That's what it's all about. And then it's not about customer satisfaction. It. It's about customer astonishment. How do you astonish people with your overwhelming generosity and commitment to serve, where it's just obvious that you're in this because you're purpose driven. You're not just trying to make money, you're trying to affect people's lives and change the world. The greatest praise I get, and it gets me tears in my eyes as I say this is feedback that that's how people experience what I'm doing because that's what I'm all about. How do I overwhelm you with as much goodness that you can take into your life? And if you never pay us a dollar, that's fine. Awesome. You we're still on purpose now. We then provide an even more value for our members. And we hope and we're blessed to have a certain percentage of people who engage with our content to become customers of our business. But that's secondary to serving as profoundly as we possibly can day in and day out. That's our third big idea. Are you ready to serve again and again and again, week in and week out, month in and month out, year in and year out? Fourth big idea is character. The final section is on leadership and how we as creative individuals need to become leaders. And she references a venture guide, Kleiner Perkins. I'm forgetting his name at the moment, who's the head of design at Kleiner Perkins. Genius guy who's done some extraordinary stuff. And he talks about the fact that ultimately it's all about character. And he quotes Nelson Mandela, who says, look, don't judge me by my successes. Judge me by the number of times I've fallen down and I've gotten back up. That's how I want to be measured. That perseverance, that character, is ultimately what's going to help us make our mark. I'm going to be teaching a class on Business 101 soon, and I contributed a chapter to a book that Michael Strong wrote with John Mackey and Muhammad Yunus and a collection of other people. And my chapter was on the fact that you and your consciousness is your company's greatest asset. Your character is your business's greatest asset. And that's what I'm most excited to help you cultivate, is your tenacity, your perseverance, your integrity, your ability to do what you say you're going to do consistently to serve as profoundly as you can. That's the essence of your business. That's what sophisticated adventure guys are investing in and gals are investing in. The ideas are going to change, but the entrepreneur who's willing to change with data that comes in, willing to experiment, willing to fail again and again and again, those are the ones that the investors want to invest in, that the community wants to engage with. Your character matters. Fifth Big Idea is a fun one. This is from the final section Jocelyn created in each of the three books. There's kind of a call to action at the end of the book, which is a fantastic essay by different contributors that just kicks you in the butt and gets you going. In this book, it's by Seth Godin. And Seth Godin is amazing. And one of his big ideas is ship. You're never ready. Just get to market. And he shares some funny stories about the fact that no one's ever ready. The market is never ready for a truly great idea. And Instagram, the first person who used Instagram, what did they do? The whole point of Instagram is sharing photos with other people. But the first person had no one to share it with. They shipped it before they were ready. Alexander Graham Bell, right, creates the telephone. They didn't even know no one wanted to use a telephone. Who wants to use a telephone, right? They don't even know how to use it. And they didn't even have a word to use when they initiated a conversation. Apparently the upper class at that time only started a conversation when they were introduced via someone else, right? So he came up with this word of ahoy. When people would answer the phone, they would say, ahoy. Thomas Edison helped him out and said, try hello. Before that, hello wasn't even, apparently, in our vernacular, whole other conversation. But he shipped the telephone before it was ready. Cars were introduced to the market before they had roads and gas stations. So quit holding on to your ideas, Ship them, bring it to the market before you feel that you are ready. I quote Steven Pressfield and Patricia Ryan Madsen in the note as well. You just need to get out and bring it to the world again and again and again. And Seth Godin is the perfect embodiment of this. He produces a new post, a blog post, I believe, every single day. And he has for I don't know how many years. And it's just amazing. It inspired me to do what I'm doing. Ship, ship, ship, ship. There are a ton of days where I don't feel ready. I don't feel as energized as I want to feel in order to do the work that I want to do, but I do it anyway. And I ship again and again and again before I'm ready. And what I see is that my little comfort zone and skill level continues to expand. But if I sat there and tried to get perfectly ready, I would never do anything and I would never get feedback and the ability to improve over time. So start before you're ready. Remember Ahoy. Too funny. Your character matters. Cultivate it daily. Serve. How will you serve? That's the relevant question. Eat your own dog food. If you're not creating something that you're passionate about consuming, you may want to reconsider how much energy you're putting into that and find something you're actually fired up about. Then your purpose. The nexus point of what you love, what you can be great at, and what the world truly needs. Be purpose driven. Take care of the bottom line, obviously, but focus on how you can create an extraordinary impact. Use your gifts and greatest service to the world. That's a quick look at make youe Mark Like I said in the intro, I loved it. Recommend all three of the books. Manage your day to day. Maximize your potential in this one. Make youe Mark and Check Out 99U Amazing Site with a collection of really cool wisdom. Thanks Joselyn and 99U team. I hope you enjoyed and look forward to sharing more. Have an awesome day. See you. Hi, this is Brian. I hope you enjoyed that PNTV episode. A lot of people don't know all the stuff I do beyond these free videos I share on YouTube, so I thought I'd do a quick video to give you an overview of our membership program that you can get access to and get a ton of other stuff. So here's a quick look. Ten bucks a month. Join the Optimal Living Membership program. You get instant access to 250 philosopher's notes on some of the best Optimal Living books out there. Old school classics, positive psychology, modern stuff, Mindfulness, Peak performance, purpose, neuroscience, wealth, etc. And what you may not know is that in addition to the PNTV episodes, I create PDFs on all these great books. So six page PDFs. Let's take a look at one of them. Joseph Campbell, you want to figure out how to live your hero's journey? Well, this is a great place to start. I basically pull out my favorite big ideas, riff on them, connect them to other books and other ideas, and help you apply this wisdom to Your life today. That's what the PDF looks like again. We have 250 of these on all these different great books. And then I record those PDFs as an MP3 so you can listen to that MP3 while you're on a walk or working out or doing some errands or whatever that is. Philosopher's Notes. A lot going on there. And then in addition to Philosopher's Notes, you get access to optimal living classes. 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