Short advisory monologue telling business owners they do not need to manufacture a grand mission for their company; it's acceptable to run a business you enjoy (e.g., around food) so long as you add more value than you extract. The speaker aims to relieve pressure on entrepreneurs and normalize profit-driven, honest businesses.
Everyone's chasing mission driven businesses. Here's a thought. Maybe it's okay to build a business because you like food and food costs money. Not everything has to be a movement. This came out of a conversation that I was having with a client and they were really frustrated. They were struggling because they're like, ah, I just, I need to come up with this greater purpose. Just the stuff they were coming up with was like, we help humanity thrive through all this stuff. And I'm like, but you don't, right? You don't. You've got a great product and it delivers amazing value, but you don't have to pretend like you're helping humanity thrive. You're putting people on Mars. It's okay just to help this sliver of the market, to have them pay you money so that you and the people who work for you can eat. The media made us believe that every single business has to be this movement and mission based thing. And it just doesn't. And this is the lesson. All we need to do is to add more value than we extract. So just keep that in mind. All right? If you're adding more than you take, then you got every reason to exist.
