by Paul Jarvis
Virgin founder Richard Branson summed up purpose nicely: “Success in business is no longer just about making money or moving up the corporate ladder. More and more, one of the biggest indicators of success is purpose.”
If your business is fully aligned with your purpose, you’ll be more motivated to keep at it, even during the tough moments; your workforce will turn over less, since employees won’t have to leave their values at home when they head to work; and your customers will become and remain loyal. Your purpose will also serve as a litmus test for all your business decisions, enabling you to make smart, prompt, and more confident choices in all areas of your work.
What happens if you build your business without ever thinking about your purpose? What if you’d rather focus exclusively on acquisition and higher profits? Those activities can definitely seem more rewarding. But the more we busy ourselves with work and fail to consider why we’re doing it in the first place, the more likely we are to realize (often far too late) that we’re not enjoying what we’ve worked so hard to build. And if you’re the one building your own company of one, you’re the one who has to rebuild and change it when things don’t work. It’s so much easier to first clarify your purpose, even with just a quick check-in, to make sure it aligns (or still aligns) with where your business is heading.
John Kotter and James Heskett report in their book Corporate Culture and Performance that purpose-based, values-driven companies outperform their counterparts in stock price by a factor of twelve. They have found that, without a purpose, management has a harder time rallying employees to increase productivity and customers have a harder time connecting to the company. Their decade-long research shows that purpose creates positive outcomes far greater than the sum of its parts.
Whether you’re a Fortune 500 CEO or a freelancer, your purpose is what drives you to succeed and defines what success is. It’s not so much what you do as how and why you do it. Your purpose is your values put into action. For example, CVS stopped selling tobacco products because cigarettes — previously worth billions in revenue to the pharmacy chain — didn’t align with its purpose of helping people on their path to better health.
Defining your purpose has more to do with your personal values and ethics than with business plans or marketing strategies. You can’t fake your purpose. Your gut and your customers simply won’t let you. And really, why would you want to? You’ll get so much more enjoyment and satisfaction from running your business in alignment with your purpose. If you don’t feel a deep connection to your purpose, no one else will feel it either.
Not having a purpose runs counter to how a company of one should operate because a lack of purpose will keep you focused on short-term gains over long-term sustainability. By assuming that quarterly growth in profits is the only factor in your success, you risk overlooking the well-being and success of your customer base (which, we learned from the last chapter, happens at your own peril). “Growth and scale at all costs” is a broken, outdated, and unsubstantiated model that disregards what research has told us about the hazards of growth and scale.
Given the success of Patagonia, Seventh Generation, and many other such organizations, it’s clear that purpose isn’t just a fluffy, new-age paradigm for businesses uninterested in profit. A study done by Michael Porter, a Harvard Business School professor, and Mark Kramer, the cofounder of the social-impact firm FSG, found that taking a “shared value” approach to purpose generates positive economic impacts for companies. They can align their business with their values and with what matters to their customers by reconsidering how they produce and sell products and redefining what productivity means for employees (valuing their rest and happiness and discouraging overworking).
A well-integrated, shared purpose lets a company of one set its true direction, leading to easier decision-making, higher retention of team members, and greater connection to customers.
WHEN PASSION IS A PROBLEM
Purpose and passion are quite different.
While purpose is based on a core set of values held by a company or even a business owner and shared with customers, passion is simply a whim based on what we think we enjoy doing. The tired business advice that we should all “follow our passion” implies that we are entitled to getting paid to do work that is always enjoyable.
A well-cited 2003 study of college students at the University of Quebec by Robert Vallerand found that they were more passionate about sports, arts, and music than anything they were studying. Unfortunately, only 3 percent of all jobs can be found in the sports, music, and art industries. And just because you’re passionate about, say, tennis doesn’t mean you can become the next Serena Williams, no matter how hard you try. “Follow your passion” is irresponsible business advice.
Barbara Corcoran, a real estate investor and a “shark” on the popular television show Shark Tank, said that she didn’t follow her passion; instead, she discovered it by accident as she worked her ass off. Her passion came after her hard work — as a result of it — not the other way around. Known for her shrewd pragmatism on the show, Corcoran says that it’s more important to focus on solving problems than on passion. Her problem-solving focus allows her to better evaluate new business ventures that are presented to her on the show.
When you focus on solving problems or on making a difference, passion may follow, because you’re actually involved in the work you’re doing instead of just dreaming that you might be passionate about something. Cal Newport, the best-selling author of So Good They Can’t Ignore You, argues that passion is the side effect of mastery. To Newport, following your passion is fundamentally flawed as a career strategy because it fails to describe how most successful people ended up with compelling careers and can lead to chronic job-shifting and angst when your reality falls short of your passionate dream for your career. Newport believes that we need to be craftspeople, focused on getting better and better at how we use our skills, in order to be valuable to our company and its customers. The craftsperson mind-set keeps you focused on what you can offer the world; the passion mind-set focuses instead on what the world can offer you.
Too many people assume that meaningful work or ideas are the result of passion. Research from William MacAskill of Oxford University has shown that engaging work helps you develop passion, not the other way around. This kind of work draws you in, holds your attention, and gives you a sense of flow (being absorbed in the work and losing track of time). Engaging work comprises four key components: clearly defined assignments, tasks you excel at, performance feedback, and work autonomy.
All this being said, countless books, bloggers, and business leaders will continue to tell you that the key ingredient to a happy, meaningful life is to find the courage to follow your passion. This call is alluring, especially when it seems like others have simply packed up their nine-to-five lives, jumped headfirst into their passions, and ended up thriving.
But what I’ve noticed is that there are two key ingredients that most successful businesspeople don’t talk about when they’re giving keynote speeches about how smart they were to make their leap into a more passion-filled work life. The first is that they were skilled at what they did before they took a leap — so skilled that they were doing well enough that if their leap to something new faltered, they’d still be okay. Not to mention that what they leaped to was completely built off the skills they were currently using and that were already in demand. The second missing ingredient in their account of successfully “following their passion” is that they were able to test their leap with a smaller jump before they climbed to the top of the highest platform. Most of these speakers neglect to mention that they didn’t just willy-nilly jump; rather, they did a small jump first to make sure they could land it (that is, they made sure there was enough demand for their offerings) and not drown once they hit the water.
Looking at my own career, I can say that I’ve succeeded in changing the type of work I’ve done over the last twenty years only when tho
se two key ingredients were present.
I started my own business doing web design only after I became an in-demand designer at an agency. I built up the skills as an employee until the clients of that agency wanted to leave with me when I quit. If I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have even started working for myself. (I did so only because clients called after I quit, wanting to bring their business to wherever I had moved.) In fact, I wasn’t passionate about web design, or even passionate about starting my own business. I found the courage to do it only because I had a small list of companies that wanted to pay me from day one.
When I started selling online courses, the same elements were present. I used the skills I had built for years as a designer to make courses on related subjects. And before I moved entirely into products, I spent a few years transitioning, waiting until I was sure that selling these online products would make me enough money before completely diving in.
On the other hand, when I first tried back in the 1990s to pivot into business consulting without having any related, built-up skills, I had almost no bites from clients. I was young (and naive) and thought that since I had helped design a handful of websites, I understood how all businesses everywhere work. Consulting seemed far more fun than just designing websites, so I found the courage to start promoting that as a service. The problem was that I was only just starting my journey as a designer and hadn’t come close to building up the necessary skills to consult for other businesses.
In short, my business skills weren’t in demand at all back then, and I had never even tested them to see if anyone would pay for them before spending a ton of time updating my website to promote them. Doing well with business consulting didn’t happen until I had years of experience under my belt — both by working with clients and by running my own companies.
The same thing happened when I tried to pivot into something I was passionate about without testing to see whether there was any demand. Years ago, I started not one but two software companies. Yes, I was the designer for them, which was a skill I had built up and created demand for, but I started both companies without first determining whether they’d be financially viable. I worked for months and months with partners to create products that we hadn’t even come close to demonstrating anyone would be willing to pay for. Both companies ultimately — and spectacularly — failed.
I didn’t start out with a passion to be a web designer, a writer, or an online course creator. I didn’t even have the courage to jump headfirst into those jobs. They happened slowly after I honed my related skills to the point where they were in demand. The passion for those jobs followed, but only once I had spent a lot of time doing them and getting better at them. And then I moved fully into them once I could prove (mostly to myself) that they would pay. In contrast, when I tried to be a consultant in my early twenties and when I tried to start two software companies, I failed completely because I hadn’t yet honed the skills required for those endeavors — plus those skills were definitely not in demand and I couldn’t demonstrate that even a single person would pay for them.
Of course, “courage” and “passion” sound better and more romantic than “skills” and “viability tests.” Courage and passion can be great if you want to skydive or take up a hobby like playing the ukulele. But when it’s your livelihood at stake, being courageous and following your passion should take a backseat to using the skills that you can build up and validate with revenue.
This might seem like a downer of a message, but it’s not. Thankfully, you don’t have to waste time trying to figure out what you’re passionate about or hoping that one day you find the courage inside yourself to leap into your passion full-time. Passion and courage are almost impossible to control and can easily leave you feeling bad about yourself. It’s far easier to simply work at getting really good at something in demand, discovering how those skills can be applied to something else, and then testing your idea in a small way to see if it will pay.
Another study on college students, from psychologist Jeffrey Arnett, found that most postgrads expect the work they do in their career to not be just a job but an adventure. The problem is that most of the subjects felt entitled to meaningful and adventurous work, but no obligation to put in the time and effort to master the skill set required. Just as autonomy is achieved through mastery of skills and ownership of an ability to solve problems, so too is passion. Passion doesn’t precede mastery, but follows it.
The feeling among some employees, team members, or even business owners that they are owed something just for showing up is a difficult pill to swallow. Linda Haines, who ran a human resources department at a large international company, says that many people who were raised to feel like they’re always winners, regardless of their relative efforts, merits, or skills, feel entitled to promotions and advances just because they show up to the office. The downside to this feeling of entitlement is that it leads to problems within teams and in dealing with customers, manifesting as resistance to feedback, overestimation of talents and accomplishments, little sense of team loyalty or loyalty to a purpose, and a tendency to blame others, even customers, for mistakes. Entitled business owners and workers have a hard time adapting to challenging situations, which is the opposite of the company-of-one trait of resilience.
Engaging work, not entitled work, can be anything from collecting garbage to serving coffee, to coaching billionaires, to becoming a company of one inside a large organization. That’s it. While no one should ever tell us to not pursue our passions, we can’t feel simply entitled to make money from them. If you’re engaged by your work — for the independence it allows, for the sense of completion when you’re done, for its contribution to making the world a better place — passion is likely to follow. Passion isn’t the catalyst that creates success, but more often what develops after success is achieved. Taking action and doing work, as a first step, create momentum, and this momentum happens when you’re caught up in — and enjoying — the process of your work, not its possible outcomes.
The gist is this: you can pursue any passion you want, but you shouldn’t feel entitled to make money off it. Passion in work comes from first crafting a valuable skill set and mastering your work. This is great news, because it means you no longer have to beat yourself up for not finding your true, hidden passions. Instead, you can simply get to work.
THE TRUE COST OF OPPORTUNITIES
The final part of aligning your mind-set with a company-of-one mentality is learning to handle the onslaught and weight of opportunities and obligations.
Just as growth in revenue and employees should be questioned as to whether or not it will make things better or simply bigger, we must also question the idea that a busier life, with a packed schedule, is a better life.
Opportunities are just obligations wearing an appealing mask. There might be a positive outcome to seizing them, but they always come at a cost — in terms of time, attention, or resources. No matter how hard you try, you can’t scale the amount of time in your day. And since you can’t somehow buy more hours, you need to find ways to use those hours better.
Curiously, up until the 1950s, the word “priority” was almost always singular in use — it wasn’t until later that the misguided belief that multitasking is a good idea took hold, along with “priorities” (plural). We now incorrectly assume that we must have numerous priorities and multitask to get ahead in business, even though working this way can deeply affect (and hurt) our productivity. With a key trait of a company of one being the speed at which things can happen and be accomplished, productivity is required. A Microsoft Research study found that attempting to focus on more than one priority at a time reduces productivity by as much as 40 percent, which is the cognitive equivalent of pulling an all-nighter. Research done by Hewlett-Packard found that the IQs of employees who were interrupted by email, calls, or messaging were reduced by more than ten points — which is twice the impact of smoking marijuana.
Jocelyn Glei, the best-se
lling author of Unsubscribe, is obsessed with avoiding distraction to do more work that matters. She works for herself now; previously she was the founding editor and director of 99U, so she’s experienced both leading an autonomous team and leading herself. In terms of productivity, she believes that the main difference is motivation and momentum. Working on a high-functioning team, you’re naturally playing off other members to accomplish your piece of a project, and that keeps you wanting to move things forward by focusing on your part. When you are a company of one without a team or employees, you have to generate your own momentum and motivation to get work done. It’s up to you to set your schedule, manage obligations, and avoid distractions.
Companies of one need to become adept at “single-tasking” — doing one thing for an extended period of time without distraction. This capacity helps you focus on the right tasks, do them faster, and do them with less stress. Gloria Mark, a professor in the Department of Informatics at the University of California, found that for every interruption, it takes an average of twenty-three minutes and fifteen seconds to fully get back to the task. Fewer distractions means speedier work.
Many large organizations have changed how they run fairly recently by adopting the startup ethos of flatter hierarchies, open workspace, multiple projects for every team member, and even asynchronous communication (like Slack). In these workplaces, employees no longer feel like they have one singular task to perform in their jobs, and they have to self-manage many of their responsibilities and their time. Even though these traits are part of being a company of one inside a larger organization, we need to unpack what it means to develop this autonomy and how best to do so.