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Whats Your Why? Why Do You Do This? An introduction to PRO Why and Simon Sinek

Guest post by: Todd Mackenzie

Article Overview: An introduction to Why and Simon Sinek PRO Why

Whats Your Why? Why Do You Do This? An introduction to PRO Why and Simon Sinek

This isn't a discussion about sales techniques. It's not about lead generation, or anything technical regarding theWhatsor theHowsof the business. This discussion is about theWhys– the intangibles, the concepts, the things that are difficult to put into words at times. The things that we all know exist, but at times have a hard time believing just because we can’t put our fingers on them, we can’t articulate them into words, we can’t actually see them.

The master of theWhyconcept is Simon Sinek. If you don’t know whoSimon Sinekis, I highly recommend that you go toYouTubeand just do a quick search, or do an internet search for“Start with Why.”

I discoveredSimonabout six months ago and it immediately resonated with me at a level that I just can’t explain. A couple of light bulbs went on and it just hit me at a level that was very cerebral, at almost like a subconscious level. I immediately went and bought his book, bought the course on his website called“Why U.”

I felt like this was a guy who’s made his sole mission in life to help people and companies find theirWhy, which could be described as their cause, purpose or mission. He was teaching them how to start with that and how to base their business around that.

Simon has come up with a class called theWhy Discovery Process,which is meant to help people find theirWhy. I bought the course, went through part of it, and then had the privilege of actually meetingSimon, and we hit it off. I realized right away that this is a guy who is absolutely on a mission to help as many people find their soul, their purpose, their focus, their special gift – we had a lot in common.

Since then, I’ve had the privilege of sitting down with him over a five-hour period and going through thisWhy Discovery Processin real life. And the cool thing about the experience – and the uncomfortable thing about the experience – was that we actually did it in a studio with two cameras. The whole process actually took about 10 hours. The footage we captured is being essentially worked right now into the nextPRO Ucourse – theWhy Discovery Course.You can see me sitting in front of the camera for 10 hours of the most uncomfortable, yet incredible experience.

Discovering my Why



What I mean to discuss, though, is“what is my Why?”Through this process I just described, I learned a lot about myself. I learned a lot aboutwhyI do what I do. And if you had asked mewhyI do what I do over the last couple of years, you'd find that the answer has changed somewhat.

Initially when I first started in this industry six years ago, it was to get out of my job. I just wanted the freedom. Then it was to make X amount of money per month. My first goal was 10,000 a month. At the time myWhywas very self-centered,“me first,”money-oriented.

Over the past six years, it’s evolved and it’s really grown – and it’s something that will continue to evolve. But the cool thing is when you go through this process, you can essentially find out that it’s not arbitrary. YourWhyisn’t something that you choose. It chooses you because it’s a summation of your life up until the moment that you actually do the discovery. It’s like uncovering something that’s there, but you didn’t know it was there. It’s not like sitting down and strategizing to start a new business and thinking,“Gosh. What would be a really cool mission statement that we could start with?” You don’t just create it out of thin air.

It’s like peeling away the layers of the onion. The centerpiece of the onion is already there. You just have to peel away the layers to find out what that pearl is, and I did that. When it came out it was a very visceral experience, my hair all stood on end. It was this tingling sensation. It was incredible.

I’m really excited to share myWhybecause we often talk about this in these big conceptualWhyterms; but until this point, I myself had never defined it in one sentence. I knew what I wanted myWhyto be, but to actually peel away the onion and discover what is actually in there was really an exciting experience.

So, here we go. MyWhyis to wake people up to the choices they have as individuals, so that they can live the life of their dreams. And every word in that sentence means something significant. It's something very personal to me and now I’ve got a benchmark where everything I do, everything I say, every email I write, every call that I host stems from this singular purpose.

What I’m doing is everything that I’ve ever wanted to do – it’s enjoyment. And that’s the key. Once you find out what you’re passionate about and really what yourWhyis, it’s fun. There’s a great book calledPlay to Win, which illustrates how it is when you're no longer scared to try something. Remember back to when you were a little kid and you were playing on the beach in the sand. You built a sandcastle, but you didn’t say,“Oh, I’m not going to build this sandcastle because the water might come up and knock it down.” You didn’t care. You just built the sandcastle because it was fun. You’re playing because you love to play.

It doesn’t even matter if you“lose”– you can’t lose. When you discover yourWhy– you can’t lose. You can’t lose because what other people would define as losing is part of the game.

The Why for PRO



As entrepreneurs we all know that our business is really just an extension of ourselves. Being an entrepreneur is different from being a business owner. A business is something that’s separate from you. Being an entrepreneur is really a very human experience. It’s a lifestyle almost.

At the office recently, we were discussing theWhyforCarbonCopyPRO.Part of the reason for me going through theWhy Discoveryfor myself was so that we could clearly define aWhyforPRO. We’ve had some people email in,“Hey, there’s all thisWhytalk, but how come there’s no mission statement on theCarbonCopyPROwebsite? How come there’s noWhythere?”

The reason is, we weren’t just going to put something arbitrary out there that sounded good; we wanted to peel back the layers of the onion and be able to identify what it actually is all about. And theWhythatCarbonCopyPROhas – it’s not something we created, it’s something that we’ve discovered – is to wake people up to their inner entrepreneur so that they can live the life of their dreams. It's very similar to my personalWhy, but it defines it as an entrepreneurial space.

If you look atwhatwe’re doing from a logical standpoint, it doesn’t make sense.Whywould you lose a career to do what you’re doing? It’s because we weren’t being fulfilled. I’m not here on this earth to go to a cubicle every day. That’s a belief that I personally feel is within everybody. Nobody wakes up and says,“Oh, I want to go work for somebody else.”

Waking up to your Why



InStart with Why,Simon Sinekwrites that, every morning he tells himself,“Do something good for someone today knowing they can never repay you.” Combining that with myWhy, I did some soul-searching recently and went on a personal discovery mission. I did things that really meant something to me. I went on an autism walk. I feel that I have aWhy, but it’s always evolving. So, this evolution process that I’ve been going through over certain periods of time needs to be redefined. YourWhycan change.

So, this whole week I decided to step out of my comfort zone and to go out and do things like the autism walk so I could really clarify myself again. Another tough thing was I told my father I loved him. Last time I did that was 20 years ago. I paid respects to my grandmother down in South Jersey. She’s been dead for three years. These are the things that matter to me. These are the things that I had to revisit to really find out what my Why was again.

I was so numb to life, and I got so plugged in to going to work every day, that I began to overlook the finer things like that in life. A portion of me was dead, and that’s what’s been given back to me – it’s like I see everything around me. I’m so alert and so aware to what’s going on because everything around me matters. I have a sense of purpose. When you define your sense of purpose – that’s where motivation and inspiration comes from.

Think about it this way: I’m a huge baseball fan. Can I explainwhy? I have no ideawhy. I cannot put it into words. It’s no different than having a feeling from the limbic part of the brain where yourWhycomes from – the part that is without feelings and words. It's the human part, the emotional part, the purest part, and when you turn that part off and you just operate out of your conscious mind, and it’s just about money, it’s just about mechanics, it’s just about showing up to that cubicle – You become numb: Your alarm clock goes off at 5 AM. You know what you have to go do. You have to go get in the car. You have to spend an hour on the road and then you have to go do a job and then come home – and I fell into that. But ever since we’ve been plugged into the entrepreneur world, I've been so alive.

That's theWhythat we’ve uncovered forCarbonCopyPRO, it’s to wake people up – shake them by the shoulders and wake them up to their inner entrepreneur, that little entrepreneurial spark that’s been neglected, that’s been pushed back, that’s been covered up and forgotten. Most people stop dreaming when they’re kids. We want to wake people back up to that.

Sometimes when I talk to people and them exactly what we do and how we do it, they look at me like I don’t make any sense – because we believe in the impossible. Our belief mechanism is so“out there”because we’re just playing the game. We don’t care if we lose. There’s nothing to lose, really.

Believing in the .001 percent chance



The belief is intertwined with theWhy. So, when I went on this personal discovery mission this week, I actually had a dream. In this dream, there was a therapist, sitting at a desk, and we happened to be at my house. This therapist was scratching his head and he was giving me a funny look and he was saying,“Whydo you guys believe in the impossible? It just doesn’t make sense. I’m sitting here scratching my head. Everybody believes in the possible. Why do you guys decide to say, ‘You know what? I’m going to step out of my comfort zone, I’m going to go on these personal discovery missions, find out myWhy’ –whydo you guys believe in the impossible? It just doesn’t make sense to me.”

He was trying to understand our minds and for the same exact reason, that’swhywe believe in the impossible. Because if we don’t believe in the.001 percentchance that an apple would rise or that a revolution would get started, who would?

We speak to people on the phone and they say,“Well, realistically, I could do this.”We have this little community –Loyal 9andCarbonCopyPRO– and we cultivate this belief level, and then we can give it out to other people because once we believe in them, they can believe in themselves. And once you pass it on and you pay it forward, the possibilities are endless.

I would rather choose to bring to life the things that are impossible than to believe things that are already there.

When the founder ofCarbonCopyPROtold people he was working on an Internet marketing company based off of this, people didn't understand what it was or how he could pull it off.

TheWhatand theHowtook care of itself. That happens when you have a vision, a dream. He had a passion: waking up entrepreneurs. Really believing in people and letting them, if they have to at one point, borrow from our belief in them until they get that belief.

Transferring Belief



But one day, they’re not going to buy into the mass mentality – they’re going to have more belief in themselves than they do in their boss. They'll have so much belief in themselves that they’ll be willing to go play the game because they know there’s really nothing to lose as long as they’re chasing what they’re after.

And part of our job is believing in theWhyof the people we talk to. When people tell me theirWhy,it's powerful to give them that belief – especially when they've never gotten that belief from anyone else. That’s why we’re here. We’re trying to understand people. We really try to say,“You know what? I understand that and let’s move forward. Let’s get the result that you want. Let’s move forward and see how we can evolve yourWhy.”It chokes me up a little bit because this subject means a lot to me, and through this personal discovery process I went through, I realize how the belief andWhyare really tied together hand-in-hand.

Part of theWhy Discovery Processis to look at the different periods of your life and think about the people that have had influence on you, and why they have influence. I was able to identify the exact moment when the first person that I respected believed in me. I was able to actually identify the exact moment that that occurred. It’s a great memory. It felt good to have somebody believe in me.

In the context of leadership, when you’re talking to your leads and your applicants: Are you selling them like a salesman would sell them? Or is your objective to inspire them by very clearly communicating and articulating to them“I believe in you”?One prominent member of our group,Michael Force,still talks to this day about the conversation I had with him three or four years ago when I said,“Michael, I don’t care whether or not you believe you can do this. I know you can do this.”I transferred belief to him. I didn’t give it to him. There’s a difference between giving something to somebody and transferring it to somebody.

Giving it to them relies on them accepting it. Transferring it doesn’t rely on them accepting it – it just happens.

Another great thing about theStart with Whycourse is that it breaks some of these ideas down to a scientific level, where you understand how the brain actually works. And whether or not you believe in this concept, through biology we’ll prove to you that this is how the most successful entrepreneurs and most successful brands are built.

It’s not even a matter of whether you believe it or not, it’s a matter of just seeing the evidence around you and looking at guys like theLoyal 9and wondering,“What separates these guys? Are they just great sales people?”I don’t think any of them comes from a sales background. It’s not about sales. It’s about giving people an opportunity to have someone else believe in them. It gives them such a powerful sense of worth and self-confidence.

When you use this principle in business, you’ll have people crawling all over each other to work with you. Because you’re triggering an emotion inside of them that they cannot explain, and it’s not something anyone’s ever been able to trigger. It’s not sales – it's about inspiration.

When we’re speaking to the applicants and the members, they often ask,“Well, what’s the support?”They’re really asking,“Do you believe I can do this?” It’s really building a belief level. A lot of times when I get on the phone with someone – if they don’t have the belief level coming in – and I say,“You know what? You have to go out and do some work on yourself before we get back on the phone.”There’s no sale going on. It’s true; everything I’ve ever done in my life has been because I’ve been inspired to do it. I’ve been an entrepreneur for a long time and it’s about that inspiration, thatWhy, and that belief level.

Getting past the ups and downs



Once you become crystal clear on your purpose and your mission and yourWhy, it eliminates the ups and downs. In life, you have great successes and great failures, and it’s this up and down cycle that we go through as entrepreneurs. We want to work with you, so it’s not 45 degrees up and then 45 degrees down, 45 degrees up and then 45 down. Once you have clarity on what you’re doing and you can sustain that purpose, you can avoid those dips.

Again, sometimes when you get up in the morning you just don’t feel like going to work. You’re not“feeling it.”We use this expression a lot in our society: “I’m just not feeling it.” “Honey, do you want to go to a movie?” “I’m just not feeling it.”Or, if she is feeling it:“Do you want to go see Robin Hood?” “Nah. I’m just not feeling it.”

The human experience isn’t something you can really explain because it’s mostly feelings. If somebody comes up to you and says,“Well, why don’t you want to go see that movie?”Your response is,“Look, I don’t want to see it.”Butwhy? Sometimes it’s hard to articulate.

That same, human experience is no different than having that feeling about your business and about your success and about your purpose. Once it’s there and you’ve identified it, it’s like uncovering a little flame. You finally uncovered that spark. Again, thePRO Whyis to wake people up to their inner entrepreneur. Help them find that inner spark of becoming an entrepreneur, to identify it. Identify that. Once you’ve identified it, now you can just help that flame by making sure there’s no water going to be dumped on it, there’s no wind that’s going to blow it out. You stoke the fire, you coddle it, you cultivate it, you culture it, and before long you have a raging fire. But it starts with that little spark. You have to identify that little spark. Once you’ve identified it and it becomes a raging fire, the days of not feeling that inspiration, and the days of losing momentum, are gone.

Make your Why sustainable



The reason you lose momentum is because the motivator that gave you the momentum to begin with wasn’t something that was sustainable. How many people have you seen start a business and ramp it up, and then – after they get a certain result – they lose momentum. They start up, ramp up, lose steam and fall back.Whyis that? It’s because they haven’t identified theirWhy. Maybe theirWhyis: Paying their bills, or survival. But once the bills are paid and once survival is ensured for the next two or four or six weeks, the motivation is lost. If you’re doing something for specific amounts of money or the ability to quit your job you'll lose momentum.

I remember when myWhywas to quit my job. I accomplished that goal within about three months. But I went six weeks after accomplishing that goal without making a single dollar. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. And the reason was that my motivation to that point, myWhy,was to quit my job. Well, I accomplished that goal and – there’s no greater inspiration or motivation to get me out of bed, to inspire me to have these powerful conversations. But I just ran out of steam. How many times do you run out of steam? It’s because the reason you’re doing it isn’t a sustainable reason.

One colleague shared that in his last company, they set the company goal, or the companyWhyand mission and purpose to reach 52 million. So what happened? They hit 60 and then after they hit 60, guess what happened? They went back to 35 million within a year. From 60 to 35 million, because they had fallen back on their laurels. They hit their 52 mark and lost their vision, their purpose. Everybody was lost.

From a leadership standpoint, you can’t ever attach yourWhyto a tangible dollar amount, because once you get there, you go back to the up-and-down scenario because it’s nota sustainable long-term bigger purpose than just a goal or dollar amount.

When speaking to individuals, some say,“Well, I’m looking to pay off my debt. I’m looking to pay off my bills.”We need to visualize for the payoff, for the money, but more importantly, we need to visualize what’s beyond that. And it could be telling your father you love him. It could be giving back to your family. It could be going on vacation and really going on vacation. When you break it down, it’s about spending time with the people that matter in your life. That's the payoff. But there’s still another truth behind that, and the truth iswhyI want time freedom: I want to take back my life. I want to be able to do the things that I want to do, and spend the time with the people that matter.

If you’re able to get rid of all your debt, you might think now that that sounds awesome, but what happens when you’re out of debt? You’re still broke. You still don’t have any money. So be really careful what you focus on. I think that’s the underlying message here – you need to be really careful as to what your intent is. What is the reason that you’re doing this? And if it’s just to get out of debt, I tell you what, when you get out of debt, when you actually accomplish that goal, it’s very anti-climatic. Big, freaking deal. You’re out of debt. At least you’re not in the bottom half of the barrel, but you’re certainly not in the top half either.

Sowhynot set it on something that’s really an intangible? Again: lifestyle and family freedom and being able to do what you want, when you want, with the people that you want. That’s a lifestyle. That’s a way of being. It sums up your intent in something that’s not a specific dollar amount. And then you can have different variations of lifestyle. It’s something bigger that you can become attached to and I always tell people,“I think the most rewardingWhysand the most rewarding missions and purposes are the ones that include other people.”

But truly, yourWhycannot be,“I want to have five Ferraris in my front yard,”because nobody cares about you having five Ferraris in your front yard. But yourWhycan be,“I want to help the starving children in Uganda.” People can get behind that. And it can be bigger than you.

Which ad would you respond to?



All the leaders of this group, we all took a big pay cut, whacking off salaries seven ways to do this, but it’s not even about the money. It’s about what can we accomplish on a bigger level that helps awaken entrepreneurs online – the bigger cause. And we want to be a part of your cause because that’swhywe’re here and that'swhywe're doing what we’re doing. And that’s the best way we feel that we can help accomplish what we’re doing.

When I write about this, I’m so glad that I made the choice that I did six or seven months ago to walk in and resign. I’ve finally lined up with like-minded individuals. My mom used to say growing up,“If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, it’s a duck.”

I felt so out of place always within corporate America because I was an entrepreneur amongst a bunch of people that had that part of their brain turned off. And I was one of them for a while. ButPROsaw what was within me, and helped wake that up and then every day that I went to the office I swear I just felt like an outcast. The wedge kept getting deeper and deeper because I felt like I was the guy walking around the office asking questions. And I was finally asking questions like,“Hey,whyare we doing what we’re doing?Whydo you come here at 5 in the morning?Whyare you doing this?”

I kept asking questions and the wedge just kept getting deeper. It’s really a powerful thing that happens when you tap into your inner entrepreneur and just become the person who you really are. You’ve been put on this earth with talents and strengths – play to them. People want to come and get those from you, but you have to know what they are first in order to give.

Simon’sbook has a great example regarding placing an ad:Shackleton’s Ad. It basically asks, which company would you rather work for? Would you rather work forShackleton, if he posted this ad about going on his expedition in Antarctica:“Five years experience, $30,000, 9 to 5, great benefits, work on a boat.”

Or, would you rather respond to an ad that says something like:“Leadership required. Awesome journey. You might die. Or, you might be in peril. However, you might achieve greatness, with a great crew.”

There’s a big difference between the companies that focus on theWhatsand theHows, and the companies and individuals focusing on theWhy. TheWhypeople are inspired.

What you lead with is what will determine the results. If you lead with the features and benefits, it appeals to one type of person. If you lead with the big picture, with what we call theWhy, you resonate with people at that level. And the whole point of this is to start attracting the right people and stop attracting the wrong people.

Do you lead with your core principles?



Here's an exercise we just did with Simon recently: He said,“Make a list of the five best customers you’ve ever had; best customers or members ofCarbonCopyPRO.And then make a list of the five worst customers or members ofCarbonCopyPRO.”

It didn’t take me more than 10 seconds to jot down a list for each. And then he said,“Look at the guys on the left list, the five best customers that came to the top of your mind. And what things did each of those people have in common? And write down the top five attributes that come to mind that apply to all five of those people.”

And I did that. And the five that I came up with were, the first:loyalty and commitment; second:integrity, honesty, people that do the right things; the third:optimistic, best case scenario people, they’re optimists; the fourth:they’re predictable,they’re not wishy-washy, you know what you’re dealing with at all times; and The fifth: the fifth one wascommitted to excellence– not perfectionists, but committed to excellence.

And then I looked at the people on the right list, the five worst customers I’ve ever had, and not a single one of the five met any of those five criteria. Part of that exercise was to demonstrate that you lead with your core five principles [and these five principles that I just listed happen to be the five core values that I’ve uncovered as my top five through thisWhy Discovery Process].

And these are whatSimoncalls yourHows. You have yourWhysand yourHows. So, how you do things – are you committed to excellence? Are you an honest person? Are you an optimist? Are you persistent? I looked at my list of my five worst customers and none of them had any of those five things. Persistence? That was the first one that I noticed was missing from all five. They were the first ones to point fingers, to throw in the towel, to blame somebody else.

The next step in the exercise was to look at your life, your personal life and your business, all the way down to the ads that you place and the marketing materials that you have, and the conversations that you have with people. Are you leading with these five core values? Are you putting them out there and giving people either an opportunity to resonate with them or to be repelled by them?

When you lead with your core values, because these core values represent yourWhy, these are basically the five guards that stand around on that circle, theGolden Circle, to protect yourWhy. So when you lead with these five guides, these fiveHows, these five characteristics, these five core values, inevitably the wrong people just are not attracted to that. The people who don’t resonate with excellence, integrity, persistence, optimism – they’re just not attracted to you, so they don’t even get started with you; but the people who are attracted to that – they get started. They’re the ones that are attracted to you. This is how you filter out, so to speak, your bad customers and make sure that you are attracting the right people to begin with.

Again, as mom said, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck . . . . The people who know who they are, they’re looking for like-minded people. And when they come across your core values they say,“Wow! I can resonate with that.”

And it happens at a subconscious level in the neocortex part of the brain. When they’re talking to you, they either feel attracted to you or they don’t. And it’s that simple. And it happens in a matter of a millisecond. It’s an instant reaction that they feel.

People don’t buy what you sell; they buy why you sell it.

So when you’re out there marketingPRO,whyare you marketingPRO? Is it to put money in your bank account? Or is it to empower people? Is it to get rich quick or is it to give people an opportunity to live their best life? They are completely different reasons which will attract completely different people.

So whatever yourWhyis, whatever your reason is, just look at the results. Look at your team. Do you have a bunch of whiners? Do you have a bunch of people that are complaining? Look atDr. Charlie. His last 50 team members, every single one of them – somewhere between 57 and 60 – is active in the business. Not a single one has cancelled or asked for a refund. That’s not even statistically possible in business. It’s because they’re attracted to hisWhyand they’re starting for the right reasons.

Learn More About Me At My Website.

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Article Tags: Business, Carbon Copy Pro, CCPRO, Home Business, Lead Generation, PRO Why, Sales Techniques, Simon Sinek, Todd Mackenzie
Referred by: http://jaykubassek.com



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