Make Meaning First, then Money

Money over meaning?  Regardless of how unfortunate, we rely heavily on the almighty US Dollar for our daily survival.  The hours spent focusing on creating profits could never be counted.  Companies fill their offices with sales people to make more money, accountants to count the money, analysts to monitor where the money comes from, and marketers and consultants to create ways to make more of it.  By and large, the majority of businesses spend a disproportionate amount of their time obsessively focusing on creating more profitable income.  This trickles down to us as individuals too.  How much time over the course of our lives is spent focused to what we earn, rather than what we create?

Pursuit of profit is necessary for a business to remain healthy and survive, so there is some obvious good in that pursuit.  And simultaneously, as individuals, we need money to live on.  But when overdosed it creates significant problems.  At what point should we be focused on solving problems and providing solutions, rather than yielding to the quest for the quickest monetization tactics.  Giving this further thought, and you could argue that this should be the goal of any employee, let alone business?  As a business, when you stop solving problems and providing solutions, it’s a matter of time before your customers stop buying.

Guy Kawasaki in a recent TEDx talk, uses a phrase “Make meaning as opposed to make money” and warns that if you start off with the sole desire to make money, you probably won’t make meaning, and will likely fail.  Spot on.

It is critically important to differentiate that earning profits does not equal creating value.  It certainly can.  But the problem is, too many business owners and employees think of it in that order.  If I earn profit, I have created value.  False.  You’ve sold enough product to have positive net income.  You can never create value as a byproduct of earning profit.  You earn profit as a byproduct of creating value.  We must make that distinction.

Think about what would happen if you turned the money over value methodology around.  Instead of asking how can we make that extra two percent, what if the question was – how can we create more value for our customers.  Customers pay for what is of value to them.  So, value generates income, which (hopefully) creates profit.  There are hundreds of thousands of companies that earn profit each year selling junk.  We’ve all bought their stuff, used their services, ate their food, and been completely disappointed.  Why can’t we use this same mindset as we run our day-to-day business?

I believe this is all the more critical to young professionals and students, embarking on their careers for the first time.  If you can understand where you want to create value and meaning, and can find how to apply that in your work at an early age, you will be years ahead.  Even to those later into their careers – we should apply the mindset not only to business operations but to our personal endeavors as well.  How can we create meaning and increased value to those we interact with, and pour that into our daily work?  That question should take more precedence than it does.