If you’re starting to learn more about marketing and branding for your small business, you may have heard marketing professionals or business coaches use phrases like “it starts with your why” or “find your why”. If you haven’t dug into this further and you’re questions why people keep saying find your why, then here is a quick break down of where this came from and why finding your why matters and what to do with it when you’ve found it.
Where did “find your why” or “start with why you started your business” come from?
The ‘Why’ factor came from Simon Sinek’s popular 2009 TED Talk. It’s been viewed millions of times and was shortly followed up by his best selling book, Start With Why. The premise is around how great leaders inspire action when they start with their why. Most leaders and marketers tend to start with the how something is made or what the product or service is. And by starting with why, it can inspire your customers and audiences to connect at a greater emotional level.
If you haven’t watched the TED Talk it’s a great way to get the gist of the idea. If you’d like more examples and more detail on the thinking then the book is a fairly quick read, but does at times get a little repetitive.
One of the reasons I gravitate towards this is approach is in having worked with many founders, I’ve found the inspiration for the business comes from an internal motivating factor—personal experience or passion pursuit. For small businesses in particular, building off the founder’s inspiration or ‘why’ is a genuine and powerful source for building the brand from the inside out. For some the “find your why” pursuit can be quite layered and for others it really can be simple.
When considering your why, feel free to explore as much or as little as it feels good for the moment and what you feel is required.
