I have immersed myself for decades now in the world of purpose—helping people to discover, own and deploy it. In my passionate execution of my work as a purpose practitioner, I found myself one day declaring that the next greatest dispensation that will hit the whole world is the purpose revolution.
It’s Happening
We see this already with huge organizations such as EY Beacon and Harvard Business Review having a say in it. In the year 2016, The Financial Times published an article titled, “Companies with a Purpose beyond Profit Tend to Make More Money”. This article laid bare a study conducted by Harvard Business Review Analytics that was funded by EY Beacon Institute which in essence concluded that:
“Those companies able to harness the power of purpose to drive performance and profitability enjoy a distinct competitive advantage”.
I cannot even begin to talk about the advent and the increasing popularity of the ‘gig’ and freelance economy. Why is this? There is only one reason. Purpose is the most common denominator with humanity. That’s why I created the Purpose To Profit course.
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Purpose is All-Inclusive
I mean, people might be qualified with this or that academic paper by a smaller percentage. However, with purpose, everyone is “qualified” if you will. There is a big problem though. Purpose to profit is not a conventional thing.
Purpose to profit is not a conventional thing. The most forgotten personal thing the whole wide world is people’s individual purpose.
The most forgotten personal thing the whole wide world is people’s individual purpose. We focus not on our calling, our ideas, our gifts and talents as well as our passion. No. We focus on academics and qualifications, and reduce our lives to 30-day intervals.
Is Making It All There is To Life?
In so doing, we live life as if the most important thing to do with it is to “make it” or to “survive”, and we do this for 8 decades or so, and then leave the world the way we came. When the curtain closes in on our lives, there is nothing to write home about.
The side effects of this kind of lifestyle are seen. Partly, the joblessness scourge is a philosophical problem in that the people that are jobless are people of purpose. In other words, you will find a large percentage of the jobless having a gift or a talent, a calling, an idea or a passion. These could easily become a ‘gig’.
Partly, the joblessness scourge is a philosophical problem in that the people that are jobless are people of purpose.
Enter The Purpose Economy
What they need to do is to convert that purpose into a product or a service that solves a problem, creates an impact, and improves life of anything of that sort. They add value to life with their purpose and in turn, they earn from it. But like I have said, it is not conventional. This is the philosophical problem I am talking about.
The following are some of the things that we need to arm ourselves with in order to conquer and convert our purpose into profit. These are part of the software elements you need. Frankly, the “how to” is littered all over the internet. You can easily get that. However, without this software, you are done for.
1. Guts
Conventionally, we seldom live our lives on a dare. We just follow an existing system that is “normal” and “traditional” that specifies when we can graduate and start earning. The unconventional needs guts. It needs you to lean into your gifts and talents and just stick with it.
If you will, that’s what Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak did. They were passionate about electronics. They leaned into it even when it made no sense at that moment in time. That’s the major characteristic of purpose to profit endeavors: It won’t make sense to the conventional world.
The unconventional needs guts. It needs you to lean into your gifts and talents and just stick with it.
Guts come when you decide to pay on credit the price of fear, shame, embarrassment, rejection and being misunderstood. You look at these squarely in the face and determine that it’s Ok, you are willing to face them.
2. Spirit of Adventure
You know, there is no proven path to convert your passion into profit. There is no institutionalized schooling system that is backed by many governments that does this. That’s why you need to get into this unconventional thing with a spirit of adventure. You need to embrace uncertainty.
Conventionally, you know who pays you, how much, at what time, and with what consistency. You know when you will “retire” and earn your pension till you die. With purpose to profit, it is a total adventure. You can be paid at any time. You can also run it for years, maybe decades without being paid.
Without the spirit of adventure, you will not do this. You will rather look for the conventional.
3. Persistence
Our biggest problem in life is that we look for certainty and predictability. However, the purpose economy doesn’t work on those terms. The most uncertain way of making a living, especially when you are starting out is trying to convert your purpose into profit.
That’s why you will find people looking for something that guarantees a salary at the end of 30 days. Persistence is needed so that you can go through failure, shame, embarrassment and rejection. It is needed when there is no profit, but losses.
For the most part, give your venture not months, but years. Do not expect this to yield for you within a month of starting. There will be no customers for months. You will be ignored, and for a good reason. Purpose needs a lot of time to grow, mature and become the mainstay.
4. A Supporting Cast and Structure
What completes the elements of the software is help from other people. This help comes in two major ways. Either you have a mutual understanding with people working on the same project so that you can both benefit, or you get help in terms of mentors, accountability partners or coaches.
Perhaps the biggest reason why we do not turn our purpose into profit is that we go it alone. It is overwhelming that way. When we go at it alone, and at times it is needed, you can only go so far. You must start alone, that I agree, but you cannot continue alone.
Let your vision recruit people that you can work together.
It is my belief that as we progress in life, purpose will be the greatest dispensation for it will allow people to turn their natural gifts and talents to products and services that can add value to the world, solve problems, make contributions and impact. The earlier you and I get started, the better. Check this online course on the same.
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