It’s never been easier to start a business. And, it’s never been harder to succeed.

How’s that for inspiration? Many people believe I’m a positive person. They would be correct. However, I’m also very much a realist. And the reality is it’s hard to succeed at business in the second decade of the 21st century. Harder than ever before.

Why?

Well, for starters there are over 30 million small businesses in the United States of America. All vieing for the same green piece of paper. All marketing every which way they can. All saying they have the best gadget, system, service, or product in the world. All believing their own bullshit. All spending good money after bad to prove it. All trying to please the customer so he or she will come back some day. I think you get the point.

Carol Roth, brilliant business strategist, delivers the most poignant question every entrepreneur should ask themselves in her book The Entrepreneur Equation. Here’s an excerpt:

Many people ask themselves the question, “Could I be an entrepenreur?” The real question is SHOULD I be an entrepreneur?  Because in many cases, your possible payoff won’t justify your risk or you may not have done everything you can to stack the odds of success in your favor. This is not theory, this is reaility; while every entrepreneur dreams of success, statistics show unequivocally that the majority of new businesses fail and most entrpreneurs don’t succeed.

You see, we know that nearly 90 percent of businesses fail within the first 5 years. We know this. And yet we keep launching business after business hoping we’re part of the lucky 10 percent. While luck is definitely needed in business, it’s not a good business strategy. At least it’s not for nearly every successful business venture out there today.

Please don’t get me wrong. You already know I define myself as an experimenter. You know I’ve tried many things. Some successful, some downright terrible. But, let me be clear: In all situations I stack the odds in my favor. And I’m always willing to do whatever it takes for however long it takes. (And even that’s not enough sometimes)

Now I may have just completely demoralized you and you may be cursing me from every angle, but this is the reality of business today. And, if you’re like me and you don’t want to listen to pundits anyway then consider doing these 5 things before launching…

1) Don’t quit your day job. If your job is your main source of income don’t quit…yet. Your business idea should become your side hustle. A project you work on at every possible moment. Wait as long as you can before leaving your job so you know you have a solid idea, you know what it’s going to take to make it successful, and you’ve figured out how you are going to replace your income. It will be far more exhausting doing it this way in the beginning, but your chances of long-term success will increase dramatically.

2) Do everything you can to invalidate your idea. Find every reason why your business idea sucks. Why it won’t work. Why it’s worthless. Going through this exercise will prove a couple of things. First, it will prove if you are mentally prepared to handle rejection. Often overrated, most successful entrepreneurs are really good at hearing the word “no” without it completely demoralizing them. Second, you’ll learn quickly if you have a “great idea” or if you have an idea that is of true economic value. These are not one in the same. Great ideas are a dime-a-dozen. What you want is a valuable idea. One that will be valuable enough to enough people to earn you a long-term, stable income.

3) Take a personal inventory of your life, lifestyle, and mental and emotional well-being. Too often we isolate a business idea and examine it on it’s own. The reality is running a business affects every other area of your life. It affects your relationships, your daily routine, and your mental and emotional well-being. Don’t just examine the business idea by itself. Examine yourself. Are you ready to launch into the most stressful, challenging experience of your life?

4) Make a difference. Be clear about what you want to achieve. Not for you, for the world. Too often people spend wasteful hours writing a business plan. Instead turn your business plan into your “call to action.” What is it you want to bring to the world? What will that look like? How will you get started. Create a mental picture of the impact you want your business to have. How would you feel if your plan actually had that effect? More important questions, how would the world feel? The pursuit of the impossible calls for enormous amounts of energy, fueled by passion, the juice of vision. Don’t start a business solely because you think it will make money. Start one because you believe it will make a difference.

5) Determine what are you willing to give up. In order to do anything, something else must be given up. You must make a commitment to yourself to devote the time (always more than you think), attention (always harder to focus than you think), and resources (never enough available at the beginning) to building a business that works. Convert the idea of your business into a visual reality. What does your life look like? Not fantasy-land. I’m talking what will it REALLY look like? How many of your daughter’s soccer games will you miss? How many late nights will you spend at the office? How stressed will you be when you can’t pay your bills? What are you willing to give up to get what you want?

So, you still want to be an entrepreneur? Well, then…

All successful companies start the same way–with an idea.

An idea driven by passion, a vision of a world that could be. It is the founder’s crusade that gives a business its energy to get going. Money and experience may be valuable assets to drive success, but in most cases those things were not there at the beginning.

Apple, Microsoft, Google, AOL, Facebook and many, many others were all started by 20-somethings with no experience in big business and no deep pockets of money. And, as any venture capitalist will tell you, the number of failures or marginal successes among startup companies greatly outnumber the home runs.

Like a shock from a defibrillator, a personal and visceral crusade is what jump-starts a company from a daydream to something tangible. But passion and a vision of the future can only get a company so far.

84% of business fail within the first 3 years. Why is that? Why do companies fail? You can find every excuse in the book: a bad economy, market turbulence, a weak yen, hundred-year floods, perfect storms, competitive subterfuge–forces, that is, very much outside their control. In a few cases, such as the airlines’ post-Sept. 11 problems, the excuses even ring true. But a close study of corporate failure suggests that, acts of God aside, most companies flounder for one simple reason: managerial error.

We’ll get to the errors in a moment. But first let’s acknowledge that, yes, failures usually involve factors unique to a company’s own industry or culture. As Tolstoy said of families, all happy companies are alike; every unhappy company is unhappy in its own way. Companies even collapse in their own way. Some go out in blinding supernovas (Enron). Others linger like white dwarfs (AT&T). Still others fizzle out over decades (Polaroid). Failure is part of the natural cycle of business. Companies are born, companies die, capitalism moves forward. Creative destruction, they call it.

What undoes them is the familiar stuff of human folly: denial, hubris, ego, wishful thinking, poor communication, lax oversight, greed, deceit, and other Behind the Music plot conventions. It all adds up to a failure to execute. This is not an exhaustive list of corporate sins. But chances are your company is committing one of them right now.

Systems and Structures

The reason the vast majority of new businesses flat-out fail in just a few years is that to bring a vision to life, a company needs structure. Good systems and processes allow an organization to thrive on something beyond the passion of one or two individuals. For those few founders who know how to build structure, their companies will not only survive; they will grow.

Forgetting the Why

But for a structure to continue to grow, that passionate crusade is still needed … and that is what leaves a company after its founder moves on.

With success, a company’s leaders become obsessed with what the results should be and how to get there–strategy and tactics–and they forget why the company was founded in the first place. The original strategies were developed to advance the cause and the results measured the progress. When the cause is forgotten, strategies are developed only to advance the results. The vision and the crusade simply go fuzzy. It seems so closely tied to a charismatic leader because the founder often serves as the living symbol of the company’s cause. It is not the departure of the person that triggers the decline, per se; it is the failure to properly articulate that original cause, the inability to extract the “Why” from the person and build it into the fabric of the company. What’s more, a successor should be there to advance the original cause and not try to redefine it. Attempting to change it only makes the matter worse.

And therein lies the rub. Companies that are founded with a clear sense of a higher purpose or cause exist to advance that cause, with time and success, inevitably lose that sense of purpose. With the loss of purpose, the company of crusaders become managers of the infrastructure. The numbers become more important than the founding purpose of the organization. The numbers are important–of course they are–but at the beginning, the numbers were proof that people wanted to have what you offered by buying from you. Later, the money became the only reason to maintain the business structure and the service to the customer became the value added or just part of the infrastructure.

That simple question–”Why?”–when answered in terms that go beyond the products sold or services rendered, give the customer a context for the products. That “why” is where value is perceived beyond price, quality, service and features … the table stakes. Reminding those inside the company why the company exists gives employees a higher purpose to come to work beyond simply doing a job for pay. This is the source of passion and innovation. The ability for a company, and more importantly, those who engage with the company, to have a clear understanding of “why” is what differentiates those that succumb to the odds and those that defy them.

Softened by success

It’s a proven fact: A number of studies show that people are less likely to make optimal decisions after prolonged periods of success.

In The Challenger Launch Decision, her definitive book on the disaster, Boston College sociologist Diane Vaughan notes that people don’t surrender their mental models easily. “They may puzzle over contradictory evidence,” she writes, “but usually succeed in pushing it aside–until they come across a piece of evidence too fascinating to ignore, too clear to misperceive, too painful to deny, which makes vivid still other signals they do not want to see, forcing them to alter and surrender the world-view they have so meticulously constructed.”

Forgetting what business you are really in

Like its fellow old-economy stalwart Xerox, Polaroid was a once-highflying member of the Nifty Fifty group of growth stocks that lost their luster over the years. Eventually the question “What does Polaroid make?” became a latter-day version of “Who’s buried in Grant’s tomb?” Polaroid, that is, made Polaroid cameras–period.

Polaroid and Xerox, by contrast, were slow to confront the changing world around them. Executives at both companies repeatedly blamed poor results on short-term factors–currency fluctuations, trouble in Latin America–rather than the real cause: a bad business model.

Jim Collins, author of the influential management books Built to Last and Good to Great, has spent years studying what separates great companies from mediocre ones. “The key sign–the litmus test–is whether you begin to explain away the brutal facts rather than to confront the brutal facts head-on,” he says. “That’s sort of the pivot point.”

Fearing the boss more than the competition

Sometimes Founders and CEOs don’t get the information they need to make informed decisions. The main reason, says Daniel Goleman, a psychologist and author of the book Primal Leadership, is that subordinates are afraid to tell them the truth. Even when a boss doesn’t intend to quash dissent, subtle signals–a sour expression, a curt response–can broadcast the message that bad news isn’t welcome. That’s why, according to a study by Goleman and two associates, higher-ranking executives are less likely to have an accurate assessment of their own performance.

Fear can have its uses, of course; Andy Grove has long espoused the value of competitive paranoia. But in unhealthy situations, employees come to worry more about internal factors–what the boss might say, what management might do–than about threats from the outside world.

During World War II, Winston Churchill worried that his own larger-than-life personality would deter subordinates from bringing him bad news. So he set up a unit outside his generals’ chain of command, the Statistical Office, whose primary job was to feed him the starkest, most unvarnished facts. In a similar vein, Richard Schroth and Larry Elliott, authors of the forthcoming book How Companies Lie, suggest designated “counterpointers,” whose function is to ask the rudest questions possible. Such mechanisms take information and turn it into information that can’t be ignored.

Overdosing on risk

Some companies simply live too close to the edge. Global Crossing, Qwest, 360networks–these telecom flameouts chose paths that were not just risky but wildly imprudent. Their key mistake: loading up on two kinds of risk at once.

The first might be called “execution risk.” In their race to band the earth in optical fiber, the telco upstarts ignored some key questions: Namely, would anyone need all of this fiber? Weren’t there too many companies doing the same thing? Wouldn’t, uh, most of them fail? “People seemed to say, ‘Maybe–but it’s not going to be us,’” says Darrell Rigby, a Bain & Co. consultant who studies managing during times of turbulence. “Everyone thought they were immune.”

On top of execution risk was another kind, which we’ll call liquidity risk. Global Crossing–run by Gary Winnick, formerly of the junk-bond house Drexel Burnham Lambert–loaded up on $12 billion of high-yield debt. This essentially limited Winnick to a cannonball strategy: one shot, and if you miss, it’s bankruptcy.

Strategy du jour

When companies run into trouble, the desire for a quick fix can become overwhelming. The frequent result is a dynamic that Collins describes in Good to Great: “A&P vacillated, shifting from one strategy to another, always looking for a single stroke to quickly solve its problems. [It] held pep rallies, launched programs, grabbed fads, fired CEOs, hired CEOs and fired them yet again.” Lurching from one silver bullet solution to another, the company never gained any traction.

Collins calls it the “doom loop,” and it’s a killer. Kmart is another victim. In the 1980s and early ’90s, Kmart was all about diversification, shifting away from discounting to acquire stakes in chains like Sports Authority, OfficeMax, and Borders bookstores. But in the 1990s a new management team divested those stores and decided to revamp Kmart’s supply chain by investing heavily in IT. That lasted for a while, until a new CEO, Chuck Conaway, decided that, actually, Kmart would try to beat Wal-Mart at its own game. This unleashed a disastrous price war that in the end proved to be one mistake too many. “When you look at companies that get themselves into trouble,” says Collins, “they’re often taking steps of great, lurching bravado rather than quiet, deliberate understanding.” Did somebody say AT&T?

A dangerous corporate culture

Arthur Andersen, Enron, and Salomon Brothers were all brought down, or nearly so, by the rogue actions of a tiny few. But the bad apples in these companies grew and flourished in the same kind of environment: a rotten corporate culture. It’s impossible to monitor the actions of every employee, no matter how many accounting and compliance controls you put in place. But either implicitly or explicitly, a company’s cultural code is supposed to equip front-line employees to make the right decisions without supervision. At Salomon Brothers the culture did just the opposite. The transgressor there was Paul Mozer, a trader who in February of 1991 improperly overbid in auctions of U.S. Treasury bonds. While it was another improper bid on May 22 that finally did him in, the critical event occurred in April, when Salomon Chairman John Gutfreund learned of the February overbid by Mozer and failed to discipline him. Mozer evidently took Gutfreund’s lack of action as a green light. Rotten cultures produce rotten deeds.

Focus

As your business grows the key is to never lose focus.  Don’t lose focus on what’s most important. The list above contains all the critical components  to a successful business. It also contains all the reasons that separate the ones who succeed from the ones who fail. And the margin for error is generally slim. Take heed.

We need “wow.” Wow businesses. Wow projects. Wow experiences. Wow lives.

Most often it’s not your idea that’s holding your business back. It’s creating a wow experience that you’re lacking.

You see, you have to ensure the experience your customers are having isn’t average. That it isn’t “me too.” Instead, you want to be creating, wow!

But what is wow and how can you develop it?

No matter who you are and what you’re building, inevitably, you’ll get to a point where you have to make a choice. It’s a kind of “fork in the road” situation. You have a choice—either you build a wow experience. Or, or you can settle for something less than wow.

Why would one settle for anything less than wow? Over the years, I’ve uncovered four obstacles to creating wow experiences:

1. Time. Often, we simply run out of time. The deadline looms. We are scrambling to get the product out the door. Or, we have to wrap up the service, so we can get to the next client before he or she starts complaining. We simply don’t have the time to give the job our best effort. So, we let it go. Half-baked. Before it is really done. In my case, I purposely didn’t give myself any time. I wanted to just launch and see what happens. Well, we got to see…
3. Resources. Sometimes, the problem is resources. We’d like to do a better job. We sincerely want to take it to the next level. But we just don’t have the money or the man-power. We rationalize by saying, I did the best I could do with the resources I had. And again, we let it go and turn our attention to the next project or client in the queue. Of course, I started with just a $10 bill and my laptop. I purposely created the restriction not to utilize any of my existing financial resources or existing relationships to advance the project so I have an excuse, right? Then again, an excuse doesn’t equal wow.
5. Experience. Occasionally, we don’t have sufficient experience. We just don’t know how to do what we know needs to be done. Our vision exceeds our know-how. We know what the product or service could deliver, but we don’t have the knowledge, the skills, or the experience to get us there. So, we settle for something less than our vision demands. This has been my challenge with TenLap since the beginning. I could see the online experience I wanted to develop I just don’t have any experience creating one. In fact, I had very little experience doing anything online before I launched. It wasn’t my game. Although, that’s radically and rapidly changing. My game has been offline. Manufacturing, construction, retail, real estate, boutique resorts, and financial instruments. I guess one could argue I wasn’t experienced enough. You won’t hear that argument from me though.
7. Fear. The biggest obstacle of all is fear. In fact, I would say that this is the primary obstacle. If we are honest, we must admit that the previous three items are only excuses. If we had enough courage to be awesome, we would find the time, the resources or the experience. We simply wouldn’t settle for something less than wow.

But, what are we really afraid of? Perhaps we fear losing our job, our client, or our influence. Maybe we don’t want to be thought of as unreasonable or demanding. Maybe we don’t want to be vulnerable. Maybe we are afraid of what others might say behind our back. Or, maybe, just maybe, we’re afraid of our own success.

Regardless, if we are going to create wow experiences, we must become courageous. This is a personal, psychological bridge we need to cross. What we want to create—that wow experience—is on the other side. And, there’s only one way to get there from here.

So how do you create a wow experience?

You must be able to identify which experiences you want to make a WOW, and then have a process for creating that outcome. You could call it the “how of WOW.” Start with these five questions:

1. What is the experience I want to create or transform into a WOW?
2. How will the customer/client/audience feel as a result of this experience? Remember, feelings are visceral. Think goose bumps, heart-pounding, chills.
3. What specific expectations does the typical customer/client/audience member already bring to this experience? This is where you have to over-deliver. Side note: whatever you do, don’t under-promise. That’s lame.
4. What does failing to meet customer/client/audience expectations for this experience look and feel like? Do the opposite.
5. What does exceeding customer/client/audience expectations for this experience look and feel like? Focus on all (that apply) senses.

Next, identify the common attributes in other wow experiences. Here’s a short list to get you started:

• Surprise—a wow experience always exceeds our expectations. It creates delight, amazement, wonder or awe.
• Anticipation—anticipating a wow experience is almost as good as the experience itself. As you think about it, you begin to get present to it.
• Resonance—a wow experience touches the heart. It resonates at a deep level. It sometimes causes goosebumps or even tears.
• Transcendence—a wow experience connects you to something transcendent. Suddenly, you experience purpose, meaning, and often even something greater than yourself.
• Clarity—a wow experience creates a moment when you see things with more clarity than ever before. You suddenly “get it” in a new way.
• Presence—a wow experience creates timelessness. You aren’t thinking about the past. You’re not even thinking about the future. Instead, you are fully present to what is happening now.
• Evangelism—a wow experience has to be shared. You can’t contain it. You immediately begin thinking of all the people you wish were with you. After the experience, you recommend it unconditionally. You become an unpaid evangelist.
• Longevity—the shine never wears off a wow experience. You can experience it again and again without growing tired of it. It endures.

No matter who you are or what you are working on, the first step in creating a WOW experience is recognizing WOW when it shows up. More importantly, it means being able to recognize it when it is absent—and insisting that you can do better. Insisting that you can deliver the experience everyone craves.

I think too often we (I) settle for something less, and in doing so, we rip off everyone, including ourselves. I (we’re) capable of so much more.

So what’s it gonna take for you (and me) to create wow?

Not so.

My experience tells me that the heart, above all, is most important.

It should be our first priority. Why? Because it is “the wellspring of life.” Everything else flows out of it.

The heart is incredibly important. When it stops working properly it’s guaranteed to have an enormous impact on our life, our routine, and our sense of well-being.

But it’s not just our physical heart that is important. Especially as leaders, our spiritual heart is equally important. It is just as important to the life of the group you lead as our physical heart is to the life of our body. When it doesn’t function well, it, too, has an impact.

Physically, your heart is what keeps your body alive. It pumps blood through almost 100,000 miles of arteries, veins, and capillaries. It brings life-giving nutrients to every cell and fiber of your being. Your body can survive without many important organs. Many of these are important but not essential. However, it cannot survive without a heart. When it stops functioning, you die.

Spiritually, your heart is what keeps the group you lead alive. As a leader, you pump possibility into every person and every project. Possibility is what keeps the group alive. Your group can survive without your experience, your knowledge, or your skills. They, too, are important but not essential.

However, your group cannot survive without your heart.

When it stops functioning, your group begins to die.

The heart is your authentic self—the core of your being. It is that part of you that makes you, you. It is your inner being where your dreams, your desires, and your passions live. It is that part of you that connects with other people in a truly meaningful way.

It is also the most important leadership tool you have.

So the most important thing you can do as a leader is to keep your heart open. What do I mean? Think of it this way.

When your heart is open:

• You are fully present and accessible.
• You connect to people.
• Communication is wide open.
• You are a resource to your people.
• You may focus on what is missing, but not on who is wrong.
• You are affirming and encouraging.
• People feel free.

The result? Possibility flows through the group and the group grows and develops.

Maintaining an open heart—pumping possibility through the group you lead—is the most important thing you can do as a leader. There are other tasks, of course, but this is foundational.

Use your most important tool, your heart, that’s why you’re born with it.

And, it’s as simple as this…

“You’ll be judged by what you do, not what you say.”

Too many businesses create complicated loyalty programs to try to keep a customer.

The reality is if you just aways do what you say you are going to do you will have loyal customers.

It’s a fact that most businesses don’t simply do what they say they are going to do. So, don’t make promises unless you will keep them. Not plan to keep them. WILL keep them. Plain and simple.

Reliability is crucial to any relationship and good customer service is no exception. This rule applies to every aspect of your business. Client appointments, deadlines, shipping, sales, resolving complaints…EVERYTHING.

Think before you give any promise because nothing will be more detremental to your long-term success than a broken one.

Have the attitude that you will do what you say you are going to do no matter what it takes and you will have business at a loyalty-level. Always.

If people are following? If you have a title that suggests you should be?

Or, is there something more to it?

Some say leaders are born. Others say they are molded. Which is it?

I bet you know a leader. Maybe you are one.

Maybe your mom who helped you overcome a challenging personal situation.

Maybe your brother who helps organize local events to support military veterans.

Maybe your neighbor who gathers others to keep the neighborhood clean every Saturday morning.

Or maybe you organized your company’s first ever bowling league.

“A position of authority does not a leader make.”

In business, we talk a lot about leadership. Since the days of Peter Drucker and Tom Peters we constantly discuss the difference between “leaders” and “managers.” Usually, this dichotomy hinges on “vision.” Leaders focus on the future and chart a path to get there.  Managers simply preside over the teams and systems that execute that vision.

While this distinction is useful, does it go far enough? Leaders in traditional corporate environments usually derive a large share of their power from their positions—that’s the case for CEOs, cabinet officers and school principals. In other settings, a leader’s power may reflect the freely given support of peers and followers—classic examples include Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Jr., and my mother.

There is a distinction, then, between a “titled” leader and a “true” leader.

A titled leader relies heavily on positional power to get things done; a natural leader is able to mobilize others without the whip of formal authority. These categories aren’t mutually exclusive. Many can be both. The distinction, though, is important. To see why, try this little experiment.

Think about your role at work. Now assume for a moment that you no longer have any positional authority—you’re not the owner, a project leader, a department head or vice president. There’s no title on your business card and you have no direct reports. Assume further that you have no way of penalizing those who refuse to do what you say—you can’t fire them or cut their pay. Given this, how much could you get done in your organization? How much of a leader would you be if you no longer held even slightest bit of bureaucratic power?

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” ~ John Quincy Adams

In other words, how much of your power comes from what you are (“the boss”), and how much comes from who you are (“a leader”)?

A true leader’s performance is measured by the people who follow them and how they inspire them.

So, are you a leader?

I’m sorry.

I take full responsibility.

Let’s do this together.

I was wrong.

Will you please forgive me?

How can I help?

I care.

I don’t know.

You have my full attention.

I’ll follow you.

You see, know one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.

Capitalism: an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.

In recent decades the world changed radically but capitalism didn’t.

Well, that is until September 15, 2008. Capitalism was forever changed on that day when Lehman Brothers, a 158-year American institution, collapsed. For what collapsed on that day was not just a bank or a financial industry. What fell apart that day was an entire philosophical economic system. Don’t agree? Look no further than 18-year Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan’s testimony before Congress on October 23, 2008.

In my opinion, most people are severely underestimating the EPIC disruption that occurred in the months following Lehman Brothers collapse. In fact, I believe history will prove it to be far more significant than the Great Depression. As we speak, I think the world is resetting itself economically, socially and spiritually. While the 30’s may have been the Great Depression, I believe right now we are in the Great Reset, but this reset isn’t just happening in America. We’re in a global economy now. (See the rise of China and India, the complete country collapse of Greece and Ireland, the uprising in Tunisia and Egypt, then look at the record number of unemployed and poverty stricken Americans.)

A CRISIS OR CATALYST

Now let me be clear, capitalism was not destroyed by the most recent crisis, it was just irrevocably changed. Capitalism by its very definition is an adaptive social system that mutates and evolves in response to a changing environment. We know the traumatic events of 2008-09 will neither destroy nor diminish the fundamental human urges that have always powered the capitalist system—ambition, initiative, the competitive spirit. These natural human qualities will instead be redirected and reenergized to create a new version of capitalism that will ultimately be even more successful and sustainable than the system it is replacing.

So rather than looking at the events of 2008-09 as a crisis, maybe we should consider those very events as a catalyst. A catalyst for the next generation of capitalism. Now, more than ever, it’s time to redirect, re-energize, and creatively adapt to current conditions.  The extraordinary opportunities created by technology, globalization, and social change makes for an exciting dawn of the new age of capitalism. And the United States of America can continue to be the leader if (and this is a big IF) its businesses, governments, and educational institutions embrace these changes.

Like any major transformation, it will be messy, but we must recognize the immense necessity to adapt. For it was Eric Hoffer who stated it best when he said, “In times of change, the learners will inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to succeed in a world that no longer exists.”

We are a changing world and true change is often a hard and painful process—a dirty job. People get hurt, jobs are lost, and entire industries disappear. Yet, I believe the global economic upheaval in recent years has afforded us an unprecedented opportunity to rebuild and re-envision an economic model and a future that is based on what is right for people, the environment, and business. This is the true emergence of the new era.

Why is this so important? Because what powered prosperity in the twentieth century won’t and can’t power prosperity in the twenty-first. We are shifting into an era where more meaningful measurements of a country’s and company’s prosperity is being defined because prosperity itself has reached sharply diminishing returns.

TRANSITION OF AN ERA

The challenge with industrial era organizations is they were built on profit by producing and selling as much stuff as possible. But what we know is more stuff doesn’t create better lives or a happy, healthier society. A better society doesn’t depend on more stuff, but on better well-being. So twentieth century companies find themselves in a position of determining how to shift to a meaningful focus that creates a happier, healthier society through well-being.

Throughout the world, there is a palpable hunger for a new capitalistic model. One that understands the difference between excess consumption and sustainable quality of life, one that doesn’t sacrifice the future for the present, one that recognizes we don’t merely need to protect the environment, we are the environment, and one that narrows rather than exploits the inequalities in the world.

IT STARTS WITH A PHILOSOPHY

Most companies have a competitive strategy, but few have a business philosophy. What’s the difference? Everything. Most businesses are obsessed with monetizing and business models: what can we sell, and how much can we sell? A philosophy, in contrast, is concerned with why we’re in business in the first place. I don’t mean mission statements or even company values, but a belief system on how you create meaning for the world and how you intend to express it. At the foundation of any philosophy are core tenants. I submit to you three that may just be the foundation of twenty-first century capitalism:

Meaning + Co-Creation + Worldcentric = Twenty-First Century Capitalism

MEANING

In the new economy businesses can no longer simply make a profit. They must make a meaningful profit or soon the business won’t matter. In the twenty-first century, the most profitable and valuable path to advantage isn’t differentiating stuff, but making a difference to people, communities, and society. For example, TOMS Shoes has a tagline “One-for-One,” but it’s more than a tagline it’s a business philosophy. One that says, for every pair of shoes you purchase TOMS will give a pair of new shoes to a child in need. Or, look at Nintendo who was all but extinct before the release of the Wii.  With the Wii, Nintendo made meaningless games meaningful again. Just visit your local retirement community or family living room and you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.

Consider Nike, which has made an incredible transformation over recent years. One part of that transformation is Nike Plus- an online community dedicated, not just to selling shoes, but creating a more meaningful running experience that creates a fit person connected to other fit people. Nike realizes that in the past the product (shoe) was the end point of the consumer experience. Now they know it’s just the beginning. The end result: A more profitable business.

And meaning can’t only be external it must be internal. Deeper meaning at work must replace the classic case of the Mondays that so many wake up with Monday morning. The workplace must become one of shared principles by all employees rather than simply a place to exchange hours for dollars and benefits. For this you can look no further thanZappos whose sole focus is creating a company culture of happiness. By focusing on creating a company culture of happiness, Zappos was able to deliver happiness to its customers. The result, $1 billion in annual revenue.

When pursuing meaning in business a company must also consider its environmental impact. The hidden history of a business’s product or service is no longer hidden. It’s now either a major asset or major liability. The new era consists of businesses built on renewable resources that can be replenished at a faster rate than they are consumed. Sustainability can no longer be a marketing exercise. It must be built into the business model. Ultimately, companies must be designing processes and products that not only return the biological and technical nutrients they use, but pay back with interest the energy they consume. Consumers are becoming more conscious of these details and are paying closer attention to the “Back Story”- where things come from, what’s inside them, and how they got to a point of use.

CO-CREATION

Our society is witnessing a structural change in the relationship between institutions and individuals. Properly harnessed, we can usher in a new era of wealth creation through new economics of interactions and human experiences that goes beyond the conventional paradigm of goods and services exchange. Enabling customers to collaborate with you—in creating, distributing, marketing and supporting products—is what creates a premium in today’s market. Threadless has nearly perfected this. The ability for consumers to vote on T-shirt designs BEFORE they are produced creates a democratic atmosphere where the customer is in charge of their own experience and end product. This not only translates into a better customer experience, it’s more profitable and sustainable for Threadless. Or consider Netflix. 99 times out of 100 Netflix puts a movie suggestion in front of me that I will enjoy. How? By leveraging technology to get me to create my own user experience.

Starbucks has made the effort to bring co-creation into the board room. Let’s face it, in a world where change happens faster than most companies can respond being able to get real-time ideas from your stakeholders is far more valuable than ideas from your stockholders. Enter mystarbucksidea.com. A website where customers submit ideas for enhancing and improving products and services offered by Starbucks.

On a smaller scale, consider this very blog and my most recent blog post where I ask for specific and direct feedback from community members to enhance the community I’m building.

Co-creation goes a step further into the workplace as well. CEOs need to assume the role of a coworker and adopt more effective collaborative techniques. And managers must manage from the outside in and the bottom up.

WORLDCENTRIC

Twenty-first century companies are worldcentric. They understand that everything they do has a global impact (economic, environmental, and social). It’s always been that way, now it’s noticeable and documented.  We’re now in an era where wealthy nations must utilize business to invest in the poorer nations rather than use them to merely produce goods and services to be consumed in excess. Ultimately, only when everyone is sustainably better off does greater consumption and more growth become sustainable.

In the new era, companies must also realize customers, not just vendors come from everywhere around the globe. The mark of a twenty-first century company is diversity—delivering products and services where, when, and to whom they can sell globally. ConsiderZoka Coffee, after opening its first location in Seattle, Washington it opened its second location in Tokyo, Japan. It now has several more locations in both the U.S. and Japan.

Look at the example of Headway Themes, a father who partnered with his 17-year-old son to launch an international business from their basement in a small town of 4,000 people. Within 30 seconds of launching their business they had 89 people at their website. Not one was from the U.S.

Whether you’re a multi-national corporation or a coffee shop on the corner of small town U.S.A. you must consider your global impact. At a minimum you must think globally while acting locally.

TODAY’S CHALLENGE

Ultimately, today’s challenge, as noted by author Umair Haque in his book “The New Capitalist Manifesto“, is not merely in creating book value, business value, or shareholder value, but in creating authentic economic value. In order to determine authentic economic value we must begin to look at the true cost. The cost of value isn’t merely immediate or just financial. It also includes the natural, social, and human costs. 

It requires you to ensure you are making a real economic difference. Are people smarter, fitter, healthier, or more connected as a result of interacting with your business? That is the truest and hardest test of authentic value creation. Outcomes that make a difference to well-being are what make our work meaningful and our societies stable and thriving.

After all, consider the questions that Umair Haque proposed toward the end of his book:

• What good is an energy industry that destroys the atmosphere?
• What good are banks that catastrophically deplete the financial sphere?
• What good is a food industry that sparks an epidemic of obesity?
• What good is an apparel industry that produces insipid clothes in joyless, dreary working conditions?
• What good are athletic shoes that don’t make people fitter?

Are you seeing a pattern here?

QUESTIONS FOR ALL OF US

Twenty-first century capitalism is about building organizations that are living networks creating a meaningful profit through co-creation of ideas, products, and services that make the world smarter, fitter, healthier, happier, and more connected.

So maybe it’s time to reflect on your business and ask yourself are you making a real economic difference? Are you factoring in the true cost of what your business does? Are you helping make the least well off, better off? Just some questions to consider.

Ready to build a meaningful organization? Let’s chat.

You know what’s better than a great idea? A valuable one.  A valuable idea is worth something. But, how do you know if your idea is worth something. Do the following…

STEP 1:

Spend ALL of your time/money/effort validating or disproving the PROBLEM (not the idea).  What most entrepreneurs do when they have a great idea is call a few people and share the idea. They even call me. I’m good. I can tell them what I think about the market, the opporutnity, the challenges, and the business landscape. But, I don’t “know” any more than anyone else knows. The only way to KNOW if you have a great idea is to validate or disprove the problem you’re solving. That’s it. Focus all your energy validating or disproving the problem. Then you’ll know if that great idea is also valuable.

STEP 2:

Presuming you’ve validated the problem, find out exactly why, what, when,  and where someone would part with money to solve the problem. If people aren’t willing to part with their money it doesn’t matter if your idea is the greatest idea in all the land. The four Ws mean valuable, not just great.

STEP 3:

Validate if your idea meets the requirements necessary to solve the problem. Maybe your idea is the solution. Maybe it’s not. Maybe your idea is part of the solution, but not the whole solution. If, and only if, your great idea has all the components necessary to solve the problem then it’s also valuable.

STEP 4:

Validate as to whether it is feasible to develop the product/service necessary to solve the problem in the way the market wants it solved. Just because you have a solution doesn’t mean that’s how the marketplace wants it solved. Maybe you’re too early to market. Maybe people like the idea, but not the way it’s delivered. Maybe the process is too complicated. Solving the problem the way the marketplace wants it solved will take your idea from great to valuable.

Start here. And when you know you have a valuable idea call me. I’ll help you take average execution to awesome.

Simplicity: The quality of being simple and clear. Simplicity is clarity and ease. If you wish to improve your life with dignity and ease, simplicity is the first step. Complexity creates excesses in negativity, greed, lying, and schemese that upset the harmony of simplicity. True simplicity is a quantity of one. Complexity begins with two or more. Therein lies the pitfall of relationships which can be resolved only when the two become one. Complexity is a personal barrier that rises out of old memories, but simplicity is transpersonal, rising out of the present moment, pointing to the future.

Humility: A humble person is modest, gentle, and honest, one who does not thinking he or she is better or more important than others.  Regardless of your position, earn the right to be heard rather than demanding a hearing. Humility is not thinking highly of yourself, nor is it thinking lowly of yoursefl, for both of these are pride. Humility is simply not thinkg of yourself at all.  The world is moved not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the sum of the tiny pushes of honest workers.

Sincerity: The virtue of speaking truthfully about our feelings, thoughts, and desires. To practice sincerity creates great risk to human beings since our defenses are set aside allowing the outside world to judge and compare us. Sincerity is a virtue only when used for personal growth and benefit. It becomes a weapon when used to manipulate others to self-disclose to us.We usually think of honesty as speaking the truth. Sincerity goes beyond this by including listening the truth, and also reasoning the truth. The sincere life is not measured by where you are. Where you are is your beginning. If you are totally sincere you will begin your evaluation by being sincer about what your future possibilities are. Keep the challenge of the path always before you.

Purity: The state of being pure. The absence of pollution, dilution, and imperfection. Purity of body, heart, and mind are the badge of truth. Nothing spoils this trio deeper or faster than lying.

Gratitude: The most productive of all virtues known to humans. It involves a sense of indebtedness to others accompanied by a desire to reciprocate for what they have done for you.  Research reveals that gratitude is increased when the favor is costly to the giver, valued by the recipient, given with pure intentions, and with no expectations.  Gratitude stabilizes the body, mind, and emotions. In individuals who are already imbued with gratitude, receiving gifts and praise has little effect on them.   Saying thank you is more than good manners. It is good spirituality. As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.

Surrender: The object of surrender is to make our self available to a higher purpose. This is achieved by putting ourselves aside and surrendering our own will to the plan and purpose of the Higher Self. Putting self aside means to vacate our wishes, desires, possessions, relationships, plans and cognitions, in favor of our Calling. This often means to surrender to an idea, a calling, or a mission. It is to abandon yourself for a premonition that may become your vocation. The world “vocation” comes from the word “vocare” which means God’s voice.  The absolute corollary of surrender is personal obdenience to the will of a greater plan and destiny. There is no place in surrender for doubt and disobedience. The idea of total surrender is rare indeed in human beings. However, there is no substitute if you wish to take the high road. Such devotion is remarkable.

Availability: To be available for nothing else. The universe is ruled by immutable laws and they are not subject to change. When your attitude is immutable then you are available, and not until. Anything less than immutable is unavailable. There is no such thing as almost available. True availability is as trustworthy and reliable as infallibility. Time and tools can build a beautiful edifice in this world, but availability and attitude can build a new world that eventually manifests as physical reality. There is no power greater than availability in this world. It is not a fraction nor an ingredient of power, it is the power.  Availability is not a blueprint or a guideline. It is the essence of new creation. No talent is required for availability to manifest. It asks only for your intention and your time.  Once you are available, the mold of your dream is formed. As your dream takes shape your attitude manifests before your very eyes.

Apply these seven principles and break yourself free.