Does your business create joy?
For you? For your customers and clients? For your team?
If not, why the heck are you doing it?
I often write about the maxim that “Problems are markets.”
Meaning, when you have a large enough group of people all interested in solving a problem, you have a market.
And often the most effective way to market and sell to that audience is by speaking to them about the problem.
However, there’s a flip side to that.
The solution.
The destination.
The desired result.
The outcome.
The joy.
For every pain we’re trying to solve, there’s a pleasure we’re trying to get our prospects to experience.
For every darkness, there’s the light.
For every hell, there’s the heaven.
Your job as marketer isn’t just to take them FROM the pain…
It’s to take them TO the pleasure.
They may have a dark and painful past. And while knowing that — and speaking to it (at least on some level) — will help you connect…
It’s in actually helping them reach a brighter future that you create satisfied customers and raving fans.
So… What transformation do you create?
How are you ensuring that you are speaking to your prospects about BOTH?
Likewise, this applies throughout your business…
What about your team?
How are you helping them achieve what they want to achieve?
How are you bringing them from darkness into light?
How are you helping them achieve their desired outcome?
And what can you do to reinforce the behavior you want by focusing on the positive, not just the negative.
Discipline feels very natural. Corrective action. Pointing out areas for improvement.
That’s usually necessary the FIRST time. Maybe the second and the third. Beyond that, they already know what not to do. But perhaps you haven’t been clear enough about what they need to do. About reinforcing that action. About linking it to their goals and desired outcome. About showing them the pleasure of right action, not just the pain of wrong action.
(This applies to personal relationships as well. Would you rather be in a relationship with someone who gets what they want through praise or through nagging? Which would you rather be?)
Hold up a mirror and see this also applies to yourself…
Is your business focused on pain? On agony? On trying to get away from poverty? Or trying to move toward abundance?
What about the actual products and services? Are they joyful to you? Does your business create joy in your life, when you show up?
Let’s not get this confused with a passion business — although a passion business can create joy. “Do what you love and the money will follow” is seldom good advice.
But if you can find your Ikigai — what you love, what the world needs, what you can get paid for, and what your are good at — your business will bring you joy, while also succeeding as a commercial endeavor.
Are you creating joy?
If not, it may be worth seriously considering why…
And what decisions you can make that will change that.
Do your customers get joy out of doing business with you? Out of using your products and services?
Does your team get joy out of working together, and working for your business? What about out of serving your customers?
And you — are you getting joy out of the work you do?
This is not a trivial exercise, or simply to make you feel good…
The practical implication of creating joy is that everyone will engage at a deeper level.
Clients will do more business with you.
Your team will contribute at a higher level.
And you’ll be re-energized whenever you work on your business.
Which is far better than the alternative of customers who begrudge you, a team that’s working for the weekend, and you perhaps having financial success but feeling soulless.
Create joy.
Yours for bigger breakthroughs,
Roy Furr
