Tell me about your vision.
What do you see for the world in regards to leadership,
in regards to your life?
You can be as expansive as you want on this.
Sure.
My vision, like I'm really about purpose.
And a lot of people talk about purpose.
I take it seriously.
I think my career has been a quest for purpose.
And at first, it felt kind of random.
I was a creative person, and I wrote poetry,
and I studied philosophy, and I was interested in art.
And literature.
And I don't think I ever expected to be a businessman.
Kind of felt like the accidental businessman.
But we all have to engage in the economic machine, so to speak.
Got to connect those gears, the internal gears,
with the marketplace gears.
And I found my place in tech.
And it kind of expanded from there.
So my vision is really about, and I
can do certainly a lot of details
in that long middle passage that I can talk to you about.
But what I help people with now, what I care about the most,
is helping people find and define their purpose.
Because I believe that business can be a force for good.
And we all have to work.
Most of us, in the 99%, at least, need to work for a living.
And I'd also say most of us want to work and are meant to work.
But to work purposefully.
And as long as you're working, I feel like you may as well
be working for a purpose.
And I see a business, especially for entrepreneurs,
as an extension of themselves and an opportunity
to really leverage the power of organization,
the power of numbers, of people working in concert
towards a clear, purposeful vision,
as an extension of themselves, really.
And it's all about making an impact on the world,
a positive impact on the world.
And I believe business can do that.
It's a great opportunity.
There's other ways to do it, of course, too.
You can do it through other organizations, your church,
or nonprofit, or whatever you do.
But why not do it in business?
But moreover than that, so that's
from the CEO, founder CEO's perspective.
But in terms of inspiring and motivating a team,
people want meaningful work.
And there's a lot of statistics that say the best employees,
professionals, are willing to sacrifice up
to 23% of their income.
This is according to one survey I read,
for work that is always meaningful.
That's lifetime income.
I'm willing to sacrifice nearly a quarter of my lifetime
earnings if I can be doing something meaningful.
And personally, that resonates with me,
because money has never been my primary motivator.
Now, when you don't have money, you can get desperate about it
and it can become an obsession.
But when you do have it and when you get it, you're like, OK.
Well, it's nice to have.
And it certainly allows freedom.
It gives freedom.
But it's not enough in itself.
At least it hasn't been for me.
So and I think that's true for most people.
So I try to get people to think about purpose.
And it's a great starting point.
Purpose, on the one hand, and core values, on the other hand.
And then you kind of have this inside.
This is the outside, like the impact
you might want to make on the world.
There's a vision there.
What is your vision?
Vision and purpose are not exactly the same thing.
But it's your target.
It's your goal.
And everything in between, strategy, culture,
organizational habits, whatever product or service
you deliver, the details, the features,
and benefits of whatever you're delivering,
your customer experience, your brand identity,
all need to align along that axis between core values
and vision, with purpose being the thing that kind of links
them all together.
So that's neat.
And it's helpful.
It's super important.
If you get caught up in those mechanics without the purpose,
you can find yourself drowning very fast in a life
that you don't like.
So Mark, you mentioned this concept
of accidental entrepreneurship.
I just kind of fell in.
And it reminds me of my story, too.
I was on a humanitarian mission in Uruguay for a long time.
And it was when I was there where
I learned that I needed to be an entrepreneur.
And it doesn't make any sense, logically.
It made no sense as to why then and why at 20 years old
I would receive that, like, go and do this.
But because it's funny.
I got back.
And I ended up in the tech world as well.
I don't think we're the only people on the Earth that
have that experience.
I think a lot of people end up having that experience.
And don't get me wrong.
If you go to get your MBA at Harvard Business
and you find yourself being surrounded by people who are
like, oh, I've wanted to be a business person,
well, no doubt.
You're all at Harvard Business School.
But most entrepreneurs are not in that realm of life
when they fall into the reality that, oh, maybe
I should turn this on or do this.
So any further thoughts on the accidental entrepreneur aspect?
What words of wisdom do you have for somebody
who accidentally fell into it and now they've
got a lot to learn to make sure they pull that vision off?
Right.
Well, I think one reason why people end up in business
is because it's different from charity.
It's if you want to make a positive impact in the world,
that's another way to do it.
It's charitable contributions or volunteer work.
And that's all that's noble work.
That's honorable work.
There's something about a business, though,
where you kind of have to earn your way.
You have to solve real problems in the real material world
that people are willing to exchange currency, which
in itself is neutral, in my opinion.
It means you're producing something of value.
You're actually making a difference.
And you're demonstrating it day after day
through this process.
But what it does for you is it makes your organization,
your business self-sustaining.
You're not dependent on somebody's handout,
like of a philanthropist or a donor to keep things running.
And there's very few gifts without strings attached.
And so I think social enterprise really just is moving.
You're talking about having a business
model around that process, needing to learn about that.
What's one resource?
If you had to name one resource, what's
kind of the king resource you would turn to if you were
that purpose-driven person today saying, man, I kind of want
to turn this into a business?
Yeah.
I like Michael Gerber's E-Myth Revisited.
Yes.
I was hoping you'd say that too.
Really?
Someone I wish I had read sooner.
Yeah, yeah, right.
Because he says you've got to think like a franchise.
That was his idea.
And this goes back originally to the 80s.
And then he revisited it in the 90s.
But he was ahead of his time.
And all these frameworks, I work with frameworks.
I work with the US.
I work with System and Soul.
And it's all about having a system for how you operate.
Because you don't need to reinvent the wheel.
There's plenty of great minds around the world
who have thought about this for a long time.
And those systems have kind of cobbled together in some cases
or synthesized all the great business literature and wisdom
and performance literature and wisdom and team building
and accountability, all these things into a single system.
But it starts with Michael Gerber's book,
where he talks about it.
And a big part of that is the difference
between working in the business versus working on the business.
We all get caught up, especially the entrepreneur,
wearing 16 hats simultaneously in the working in the business.
And you can't see the forest from the trees.
And you need to separate those two.
And Mark, how can leaders lean into funding the vision?
Interesting.
So I think fear is the obvious thing that comes to mind.
Imposter syndrome, what you don't know,
and what you know you don't know,
what you don't know that you don't know, all of the above.
The uncertainty, the unknowns, it's risk.
And you have to be ready to fall in your face a lot to succeed.
And it does get easier as long as you keep getting up.
But I think fear is the biggest one.
And if I'm reading the question correctly,
so I think when you talk about funding their vision,
you mean whether that money is coming from somebody else
or coming if it's bootstrapped or if it's completely just
a sweat equity kind of thing until you
can get some revenue going?
Is that what you mean by funding your vision?
I mean, like kind of putting your money where your mouth is
and going for it?
Great question.
So it's open-ended because all of us
have different circumstances.
I mean, this could be some kid from Saudi Arabia, China,
America who's got daddy's pocketbook
and is scared to step into his own skin and get things done.
I'm not here to define that as much as to point out
the perspective that universally speaking,
when we put the external of the resources aside,
yes, resources are important.
And so it may be just the fear of stepping into it,
but it may also be a monetary facet.
So when I ask this to a leader, especially the second one,
how do leaders lean into it?
My backup on that would be, Mark, well,
how did you lean into it?
Or how do you recommend others consider going about it
the more we create transparency, the more we
create potential paths for people?
To me, the more likely they'll be
able to exercise that freedom of choice to say, you know what?
Like Mark said, there's fear here.
But should I let that hold me back from my vision?
Right.
I think you do have to believe that what you have to offer
is something of value.
You have to believe you have something of value to offer
to the world.
And you have to be willing to take the risk
to tell somebody about it and then also
ask for something from them.
Could be money.
It could be connection.
Could be advice.
All of those things.
But you need to believe in yourself.
And you need to be willing to take the risk
and step into that uncomfortable place of fear and the unknown
and be OK when it says no or goes poorly
and just keep getting up again.
It's that perseverance that counts for a lot.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.