Success Depends on Your Purpose
Posted by Greg Roworth on Jun 13, 2017
Do you work for a living, or to create a lifestyle, or to build a legacy?
What’s your purpose for being in business?
Did you realise how important purpose can be to your ultimate business success?
Living
One of the major influences we can have on our business success is our purpose for being in business. For some, the main purpose is about making a living. This means we choose to work at something we enjoy while simply making an income to live off .
We all have a basic purpose to make a living. However, making a living is only about survival, not true business success.
Lifestyle
For others, being in business is about creating a lifestyle. The aim is to create a significant income that enables a level of financial independence. Also important is the freedom to spend your time pursuing pleasurable activities other than work. That’s a major benefit of being in business. It provides an ability to create a lifestyle that is normally not possible with a normal job.
Legacy
At another level, some people have an ambition to build a legacy. They want to grow a business that provides something for others sustainably into the future. Building a legacy means more than providing for yourself. It means that you create opportunities and income for people and products or services of value to the community. If your purpose is about contribution, you are often inspired to go to greater heights than when you merely provide for yourself. When you provide for yourself, you are happy to stop when you reach a point of satisfaction. However, when you are inspired to give, at what point do you say, “That’s enough?”
A Cause Worth Fighting For
When your purpose is to build a legacy and you are focused on contribution, you are also much more likely to inspire others to join your cause. Any business where the owner has to work to motivate the team is destined to struggle. However, when the team members are inspired to fight for a worthy cause that creates value and leaves a legacy for others, the success of the business is virtually guaranteed.
A business that is driven by purposeful interactions to make a valuable contribution can hardly fail. When you create a business like this, almost everybody will want it to succeed because of the value it creates. When everyone wants a business to succeed, that is, the customers, the suppliers, the financiers, the employees, not to mention the owners, how can it fail?
When your purpose is to build a legacy, the business is much more likely to reach its full potential than when you are satisfied you have done enough to please yourself. This is not about judgment or what’s right or wrong. Just be aware that if you opt for anything less than creating a legacy, you are likely to be limiting your business potential. Your choice to feel satisfied with anything less than your full potential creates a ceiling on your ability to achieve all that is possible.
If you want to achieve your full potential in business, a higher purpose, to create a legacy, is most likely to be the key that unlocks that potential.
To explore more about creating a legacy focused business, read Run Your Business on Autopilot.
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