I don’t think you should ever start a business to make money. Don’t get me wrong – it makes the world go round and it’s nice to have money rather than not, but if you start a business just purely to make money, I think the chances of success are relatively limited. The reason behind that is that to me, if you start a business to make a difference, then from a business owner’s prospective and an employee prospective you are more likely to get up when you get knocked down and you will get knocked down, over and over again. There will be cash flow problems, there will be customer problems, there will be issues with supply, there will be issues with software and anybody in business will tell you it’s hard work, you get knocked down and you get knocked down. You are more likely to get up and carry on going when you really believe you are making a difference.
If you look at enjoy! as an agency, from the minute we started to focus on making a difference to the amount that people could grow their business and align their marketing from a strategic and a psychological point of view, for this social and digital world, we have gone higher and higher because that’s what we believe in and that’s what we are focused on. So, when people say do you do this – no we used to, we don’t do it anymore and since we’ve got that sense of clarity and sense of focus we really believe we will make a difference and by making a difference all of a sudden people get engaged behind it. But not only that, if you make a difference you have a better story and if you have a better story you are more likely to get people to buy into your story and get behind it, so to me I think money and profit is a bi-product of what you sell and what you do. Ultimately start a business – grow your business about making a difference.
