Tag Archives: questions

Your essence – the gem at the heart of your business

Brand name, messages that matter, million dollar message, one central truth, Persuasive message, punchline, ,
Your essence is your why and purpose and does a huge amount of business heavy lifting
Your essence is your why and purpose and does a huge amount of business heavy lifting. Photo by Ileana Skakun on Unsplash

To know what your business really really is, and express it in a form that resonates with all is rightly a holy grail.

Understand and use your business essence, expressed as words, and you:
Have the basis of your first, most important story…and all other stories
Have an internal company rallying call
Have soul

However unearthing your essence is challenging; to say the very least.

Finding the authentic description of what makes your business tick – and why others can care – is no walk in the park.

It is certainly no use attempting to brainstorm your way to your essence. Brainstorming leads you down endless roads of creating fiction, which people cannot own.

The only way to find the spirit of your business is through questioning.

Only questions, from questions, can drive to the One Central Truth about your why or purpose.

From there, only by weaponising words around your One Central Truth can your craft an essence of expression.

Again, this is a real challenge.

But, unearth your essence, and you have a Million Dollar Message to carry out an extraordinary amount of business heavy lifting – now, and into the future.

Brainstorming is the wrong answer to the right question

Metaphor, one central truth, punchline, slogan, Tagline, value proposition, , ,

Brainstorming is a waste of time
Questions, and more questions are a much better way to an answer than brainstorming Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

So, if you’re looking to create your first, most important story, how do you go about it?

Or, you’re looking for the name of a project or report, what process should you use?

Alternatively, you’re wanting to give yourself a dynamic campaign title, and need a way to nail the caption.

Many people adopt a brainstorming process.

They come up with a multitude of ideas and options; and whittle away from there.

There’s two things wrong with this brainstorming approach, especially for unearthing your first story (or Million Dollar Message as I call it).
It won’t reveal the authentic you
It will lead to a fictionalised, idealised version of who you are

The other trouble with brainstorming is it takes you down pathways, wrong pathways. These tracks take you in the wrong direction, and because of the inherent process of brainstorming, make it difficult to do a U-turn.

You feel as if you’ve invested so much intellectual capital in the story idea you’re pursuing, that to turn back is to indulge in mental treason.

The right answers are questions – deeper explorations of what, why, who, when, where and how.

By digging, and digging further, you unearth the one central truth of the aspect which makes you special, and discover the clothesline on which your first message hangs and to which all your messaging will have a North Star reference point.

So, don’t brainstorm. Question storm (and if you’d like some higher education reason to adopt this philosophy, check out this Harvard Business Review article as well).