thank you to over 11,000 of you who read this weekly and share with your friends and family for behind the scenes on building a million dollar business from scratch and beyond.
i also include a personal note in the end so i am grateful that you let me do that without judgement.
founders want great exit (have), so they try to scale and find ways to grow faster at all cost (do), which leads to consequences for that way of growing (think) and that’s why so many businesses fail in the first few years (be).
that’s have. do. think. be. mindset.
the problem is they started with have and not with be.
with GTM Partners, we have been fortunate to build a profitable company from day 1, instead of growing at all cost.
our vision is the be go-to for go-to-market, so we are thinking of products like building a licensing model and original research, which is why we project doing more and more partnership deals and not just building a massive sales team to have an efficient growth and profitable business.
that’s a be. think. do. have. mindset.
i learned this from my friend Dick Biggs.
he is one of my fav author and his books have been transformational for me in the recent years.
if we build businesses that starts with what we want to BEcome before what we want to HAVE, we might have entire different economy, jobs, and market conditions.
on a personal note, Dick recently also ran a leadership series at my Chuch for 6 weeks and he taught us framework at a personal level.
he described that most people live lives like this (i certainly have in the past):
have - a lot of things
do - so they do things to get those things
think - then then think of the consequences of their desires and things they did
be - and finally they become someone that is a result of what they have, do, and think.
you might want read that again and self examine.
it took me several weeks to wrestle with this simple, yet profound idea.
in reality, if we all took a moment and ask these questions in the right order, we most likely will choose a different path than we are on right now.
so here are the questions to consider and my answers to it:
Be - who do i want to be? Jesus follower
Think - how do i want to think? love God and love others
Do - what should i do? find ways to love God and love others in everything i do.
Have - what do you want to have? Godly marriage, family, and legacy.
now those are my answers and yours might be different.
i immediately wrote this down and i starting to work on this with my kids.
instead of simply pointing them for their mistakes, i can now point to this mindset.
Be. Think. Do. Have.
If you are Jesus follower, then you will think and do likewise and you will have the desires of HIS heart.
leader point: in business and in life, start with who you want to become and not what you want to have.
I've had similar thoughts about this lately. I keep coming back to love vs. attachment. If I love what I do, I get to "Be" first which inevitably provides me with what I need or have. If it starts with the 'need' then I'm attached to it from the wrong place. The entrepreneurial journey has taught me that you can make money from both but only one feels in alignment with my values. And frankly, the 'love or attachment' mindset can create a culture that impacts people and their families for better or worse. It seems to start with the self awareness of the leadership / founders.
Awesome read Sangram. I am definitely going to adopt this mindset, so good.
Another great way to think about it but from the lens of seeing others is see who they can become through the Lord’s eyes