Transcript:

Rick: Let’s say you’re an Ohio manufacturer, based in Ohio. This is a great business. It’s been in existence. The employees love the business. But let’s just say they make those little red toilet flaps or something, or something that’s not Apple, that’s not world-famous, how would you provide that same kind of inspiration and core purpose? Even if you’re not doing brain surgery, how do we instill that purpose if it’s more of a simple good or service?

Michael: You’ve got to communicate what the value of that business is to the marketplace it serves. In short it’s not selling to companies it’s selling to people. And those people are buying that product because they trust it and value it beyond the ordinary.

The company has to communicate its purpose, its mission, its dream on what all these languaging that I do about this. I’m in exactly the same way as Steve Jobs did.

And unfortunately we’re so tied down to the practical realities of what we do today. And the obstacles in the way of what we do every day that we miss the true human value of what we do every day. That’s got to be communicated.

And the only way to communicate that, that makes a difference is that the story of the company, the alive and vibrantly well at the heart of the company every single day.

I say that the entrepreneur must inspire his or her people. And that means to create an epiphany. It’s a moment of awakening beyond the ordinary, beyond the normal things that go on in everybody’s life, beyond making a living. You got to be inspired.

A second thing that has to happen, they have to be educated. Effectively they need to be taught the meaning of that epiphany and better understand it.

I call it an epiphany and a moment of seeing, and then a moment of understanding what I’ve just seen. And relating that to the marketplace that we’re here to service.

Every employee gets to participate in that grand adventure. And when they get to participate in that they go beyond just the ordinary stuff that they deal with every single day of their lives. That’s the critical component of all this.

Every single one of us lead ordinary lives. All the stuff that goes on in our lives, all the stuff that we become excited about, or challenged by, or diminished by, or eradicated by, all of those things what I’m saying is we have to be inspired to go beyond them.

That becomes the call of the entrepreneur. That becomes the call of the executives in a major corporation. That becomes the call in the owner of the very small business.

It’s no difference big or small. It’s got to be there. And if it ain’t there it’s just a job. And just a job is backbreaking.

Rick: Alright.