Categories: Articles

Business Should Motivate You

I was thinking about this (a lot) the other day…

I had to review some edits for my new book, CTRL ALT DEL (out in May 2013), and I realized that I had written about a similar thought as I had in my first book, Six Pixels of Separation (2009). The crux of the thinking goes like this: you will hear a vast majority of professionals say something akin to: "it’s nothing personal, it’s just business." To be blunt, that’s B.S. I don’t know about you, but I spend the vast majority of my waking hours thinking about not only the business of Twist Image, but what I can do to achieve more. If I don’t take business personally, what is the point? I can’t even think of something that I should take more personally. Can you?

A deeper reflection.

I had the pleasure of being in Charlotte, North Carolina on Tuesday to record an upcoming webinar with Jeffrey Gitomer (best-selling business book author of The Sales Bible, The Little Red Book of Selling, Social BOOM! and countless other tomes that are quick-witted and provide striking insights into how to be better at work). The webinar is called, Jeffrey Gitomer’s Webinar Boot Camp 2012 {Re•define} Yourself (it’s not free, so click on the link if you would like more details). As I sat in his studio, sitting side-by-side with Gitomer, I had this strange feeling come over me. When I first got interested in business books, I fell madly and deeply in love with three authors: Jeffrey Gitomer, Seth Godin and Tom Peters. Once blogging and online content became pervasive, I could hardly believe how much free insights and goodness these people were sharing (and, to this day, I can’t wait to see what they come up with – each and every day – in places like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and beyond). I guess it just felt strange to be a part of his content rather than a customer of it (which I am). On the flight home, I asked myself: "what did you learn today?"

Nothing. Everything.

There wasn’t one thing. There were many things. It wasn’t obvious. I feel like I am better. We often push personal development to the side. I realized, on the two-hour flight home, that I had an amazing day of personal business development. A lot of it probably won’t sink in for months. A lot of it will probably only surface in a way that may not even seem obvious to me. With that, I also realized that seeking motivation in personal development is not the same as seeking business motivation to do and achieve more. Seth Godin recently did a 37 minute video interview with the Good Life Project. This isn’t the typical Seth Godin fare that will fill your brain with ideas about what you should be doing in business. In this video, Seth talks a lot about his personal journey and desire to do more interesting things, projects and stuff. Yes, Godin is always motivational, but there’s something about this video that is profound in terms of business motivation.

I don’t know about you…

I ate my lunch at my office desk yesterday (which I rarely do) and I decided to let this video interview run while chomping on some salad. It stopped me dead in my tracks. It was true business motivation. It moved me to do a lot more work than I had intended to. It also created a mental model for me to focus on when the desire to click over to the Facebook or Twitter tab on my Web browser seems more desirable than the work that needs to get done.

I don’t know about you, but I need more business motivation in my life. So, please watch this and tell me if you can just sit idly by…

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.