Man’s Search for Meaning is a book about a psychologist named Viktor Frankl who suffered through many awful years at Nazi concentration camps. Knowing this, how can such a heavy and insightful book come into the business world? How can some one call this sad story the best business book of all time? How can it be utilized as a framework for making the best business you can have?
After reading it, two important key factors rang true to me from the book once I put the lens of business on it. We cannot control what happens to us in life, we can only control how we react to it. Life has to be about a mission.
Like Nietzsche famously stated, “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how”.
You ask me how is this about business. I ask you, how is it not? Business is the ultimate mission at the basis of giving you the tools to change anything you feel compelled to change in the world. Business is the best and biggest driver of change. Either directly or through the resources you obtain. And in business, there are many awful hurdles that get thrown at you. The key to your success will be your reaction.
A Business Dive
At first, we don’t know how to start a business. Many of the new business people I talk to want to start a business just to start a business. They don’t usually have a clear mission or a reason “why”.
I can understand this. When we don’t know what business is and have not experienced it, we think its about money and working a short schedule. Spoiler: business is not that easy. To put it simply, many people want to start a business just to start a business. My argument would be to start one that is a nagging passion that won’t let go.
After we get a bit of business education under our belts though, we find that there is a framework to follow when approaching business opportunities. I am not talking about the business plan, financial analysis, or market research. Before all that, we need to do a “gut check”. This means assessing the mental and physical being of what you plan to endeavor in. I’m talking about finding your “mission”.
You see after one gets passed the opening a business just to open a business phase. We realize that smart entrepreneurs efficiency and drive are key components to business success.
Finding Your Mission
In the book by Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, he talks about discovering meaning (your mission) in three ways:
- Creating a work or doing a deed – achieving or accomplishing.
There is no greater work created in this day and age than starting a business. After all, business is what makes the world go round. Business is what feeds us, shelters us, and brings us new innovations. Successful entrepreneurs are the changers and doers of the world who brought the resources to fund their passions. It’s quite self-explanatory here that opening a business on its own is creating great work. But just how great is your work?
If you could choose between being part of a business that produces payday loans at high-interest rates gauging for poor people, or a business that works on technology to cure cancer, which would you choose? This is how you can determine for yourself if one of Vitors meanings is being met. The best thing you can do in this world is some good, is your business?
- Experiencing something or encountering someone – experiencing goodness, truth, or beauty.
The second step? This is where you need to find the “heart” of your business. Your passion, your reason for being, your “why”.
In my mind, this is the first step in the business process. Ask yourself why does your business matter. Now, sometimes what makes your business matter is the intense monetary gain, which can then lead to great works. Still, my favorite types of business are the ones that have a daily great mission. Open these kinds of business opportunities and it will lead to a much greater sense of fulfillment for yourself and your staff.
Start something of beauty, of value, or of presenting truth. I cannot say it better than Viktor Frankl did.
- The attitude we take towards unavoidable suffering.
Bad things happen in life and in business. To me Frankl’s statement here lends to business in two ways. You will be hit with stuff in your business daily. It will feel like suffering, but nowhere on the level of a Nazi concentration camp. This is in itself is important to note. Your business nightmare is nothing in comparison to Frankls camp. Now how are you going to approach this issue? Laying down or with your chin up and knuckles flexed?
How your business help with suffering?
I recently read an article about Chewy, the pet food company. They would authorize their staff to do caring acts for their customers. For example, a customer had lost her dog so she asked to return the food she bought for her lost pet. Chewy asked her to donate the food instead and sent flowers to the recently devastated dog mom along with a refund for the food. Chewy is a huge company that makes money, but they are also on a mission. They care about animals and people and this is clear.
I know it seems dull and insignificant in comparison to the author’s horrors, but I promise you your business will have many sufferable occasions that cannot always be avoided. Lawsuits, employee issues, unfair big business push. We cannot control these things. We can only control the way we react and how we move forward.
Learning the Hard Way
It wasn’t until I experienced 10 years of hard business, formal education, and time after a business sale to collect and reflect on my experience. I realized I had missed all the important first steps to starting a business. The ones that are never written about like the pre-idea pre-business plan step. Not that I knew what they were back then.
Reading Man’s Search for Meaning with this lens was a profound mental journey for me. A man doomed to spend what must have felt like an eternity in concentration camps, with the experience and knowledge of a psychologist. Viktor Frankl is superhuman. He was able to analyze and portray this situation for the benefit of all mankind. It’s almost like sharing his experience with the world was his destiny.
How Can Your Business Become Your Destiny?
Having a meaning or mission is information gold in life and in business. So, how do you find your real mission in business? The very first step in any business should be analyzing your passion for it.
Many people want to get into business just to get into business. The world is telling you to throw your hat in and to stop being a fool working for someone else dream. After all, business success is just an LLC set up away, right? Well, not exactly.
Here’s the danger in this thought process: it’s not as easy as it sounds. It’s not all money, working your own hours, and freedom of schedule choice. I’ve said it time and time again, Having “grit and no quit” is what it takes to see business success. If you have these, you will be successful – I promise you. However, this can also be dangerous.
For example, what if your no quit attitude has you staying in a business long passed the passion has left? What if the business is not your life’s mission or at least stepping you towards it? Like two dogs fighting, you will be torn between your desire to stick with what you start while also feeling empty in what you are doing. I see no reason why we don’t make more emphasis on this part. A business can be both. If you don’t have grit, you don’t truly need it if you are working on your passion. The hard days get easier when you feel what you are doing is truly your life’s work.
How Business Changes The World
Small businesses currently account for 99% of all businesses. It employs 2/3 of people, and it gives 250% more to charity than big business. By simply starting a business or being in business, you already have an amazing mission.
As with anything, a mission has obligations. Think of your people – the people you employ – you are responsible for their livelihoods. Shame on the businesses who hire up without thinking and make an easy practice of layoffs. You have just uprooted people’s lives and their ability to meet their basic needs.
As business owners, people get to vote. They vote with their attention and their resources. If you have a successful business, it means many people have voted an unequal share of resources and attention to your business. This is something that should not be taken lightly. When you have gained these resources, you now owe something back. You owe the world to make an impact and to make the place a bit better than when you came into it.
For those of you who are new to the business world, I am sure you are thinking, “I am just getting into business for the money. I want freedom.” But, if you watch those that have it all, you will see that the allure of cars, money, and purses quickly goes away.
Creating a mission and direction towards it? Now, that is something worth suffering the hard world of business for. It’s worth the long hours, it’s worth the sacrifice, and it gets easier to put into context the problems you are facing. Its something that will gain you the resources to be feed and shelted in the world. But what will your business be when your looking back at your life? Do you see fulfilment?
There is a reason we say “beware the person on a mission”. Make your business a mission, not only will it get easier but you’ll find that you’re not lost after you have found your success. Given that Frankl felt his life’s meaning was to help others find theirs, I am certain he would approve.
