Horton Finds His WHO

It was story time last night and while reading to my young daughter some interesting lessons of entrepreneurship came through loud and clear.  What, entrepreneurial lessons in a kids story you say.  Yup!  You’ve probably heard of Horton Hears A Who. Maybe you read it to your child.  If not go and read it.  It’s a classic.  Integrity, giving, good moral values, and genuine caring all rolled up into one little story.

So as the story goes, Horton hears a voice.  A very faint one but a voice nonetheless. Then he realizes it is not one voice but a whole community of voices.  Gradually as he really listens he hears the voices loud and clear and begins to hear what they are saying, in fact what they are asking.  They want his help, they need his help and of course out of the kindness of his heart he delivers.  “A person’s a person, no matter how small!”  Security, protection, transportation, and someone who cares.  Tremendous value realized by his new community as Horton delivered even more and more.

Well, his little community came to absolutely love Horton.  The more value he delivered, the deeper his relationship became with his community.  Now Horton did all that he did out of his deep inner values and the love of his community was payment enough.

But imagine for a moment if Horton was an entrepreneurial type. With the value he delivered and the relationship he nurtured with his community he could evolve to adding even greater value in terms of services, information, and products that his community would happily pay for.  He could scale things to offer his services to other little communities of WHO’s on other clovers.  He could even begin to train like minded associates to deliver the same types of services and scale things even more.  Powerful!An absolute win-win-win for Horton, all the WHO’s in his world, and all of his associates.

So who’s your WHO?  Do you know, should you know, would you know… if they called out to you!

Now monetary payment is not Horton’s way.  Unfortunately so many in our industry give and give just like Horton, out of the kindness of our hearts and simply wanting to help people but fail to transition to monetizing the incredible value provided to a community they are really connected to and in a manner that is a win-win.

How are you identifying and connecting with your WHO and adding great value so that they become deeply connected to you and freely willing to pay you for even more great value.  Here’s a little hint… it’s not whoever will pay you.  Get way more specific.

Yours in health,

Brent

“‘A person’s a person, no matter how small’, and business done right delivers value to your community, one and all.”