Define your Purpose first, then build your product
Before you build your product, you must know why are you building it. It is really important to know your ‘Purpose’ clearly, this will be your guiding light in making decisions and will help you to get through the tough times.
What is a ‘Purpose’?
A purpose is something that defines the “why” behind what you are doing or building.
To understand this better, let's look at Nike. So what do you think is the Purpose of Nike? Give it a thought!
Do you think is it to make the best Running Shoe or Jersey or any Sports Product? No, that is not their purpose, this is just how they execute their purpose.
So what is the purpose of Nike? Let’s look at their website and see what they say!
So did you see any mention of any of their products here? No.
A product is always a means to execute the Purpose. With a clear purpose, it would be easier for a company to decide what products to make and see how much value the product creates and serves the purpose.
The purpose is the driving factor for everything, it is the reason for any company's existence. If you aspire to grow your company to a greater level then it is very important to have a clear purpose.
Products Change but Purpose Remains
One of the hardest lessons I learned as an entrepreneur is to not fall in love with the product I built, instead focus on solving the problem”.
But when I dived deeper into this understanding I felt that it is the purpose that we have that drives us to pick a certain problem to solve.
If you are about to start a company / build a product then, it is very important to spend time to understand and clearly write the purpose and also it helps you to check if you can commit to it for a longer period of time? to check if it is close to your heart?
It would help you as a guiding light when going gets tough and the going will get tough along the way for sure.
If your product fails, change it, upgrade it, strip it, trash it and build a new one if needed. But making any of these decisions would be so much easier with clarity.
Why we do what we do?
As Simon Sinek says in his Ted Talk — “People buy why you do it and not what you do.” [Here is the link to the video]
If there are 10 companies seeming the same product with little difference the way humans choose is by connecting to the company emotionally. This is how humans work.
If you are not True to your purpose and if you are not committed to your purpose then your customers can see it, they can actually feel it and that would lead to the failure of the product or your company.
I hope this short blog post nudges you to think of your purpose clearly whenever you come up with Product Ideas or Starting a company.
Bye! Meet you in the next one!
