The Golden Circle – Start With Why

Last night, I wrapped up the final live session for my Fall 2017 course, Introduction to Marketing & Marketing Management. It is a required course in the Business Certificate program at Columbia University, School of Professional Studies. 

During the final live session, my students are in the driver’s seat and share their key takeaways from the course and how they will apply what they learned in their role as a consumer and/or a professional in the corporate or non-profit world.  I shouldn’t have been surprised that many students stated Simon Sinek’s “Golden Circle” struck a chord with them and will definitely be applied moving forward as they create their own personal brands, create their own businesses or when thinking about their current employer’s reason for being.

If you haven’t seen Simon Sinek’s TedTalk, “How Great Leaders Inspire Action,” I highly recommend it as a starting point.

Simon used to teach in the Strategic Communications program at Columbia University and that’s how I first learned about the Golden Circle after several students referenced the concept in their assignments.

This quote deeply resonated with me

The cornerstone theme of my course is about how to Create and Deliver Value. It became obvious to me that I had to incorporate as part of my core curriculum an understanding “Why” to inspire and create value.

It became increasingly interesting to delve further into understanding consumer behavior when comparing the Golden Circle to the human brain.

Another interesting point is that 95-99% of human behavior comes from the limbic brain.  As marketers, we can create a communications strategy to inspire and resonate with the intended audience so they feel a connection to the brand.  As noted above, people buy “why” you do what you do.  Communicating the ‘why’ is key to inspire and to make an impact.

Of course you can still focus on lead generation and crunch the numbers to increase conversion rates to drive sales.  But you can also take a page from Simon’s book “Start With Why” to make it easier to drive sales by creating the right value in the first place. 

Create your organization’s reason for being.

Create value to inspire – and to make an impact.

Create a brand your customer’s feel connected to – and will share with others why they are loyal to your brand.

Create your tribe of brand advocates and influencers.

Learn more from the website StartWithWhy.com.  Buy the book, check out the resources, and sign up for the Daily Notes of Inspiration.