The very first thing you need to start a great company is a set of core beliefs and values. These are the never-changing part of your life that equip you to face the ever-changing realities of the 21st Century world.
The second thing you absolutely need to start a great business is a calling. This is what makes these core beliefs personal. There are core beliefs everywhere; in the Bible, the Talmud, the Koran. There are rule books, books on best practices that all of us can access. There are true statements floating around everywhere. And just because they are true doesn’t mean that they do anything to change the world. It’s when beliefs get down in your soul and you sense a calling to those beliefs; to that little part of the world that has a gaping need, injustice, or wrong that what you believe and what you are can change.
A calling will help you prevail through the adversities that always come in any start-up business, because life likes to kill great companies in the infant stage. And usually the first attack is not on the mission, but on the missionary; not on a vision, but on a visionary. That’s why you need a calling down deep inside; an inner conviction that you have been called to this, that you are here for this purpose on the planet: a core and a calling fused together in a mighty force of self-determination, emotional initiative, and intellectual focus to create a fire that burns bright within you. And until that fire burns bright in you, you can’t expect it to burn bright in anyone else.
Here’s what we’re looking for in our world; not more executives, not more information, we need to be inspired. We yearn for it. We go to church for it, we read the Bible to gain it, we buy books to receive it. And the man or woman with a core set of beliefs and a calling is unstoppable.