Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

Ask the best salesmen what it takes to be a great salesman. They will always tell you that it helps when you really believe in the product you’re selling. What does belief have to do with a sales job? Simple. When salesmen actually believe in the thing they are selling, then the words that come out of their mouths are authentic. When belief enters

Playing the price game, however, can come at tremendous cost and can create a significant dilemma for the company. For the seller, selling based on price is like heroin. The short-term gain is fantastic, but the more you do it, the harder it becomes to kick the habit. Once buyers get used to paying a lower-than-average price for a product or servic

Ask the best salesmen what it takes to be a great salesman. They will always tell you that it helps when you really believe in the product you’re selling. What does belief have to do with a sales job? Simple. When salesmen actually believe in the thing they are selling, then the words that come out of their mouths are authentic.

The farther right you go on the curve, the more you will encounter the clients and customers who may need what you have, but don’t necessarily believe what you believe. As clients, they are the ones for whom, no matter how hard you work, it’s never enough. Everything usually boils down to price with them. They are rarely loyal. They rarely give ref

Now consider what a company is. A company is a culture. A group of people brought together around a common set of values and beliefs.

As anyone who starts a business knows, it is a fantastic race. There is a statistic that hangs over your head—over 90 percent of all new businesses fail in the first three years. For anyone with even a bit of a competitive spirit in them, especially for someone who defines himself or herself as an entrepreneur (hands on hips, chest out, standing at

There was a time when Starbucks offered the option to sip your coffee out of a ceramic cup and eat your Danish off a ceramic plate. Two perfect details that helped bring the company’s belief to life in the place between work and home. But ceramic crockery is expensive to maintain and Starbucks did away with it, favoring the more efficient paper cup

What Ben teaches us is special. When you compete against everyone else, no one wants to help you. But when you compete against yourself, everyone wants to help you. Olympic athletes don’t help each other. They’re competitors. Ben starts every race with a very clear sense of WHY he’s running. He’s not there to beat anyone but himself. Ben never lose

Look after people and people will look after you was his belief, and everything Walton and Wal-Mart did proved it. In the early days, for example, Walton insisted on showing up for work on Saturdays out of fairness to his store employees who had to work weekends. He remembered birthdays and anniversaries and even that a cashier’s mother had just un