The Secret To Success Is Giving

As social entrepreneurs, we need to use business strategies to develop our social entrepreneurship and make it more sustainable, but with so many books and articles on success it can be very overwhelming! The problem is that a lot of them focus on getting rather than giving so we must ensure that we find principles that align with our values and empower us to develop a successful social entrepreneurship within a framework of serving and giving.

We have all heard someone being described as a “go-getter.” It conjures up the thought of a successful and determined person who will stop at nothing to get to the top. I have just finished reading an excellent book called “The Go-Giver, A Little Story About A Powerful Business Idea” by Bob Burg and John David Mann. It is a parable about a young man called Joe, a true “go-getter”, who is ambitious and desperately wants to be successful. The problem is the harder he works, the further away he is from his goal of being successful. Joe comes to the end of a bad sales quarter and becomes desperate to land a key sale, so he seeks leverage and clout from a legendary consultant, called Pindar.

What Joe gets instead, from Pindar and his friends, is lessons on “go-giving”. Pindar tells Joe “Most people just laugh when they hear that the secret to success is giving…Then again, most people are nowhere near as successful as they wish they were.” Pindar and his friends share with Joe, the Five Laws of Stratospheric Success, and Joe learns that changing his focus from getting to giving leads to unexpected returns.
The details of the story are necessary to understand the Five Laws but this is the summary of them.

THE FIVE LAWS OF STRATOSPHERIC SUCCESS
1. The Law of Value
Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment.
2. The Law of Compensation
Your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them.
3. The Law of Influence
Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people’s interest first.
4. The Law of Authenticity
The most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself.
5. The Law of Receptivity
The key to effective giving is to stay open to receiving.

This book will inspire you as you go on the same journey that Joe goes on. You will find that you come away with strategies and principles that will improve not only your social entrepreneurship but they will also enrich your life and relationships.

In my post on Leaving a Legacy, I referred to success as something that can be short term but significance is the long-term value we place on our life to make a difference. If we can achieve success through giving and serving, then we will be living a life of significance. I have always liked the quote from Sir Winston Churchill “We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.” How purposeful and satisfying, though, when we can make a living and a life by what we give!