What Are We Trying to Achieve in Business?

The sad death of Steve Jobs has brought to mind some words of one of their marketing gurus or evangelists, Guy Kawasaki.

Guy was pretty clear in stating if you are in business for money you probably won't be successful. However, if you have a purpose in your business you are likely to both make money and be successful, a clever conundrum.

The corporate mission for our PGS machinery group is to supply the best StandUp pouch machines from around the world.

This past month, as we started planning for an endeavor to raise money for future growth of Redi-2-DrinQ ShotPaQ LLC, I was asked by the investor what our mission was? Pausing for a moment, I replied, "Drink differently and have fun moments doing so." He seemed stunned at the reply that had no money making plans.

So let's think for a moment: neither of our mission statements mentions making money or the next sale -- only customer satisfaction objectives.

Pressed for more information by the investor, I reacted by saying we are leaders in what we are doing in a tough, heavily regulated business run for decades by the same families.

The questions never stopped and finally I came up with the summary that seemed to fit:

Our machine group is number 1 in its machine segment in the USA and Redi-2-DrinQ ShotPaQ is number 1 in its market segment and will grow tenfold.

Seems our mission is working. Let me know!