Love: the Hidden Value in Business

With Valentine’s day today and all the focus on Love, I think the most appropriate post has to be about Love, with a twist: Love and Business.

The following is an article I wrote December 15, 2011 about this: 

When you listen to Tina Turner’s song What’s love got to do with it I bet that none of you think of business.

Yet, at the first STARTup live Athens last month, my speech to those young aspiring entrepreneurs who were working on their startup’s pitch was to prove that Love has everything to do with it and that Love is the hidden value in business.

My point is simple:

To begin with, you have to start with an idea and you have to love your idea, be passionate about it and believe in it so much that you can hold the vision.

Then, you have to build your team, the people that will progress with you. You need to love your people so that you can work with them well, trust them, listen to them, respect them and progress the idea and business together.

After that, you need to love the process; you have to love being an entrepreneur and everything that comes with it.

You have to love your customers too, so that you care about them, care about their needs, and offer them the right stuff, products or services; and they will love doing business with you.

Ultimately you need self-love. You need to love yourself enough in order to believe in yourself and be confident and keep going when things get tough and when obstacles or your fears get in your way.

There is a quote that I love from Deepak Chopra. It says:

“Love is the beginning of the journey, its end and the Journey itself.”

What is a startup or any other entrepreneurial business if not a Journey?

The idea of Love and Business is not new. Steve Farber, the president of Extreme Leaderhsip, has written about The Love Practicum, Minimoko – a branding company – asks its blog’s readers Are You in Love?, and Umair Haque includes love in The Best Investment You Can Make.

At this point you may be convinced of the idea but now another question may have arose: How do we do it? 

How do we stay in a place of love and not fear, or resentment, or competition, or everything that is not love?

Well, I am going to share with you the biggest secret on how to stay in love:

The biggest secret about love is that it is a simple decision. You either decide to love or you decide not to. You can decide to live with love or you can decide to live with fear. There is no in-between. And if your decision is to live in love and to work from a place of love, then all you have to do is remind yourself that this is your decision, remind yourself every single day.

Let me tell you an old Cherokee tale:

One evening the shaman of the tribe told the young warrior about the battle that was going on inside his head.

He told him: "There is a battle inside my head." 

"Who is fighting?", asked the young warrior.

"Love with Fear", replied the wise old man.

The young warrior thought about it for a minute and then asked: “Who is winning?”

The shaman simply replied “The one I feed”.

Once you make your decision you need to remember which one you chose to feed.

It is always the one we feed that will live inside us and drive all our decisions and actions, which will nourish our thoughts and beliefs and which finally will determine our successes and achievements.

The challenge to keep remembering that is not easy. But what are the options?

And let me tell you this: If love is good business and if every entrepreneur is a leader, if according to Robin Sharma leadership is a way of being - in other words,  the purposeful management of our life and career - then love is not just good business, it’s just the best business we can have.