How to move your business to the new trading economy
By Linzi Boyd
When Darren Shirlaw and Linzi speak on stage around the world, one of the topics they discuss is about how businesses that have come from the 20th century are building their businesses predominantly around making a profit.
The whole business world was looking at the profit side of trading, rather than considering other commodities to enable them to make a change.
When you look at 21st century business models, you see people moving from a profit mindset into a mindset of purpose.
Purpose is the new trading currency which enables you to look at your business model differently and not have to trade it around profit.
The simplest definition of purpose is that it’s our why, it’s our guiding light, it’s what drives us. And the important thing about purpose is the context that it gives you and the context that it provides your business. People are already born with purpose, it is ingrained in our DNA, whether we are fully connected to that or not. But with businesses, we need to build the purpose into the business.
The next generation is already in this mindset. Purpose is the leading commodity, the leading currency that will enable us to trade in a new way. If you are looking at your business model and you are driving purpose as an end to end business model, how can you move your business over to be able to trade in a new economy?
The three different ways of trading in a new economy
The first way is time. How do you gift somebody some of your time without expecting anything in return? How do you go to a younger business, a smaller business, and share your support so they will, in turn, be able to give you something without any expectations?
The second way is knowledge. How do you share knowledge with somebody, to create a two-way exchange? This is happening almost every day at the moment in the environment that we are in; people are saying, “I’ll give you my knowledge of X and in return, you give me your knowledge of Y, and we will make a trade.”
People are sharing; whether it’s knowledge or tangible products and trading in that way without money exchange.
And the third one is what we described as a purpose coin, and that’s focused around ethical sales. What that means is that people are looking for a greater goal than money. When they are selling something, whether it’s tangible or intangible, they are looking for an ethical sale. How do they sell something and be able to give something at the same time?
There are two types of business models which work together: a commercial business model and a foundation.
With BOB as an example, we have the L and D Foundation. The commercial business runs a platform and an education programme, teaching businesses around the world, and the foundation supports education worldwide.
‘The next generation is already in this mindset, and purpose is the leading commodity,the leading currency that will enable us to trade In a new way.’
Working with the new business model
There are two ways to be able to work with this new business model; one is that you have your silo business model, and you build your business accordingly to everything that we teach. Build it around your DNA, build an end to end system, build it commercial and cultural and so forth.
Or you build an integrated business model. What that means is you go out with a group of people. It can be any size; from a few to millions of people if you want, and you all stand for something. You go out as an integrated force, as a collective and shift an industry and shift community, or shift the world together.
If we all come on board and can do that, then we will be able to connect with each other and unite. And we will learn together to grow, to be able to trade with each other and to impact change in the world.
