There was a time …yes there was… When great business people created extraordinary companies not on numbers or Wall Street green lights or the promise of personal wealth…
but instead on the power of love.
What?
We are so removed from this ideal now, that this seems like a fantasy. A dream, actually, like nonsense. But hold on cowboys and cowgirls, it’s true. Not in movies or novels but the cold reality of day.
Walt Disney was not a businessman first, he was a lover. Of ideas. Same for Henry Ford, and Ralph Lauren, Richard Branson, Thomas Edison, And Mary Kay.
Miracle men and women such as these fell in intoxification with ideas and then acted to bring their ideas to life. Did they become wealthy in the process? Absolutely. But did they do it for the money? Absolutely not. They did it for the love of the idea. For the realization that life is short and the spoils go to those who dream, love and take risks for the sake of their romance. Disney wanted to create a world of imagination. A world humanity could get lost in. Was it a sure shot then? The raving lover that he was didn’t give a damn.
Neither should you. Or I. Great companies, spiritual companies, dreaming companies, genius companies, world changing companies are not founded and grown by MBAs. They are cultivated like desert flowers by lovers.
Throw away your spread sheets for a moment and fall in love. Take a chance. Risk failure. But be driven by love. Sooner or later you will find excellence. The speed bumps along the way are simply the price all lovers pay.