On June 2, 2021, I received an email from a friend of mine, Bernadette Jiwa. That single email was to forever change the way I connect and communicate with the people I serve and know.

This single email was one of those moments in time that changes outcomes.

Moments really are extremely critical. As a friend of mine puts it, “Where you are in your life and your business today is simply the result of your reaction to the key moments in your life that brought you here right now.”

Bernadette's email to me was absolutely one of those moments. It was a call to action. (We hope that's precisely how you'll see this book—a moment in time that changes outcomes for you, for your team members and for the customers you serve.)

The email had this simple subject line:

“The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller.”

Of course, we all know about the power of stories. We know that our ancestors communicated life‐lessons and much more by passing on stories. Anthropologists tell us that, as a direct result, the power of stories is in our DNA.

It's as if when we hear the words “I want to tell you a story,” or even as kids, “Once upon a time …” our ears prick up. We lean in. The storyteller has our full attention. Great films, great speeches, great books all have brilliantly crafted story “arcs.”

So, when I saw that “The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller” subject line, I naturally opened the email.

And I learned that it was Steve Jobs who said those words in 1994 when he was CEO of Pixar (he'd been fired from —or perhaps we should say “he left”—Apple in 1985).

Then I read by far the most powerful part of the quote: “The storyteller,” said Jobs, “sets the vision, the values and the agenda for an entire generation yet to come.”

Think about that just for a moment. “The storyteller sets the vision, the values and the agenda for an entire generation yet to come.”

Here's what that means: just by virtue of what you do and how you do it, you—yes, you—are setting the vision, the values, and the agenda for an entire generation yet to come. Things are rippling or radiating out from you and they're having a profoundly important outcome.

The stories you create and tell are changing and enriching lives.

And here's a critically important point. This book is so important not because we're going to tell you how to tell stories in a better way. Here we're going to co‐create brand‐new stories for you to tell. We're going to give you new stories to live and to create.

You see, Steve Jobs wasn't just a great storyteller (and he certainly was that); he was a great story creator. And as it turned out, he created tools to allow us to create even better stories more simply and to let those stories spread wider and last longer too.

You can be (and we would argue “must be”) the story creator. It's you leading your firm by creating a brand‐new story of what a professional firm is, what it does, how it does it, and how it innovates across all areas to set the vision, the values, and the agenda for an entire generation yet to come.

That's you. That's you creating amazing moments. That's you changing outcomes. That's you changing, enriching, and enhancing lives. That's you changing up other people's stories.

When you think of stories, you'll recognize that all great stories essentially have just four main characters—the hero, the guide, the victim, and the villain.

And when your firm fully embraces the subscription model and gets it really working, you see that your role becomes that of the guide, the guide who makes the customer the hero. (Importantly too, your customers learn to make their customers the hero, too.)

To do that, you're going to have to change up your story to make it happen. Here's a story arc that illustrates that for you:

Again, what we're doing here in this book is, in effect, co‐creating that brand‐new story together with you. Actually, with “potential” in mind, I'd prefer us to be thinking of co‐ELEVATING the new story together with you. And we're doing that so that you can create more impact in your business, in your customers' businesses, in your community, and on our world than you previously imagined possible.

For now, let's ignore the history part in our story arc above (that's just another word for the baggage that has weighed firms down, mentioned in Chapter 1) and let's focus on your current story.

Because speed of change is not what most professional knowledge firms are famous for, it's more than likely that your current story mostly reflects the pre‐COVID world. Certainly, you've moved to accommodate work‐from‐home and it's ever more likely that you've done some great work on mental health programs for your team and so on. Even so, it's likely that a lot of your core beliefs from history still remain firmly anchored in place in your firm.

It's highly likely that your core business model, that rock upon which you stand, is still essentially the same as it was pre‐COVID. And although you'd reasonably argue that it has served you well, we want to strongly suggest that it no longer is or will.

Let's come face‐to‐face with perhaps the biggest understatement of this book to illustrate why: Our world has changed.

And that change accelerated BIG TIME in the two years of us coming to terms with COVID. And as we said earlier, it continues to change: Russia invaded the Ukraine in early 2022, disrupting both food and energy production. Inflation is giving families concern over how they will pay their bills.

In some ways, we should not be surprised by the changes. The changes were already getting under way ahead of the so‐called global financial crisis of 2008.

We'd endured years of the Wolf of Wall Street “Greed is good” mentality, and it came crashing down around us.

We emerged with new understandings—with a new realization that things must change.

COVID accelerated that.

It taught us lessons far more quickly than in “normal” times. And of course, that's because every single one of us was impacted. It was not happening “over there” where we could have ignored it and/or hoped that it would go away. It didn't. It happened to almost every single one of us in deeply personal ways.

On May 5, 2022, the World Health Organization reported that “an additional 14.9 million lives had been lost between January 2020 and December 2022 directly and indirectly because of Covid” (World Health Organization 2022).

As a result of that personal impact, we see things now that we simply didn't see before. And it's not just “you” who sees things you didn't see. It's your team. They have different priorities now—sometimes vastly different priorities.

And then there are your customers. They, too, are seeing things differently both from a business perspective and from a family perspective as well.

Interestingly, the family no longer “owns” the things it used to—the family subscribes to streaming services, to cars, to software, to medical services, to wardrobes to … . fill in the blanks. The once‐common phrase “There's an App for that” increasingly means “… . and you can subscribe to it.” Buying something and then owning it is less often the go‐to model.

So yes, your customers are seeing things vastly differently. And most importantly, they are seeing businesses differently. They are understanding more and more that business plays a critical and crucial part in shaping our world … and they no longer universally like what business has created by serving only itself.

That plays out—it aggregates out—to your community. It too sees things differently.

And now, because of our enhanced interconnectivity and the global nature of everything we do, our world sees it, too. Our world has changed BIG TIME.

And again, we—specifically the “we” who create, operate, and advise businesses—are the primary cause of that change. Governments haven't done it. They enabled it (or made it more difficult).

It's taken a while for some of us to recognize and accept that. All of us readily accept the positive consequences of businesses. But for a long time, we've missed or ignored those outcomes, those consequences, that are not so good.

As my friend Carolyn Butler‐Madden points out in her April 2022 Cause Effect newsletter:

We all know we're living in extraordinary times. We face serious challenges in our society that are begging for action and solutions. The problem is we have a crisis in trust in all of our major institutions and this is threatening societal stability.

The good news (and the opportunity) is that societal leadership is now considered by the majority of people to be a core business function. This reflects two simple truths:

• Business does not exist in a vacuum.
• Business has the resources, the capital, the capacity for innovation, and the means to effect significant positive change.

Yet how many businesses continue to operate as if they are oblivious to all of this? In a vacuum. Or worst, head in the sand.

We are living in times that call for courageous leadership.

I hope you got that—“Societal leadership is now a core business function.” It's not added on as an afterthought. Now, it must be built right into the structure and fabric of your business. And it's not some short‐term thing.

Most significantly, many short‐term focused leaders have missed the flow‐on effect, that crucial point we raised earlier about setting the vision, the values, and the agenda for an entire generation yet to come.

So … when we stand back with a new perspective and see some negative impacts of the way we've done business until now, we see that we can (and indeed must) play a part in changing it up again. We can and must create a positive feedback loop.

Crucial to that is to understand that to do that, it can no longer be about me … it has to become about we. That is precisely what relationship means. It implies “together.”

That's just one of the important shifts. There are many others that build on from “me to we.”

Take “belonging” as an example.

I remember three years ago listening to a recording of Jeff Bezos being interviewed at a large gathering in the United States—it could have been a South By Southwest conference.

The interviewer said, “Jeff, when you talk to and advise your marketing department about how to do things today, how different is it now from when you started?”

To the great surprise of the interviewer, Mr. Bezos answered, “It hasn't changed at all.”

“Really …. how do you mean?” said the interviewer.

Bezos's reply is a classic: “I tell them there's one human trait that we must always remember—people want to belong.”

And in a private group meeting in 2022, Seth Godin riffed on belonging like this:

All the humans I know, care about (once you have a roof over your head and enough to eat, once your family is taken care of) all the humans I know of care about one of two things, sometimes both, sometimes at the same time: status and affiliation.

So what do I mean by that? Affiliation means who is next to me? Who's to my left? And who's to my right. It's Groucho Marx saying, “I don't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member.”

It's you showing up and seeing people on Zoom who you recognize from the last time and it makes you feel safe, even though you've never met in real life, right? Affiliation drives culture, being part of stuff, people like us do things like this. It's a key reason that people take action.

And then there's the second reason which often runs counter to this first one. It is status. Who is up? Who is down? Who is defeating my enemies? Who am I defeating?

If you want to understand politics in the modern world, you don't have to look very far. You will see status. Whether it's the way world leaders struggled to beat each other with a handshake, or people causing horrible things to happen. It's just about status, who's winning and who's losing, whereas affiliation is, “Oh, he didn't come to the services this week. I wonder where he is?” Who's in and who's out.

So whether you call it belonging or affiliation, it's a key component of building your subscription business model.

Figure 2.1 illustrates the principal shifts that we believe are required (and it contains a huge hint on why shifting to the power of the subscription model is indeed so powerful).

So let's start at the bottom and move up.

FROM ME TO WE AND FROM SELF TO BIGGER THAN SELF

The first two are really intertwined—From Me to We and From Self to Something Bigger Than Self.

One is rather cute and catchy: “From Me to We.” Yet it's so powerful to contemplate and implement the power of that thought.

But expressing it as moving from Self to Something Bigger Than Self gives it real clout—and, as you'll see, it gives us a neat measuring stick, too.

We'll delve deeper into this in later chapters. For now, though, let's just say this: People, be they customers or team members, are not attracted to you per se—they are attracted to who they become as a result of dealing with you. They are attracted by affiliation—they're asking, “Who else are you working with?” And they're attracted by status. They too are attracted to potential!

FROM INPUTS TO OUTCOMES (IN OUR CASE, TRANSFORMATIONS)

We all value testimonials.

Most often, testimonials come instantly as in “I just read this book and it was GREAT!” or “The food at the restaurant was the best I've ever eaten,” or “This course changed my life.”

But here's one that didn't come instantly. In fact, it came 27 years after—yes, years after—the triggering event.

That event was a process in which Ron and I were both involved. Ron mentioned it in the “How to Read This Book” segment. It was called the Accountants Boot Camp. All told, globally some 17,700 accountants experienced it (and it was an “experience” in every sense of that word) from 1992 to 2000.

The testimonial we're referring to here came in the form of a video—a video sent 27 years after the initial moment. Here's the transcript for you:

Hello, My name is Paul Kennedy. I'm an accountant. I'm an accountant in practice in England just north of London.

And I'm here to tell you about something—an event—that happened many years ago—but something that was to change my life—change my life quite radically.

And that something, that event, was the Accountants Boot Camp. And I think it also radically changed the way we saw our own business and indeed how we saw business generally.

I think, probably for the first time—and how I didn't think about this before I'm not sure—but for the first time, I saw that wealth or profits, your own profits, was a direct byproduct of the value that you create for other people.

Summary: We all must move from a focus on inputs to a focus on outcomes, specifically the outcomes we produce for others.

Please notice how those last six words in that sentence are perfectly in sync with “something bigger than self.”

And … spoiler alert … that's going to get even bigger soon as well.

Of course, that's the total opposite of what so many people in your profession have been taught—that somehow the value of what you produce has to do with the time it took you to do something—it never has, and it never will. (That's why our upcoming chapter has the title “Time‐Driven Sucks.” We'll get there soon.)

For now, let's go back to the fourth line from the bottom on our diagram.

FROM VALUE TO VALUES

Value is something you must deliver (remembering, too, that value is, just like beauty, always in the eye of the beholder).

So the concept of value will always be with us. But now there's something else that is proving to be much more important to the buyer than value alone. And that's ValueS. Yes, what you stand for is now even more important than the value you deliver. After all, how can you “belong” to something where there is no match of values, no alignment?

It's always been partly that way—for example, I might choose to deal with a printer who happens to support a favorite charity of mine or support the same football team. Or someone might NOT choose to deal with someone because they're on what the buyer believes to be the “wrong” side of the vaccine divide.

And, in this currently polarized world we're in, questions about what you stand for are being asked more and more.

Most recently (as you may have read), Patagonia withdrew its multimillion dollar ad campaigns from Facebook. Not only that, as this CNN piece reveals, they stepped up their campaign to ask other advertisers to do the same.

In the wake of the revelations in the Facebook Papers, Patagonia CEO Ryan Gellert on Thursday called for companies to join the brand in pressuring Facebook to fix its platforms.

We believe Facebook has a responsibility to make sure its products do no harm, and until they do, Patagonia will continue to withhold its advertising, Gellert said in a statement to CNN. "We encourage other businesses to join us in pushing Facebook to prioritize people and planet over profit.”

In the summer of 2020, Patagonia joined a growing list of companies pulling ads from Facebook (FB) platforms as part of an advertiser boycott.

“Patagonia stopped all paid advertising on Facebook platforms in June 2020 because they spread hate speech and misinformation about climate change and our democracy. We continue to stand by that boycott 16 months later," Gellert said.

“Facebook's executives know what steps it can take to mitigate such harm—yet they have repeatedly failed to reform.”

That's “From Value to ValueS” powerfully expressed.

And it's not only Patagonia. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been cut from Facebook's revenue as companies like Microsoft, HP, Verizon, Reebok, Adidas, Lululemon, Levi's, Ben & Jerry's, Hershey's, Honda, Unilever, Volkswagen, and Pfizer found a “values mismatch.”

And in the UK, a bank not happy with Meta's (the holding company of Facebook and other brands) values reported it like this:

Starling Bank has stopped all paid advertising on Facebook and Instagram, and says it will not return to the platforms until Meta can guarantee cyber scammers are not able to advertise.

The bank's CEO Anne Boden says she has “repeatedly called out” social media giants for allowing financial fraudsters to advertise and post content on their platforms, which results in “people being scammed out of their savings” every day. (Tesseras 2022)

In January 2022, Bruce Simpson, senior adviser to McKinsey on ESG and Purpose, wrote that, “Almost 40 percent of consumers today are boycotting a product or service, not because they are unhappy with the performance but because of that company's social stance. The forces are moving very strongly in this direction, and CEOs tell us that they are spending half of their time on this topic right now” (Hunt 2022).

Of course, all of this raises the critically important question: What is it that you stand for?

And once you've sorted out that deep, soul‐searching question, how do you express it so that it attracts as opposed to repel? Or even, should you express it at all? You'll find much more on these interesting questions later.

FROM PUSHING TO ATTRACTING

It's a nice segue to this next in line of our list of eight “from–to's.”

Let's put it in the form of a question: Should you be pushing ads or should you be doing something that powerfully attracts your chosen market to you?

The answer should be obvious—building something attractive is the way to go.

Building a subscription‐based service and business model is part of doing that. And that's partly because when you really commit to doing it well, you'll automatically be closer to the people you want most to serve.

They'll feel as though they belong when you do it well.

And that leads us nicely up the ladder to this …

FROM TRANSACTIONS AND TRANSACTING TO BELONGING

This is one of the most crucial parts of the shift we're strongly suggesting you make. Remember earlier how Ron told me this:

Moving to the subscription economy means we have to learn not to monetize the transaction but rather monetize the relationship.

That is what belonging is all about. It's when people feel so connected to you, they “belong.”

In an “all‐is‐covered‐for‐you” subscription model, you're there for the customer whenever they want or need you to be (within the limits of the model).

In this ever‐more‐connected world, we somehow feel less “connected.” That's precisely why we believe so strongly that people are craving connection.

It's also coupled with what we call mattering. Seth Godin, who we quoted earlier on belonging (or affiliation, as he called it), expressed it well when he said:

As you build your subscription model, you really will matter even more to the people you seek to serve. Maybe we should make a one‐word change to that last sentence so that you realize just how important it is:

As Robbie Kellman Baxter put it when commenting on Taco Bell's move to a subscription model: “As opposed to transactional pricing where the sale is the finish line, in a membership (subscription) model, the sale is the starting line.”

Such a powerful sentence. And while we might celebrate (or indeed reward others) for getting to that starting line, it's what lies ahead that we really should be celebrating.

And that thought leads us nicely to this next rung on our ladder …

FROM PROFIT‐LED TO PURPOSE‐LED

This sounds perverse.

Yet it's anything but. It's central to your new story.

Larry Fink, CEO of the world's largest investment house, BlackRock, put it this way in his annual letter to Wall Street in 2018: “To prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society.”

And in 2019 he went further: “Without a sense of purpose no company (either public or private) can achieve its full potential. It will ultimately lose the license to operate from key stakeholders.”

And then this in 2020:

Profits are in no way inconsistent with purpose–in fact, profits and purpose are inextricably linked. Purpose unifies management, employees, and communities. It drives ethical behavior and creates an essential check on actions that go against the best interests of stakeholders. Purpose guides culture, provides a framework for consistent decision‐making, and, ultimately, helps sustain long‐term financial returns for the shareholders of your company.

Taking Mr. Fink's point one step further about purpose guiding culture is Jeffrey Hollender, co‐founder of Seventh Generation (the maker of sustainable cleaning products): “Everything a company does is an expression of its culture.”

Note that … everything.

Corrie Barrie, Best Buy CEO, clarifies that beautifully like this: “The purpose of this company is not to make money. It is imperative to make money, but it is not the purpose. Our purpose is to enrich lives through technology.”

What's seriously fascinating (though perhaps not so surprising) is this truth: Purpose‐led companies outperform others—and they do it massively, too.

Consider this 2021 report from Monitor Deloitte as just one example, illustrated in Figure 2.2 (Schoenwaelder et al. 2021).

Let's take just five highlights:

1. In terms of brand and reputation, you're 78% more likely to be remembered (or in our terms—to stand out) when you're seriously on purpose.
2. And take a look at those Sales and Innovation numbers—a near 40% premium is possible according to the study.
3. And it's not just sales you attract—you attract the large number of people who would prefer to work with an on‐purpose company—you become a magnet for talent as well once you're seriously on purpose.
4. Oh and did you notice that a significant number of those people you attract will work for less, too?

   

5. Right now, as the owner of your company, you may not be looking to exit your company. But did your scan of those numbers go down to the bottom left? If it did, you'll see that your company is likely to have a four times larger valuation number too when you make purpose the North Star of your model.
6. Pretty interesting numbers, aren't they?

It's so critical for us all to get these numbers and build them into your new model.

But … and it is a big but … bear in mind what Start with Why author Simon Sinek wrote in his April 22 newsletter: “Purpose does not need to involve calculations or numbers. Purpose is about the quality of life. Purpose is human, not economic.”

Realizing that can sometimes make it seem as though purpose is “the soft stuff.” For example, it's easy to dismiss this quote from Fred Reichheld's Winning on Purpose book:

Today we can establish that business success begins with leaders who embrace a fundamental proposition that their firm's primary purpose is to treat customers with loving care.

That approach begets loyalty, which powers sustainable, profitable growth. (Reichheld 2021, p. 25)

And in the Winning on Purpose book, Reichheld shows how revered books like Jim Collins's Good to Great fall short.

In a series of graphs (Reichheld 2021, pp. 30–32), Reichheld shows companies referenced in Collins's work, first published in October 2001, have actually not done very well as compared with companies who've embraced Reichheld's Net Promoter Score.

Reichheld points out that the reason for that is the massive shift of focus that's occurred. He observes:

(Companies) gauged their success using the metrics of financial capitalism—primarily profits. When profits become purpose, it becomes too easy for companies to boost their financial performance by short‐changing customers. This is value extraction not value creation, and since value extraction doesn't show up in audited financial statements, this kind of abuse can go undetected for months or even years, at least by the investor community. (Reichheld 2021, p. 28)

Here's the point: The world has seriously shifted. And regulations (never our favorite way of forcing change) are catching up with the shift. Sean Brown, global director of communications for McKinsey's Strategy & Corporate Finance Practice, put it this way in a piece early in 2022:

Regulators are also getting very interested in ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) and purpose. The European Union has already implemented the Non‐Financial Reporting Directive [requiring companies to report how they manage social and environmental challenges], and the Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC] has started to evaluate ESG measures in the United States. (Hunt 2022)

And in the United Kingdom right now, you cannot submit bids for certain government agency contracts unless you have a measurable track record of enabling positive social change.

Again, regulations are never our favorite way of forcing change. But it is as well to note how our world is shifting.

Interestingly though, it's been shifting for eons—it's just that we've been slow to see it. As Tamsin Wooley‐Barker points out in Teeming: “Purpose is the glue that integrates the work of one into the work of many, and it's what gets us up in the morning.”

And then she adds, “The bolder and more ambitious our collective goals, the greater our potential in the world.”

The larger point is this: Being seriously on purpose (and that means more than just nice‐sounding words in your mission and vision statements) adds value in so many ways. But perhaps we should say that this way: being on purpose can add value in so many ways.

Since we just used their name, let's take Deloitte as an example:

It's good. But how much better does it read with the addition of just one more word:

Much better, we think. Here's the reality. Purpose powers you. When you're really clear on your purpose, when it's what you stand for, when it's front and center of everything, when everyone on your team lives and breathes it, then in that moment, what you do becomes profoundly more attractive and compelling and you're on the path to what we define later as STANDOUT.

In a conversation with Start with Why author Simon Sinek, he made these crucial points:

True purpose is always human. True purpose is the idea of knowing why your business exists in terms beyond your products and services.

He followed up with this:

It's knowing that the infinite goal that you set is something that will leave this world, this place and the people in it in better shape than we found them.

You'll find that Ron digs down even deeper into this later. But there could still be an issue. Again, let's put it this way: Being on purpose can add value in so many ways.

Why the emphasis on can? You'll see precisely why in your next chapter.

It's the final step on our ladder: From income‐driven to impact‐driven.