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People pay us to get people to do things.

Isn’t that what you get paid for too?

Think about it. Whether you’re making a product, delivering a service, designing, marketing, innovating or financing – doesn’t the result happen only when you get people to actually do something different?

Actions are the fundamental currency. No actions, no cash.

So, success in business – and in achieving any worthy end – is a battle between manipulation and inspiration.

Manipulation is when we use tricks to get people to do things.

Inspiration is when they do those things because those things are meaningful and satisfying to them.

A business can be built on manipulation for a while. Offers. Urgency. Price manipulations. Sales. Scarcity. Emotional hyping. There is a whole business literature of tricks. Direct and interactive marketers have proven them. Persuasion designers have honed them. Behavioral economists have proved them in double-blind studies.

Manipulation works. For a while.

But manipulation doesn’t satisfy. In fact, it sucks meaning. Organizations that rely too heavily on manipulations build a house of cards, without coherence, loyalty or passion.

Inspiration, as Simon Sinek has said, starts with Why.

When people are doing because they are inspired to do, they value their own actions differently. We saw this when we attracted more customers for an online broker by offering a stuffed monkey (really) than by offering $350 dollars cash, just for signing up.

The monkey meant, “I’m in this crazy tribe.”

The money meant, “I’ll take the bribe.”

Which do you think acquired more valuable customers? Correct. The monkey.

Which do you think acquired more customers in the first place? Also, the monkey.

Most people are surprised by that. Knowing all I do about inspiring action, I was also surprised.

This broker built an incredibly powerful and valuable brand. It inspired passion that converted into fast growth, intense engagement and rock solid loyalty.

Want a metric to measure and manage this by? Call it your Inspiring Action Quotient.

How much do you lead, market, attract, convert and build through Inspiration? That’s the numerator, the number on top.

How much do you manipulate in order to generate the actions that grow your business? That’s the denominator.

Inspiration over Manipulation.

Inspiration/Manipulation = Inspiring Action Quotient

The higher your score, the more brand value you’re building, the brighter your future.

Simple and difficult as that.

Now let’s inspire some action.