I am not a big fan of self interest, in any form. In this era, many of our systems promote it, whether in patents or politics, and, sadly, self interest drives the behaviour of much of the world around us. Consequently, it is causing patterns of short-termism in behaviour that lessen our ability to thrive collectively as a human race.
Moving from self interest to community interest is one of the key challenges that humanity faces. I see so many people build businesses or organisations in traditional ways, when they could build much faster if they moved from short term, self interested needs, and instead, focused on creating a rising tide for everyone, for the long term.
It is happening all the time now: with Elon Musk recently open sourcing his electric vehicle patents to accelerate the entire industry, or Jimmy Wales and the Wikipedia community creating a free encyclopedia, or companies like Google giving away Search, Gmail and Android. These are smart strategies for creating a rising tide for all, rather than seeking to make individual gains, in isolation.
The fastest way to success is to look at how you can build communities and place yourself at the centre of them. There is always a way to make a good living at the centre of a community. Simply work out a way to serve it as much as you can. If you can serve that community unconditionally and freely, you hit a new level of engagement that you can’t reach if you take a commercial approach.
With others, I now work full time, for free, to help turn my community into the best place to live on earth by 2020. I know if I give unconditionally here, it will create benefits for my family, but I will also create a world of opportunity I just would not achieve if I had taken a self interested path.
In the same way, I write this blog to share everything with the world that I learn or discover. I know that great opportunities come from the audience I build and the value I have already created.
So, whether you are changing the world, building a business, or just having a conversation, with someone, my advice is always to look at how you can give first. Give hard, and give as much and as often as you can. If you look to create a rising tide for everyone, we will all collectively grow together much faster and your opportunities will be always far, far greater than they would be if you did it on your own.
Creating a rising tide is not only best methodology for you in the long term, it is also the best for the world around us.
It is the ultimate win-win.
Marc
P.S. Please share your insights, feedback and rising tide stories in the comments section below. I would love to hear from you.
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Hello Marc,
Thank you for sharing this, I completely agree with your view on how we should be giving and always look at ways to better ourselves as a whole family, business or community. With that said, I find it hard sometimes to keep myself in line with my main goal in life. I decided a very long time ago to make an impression on people in a way where help them better themselves in any way, shape or form that they might need. So far, I have met only a handful of people who have disregarded and turned away my help or motivation. I wake up everyday thinking of how to turn any negative into a positive beginning with my 2 kids, but some days, the constant negativity, turn down, and just plain wear down of other people’s complaining and constant unappreciative attitude makes me want to stay in bed just for another hour… I try my hardest to remain positive and go by the golden rule of “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” What would you say drives you to remain positive and unaffected by the constant negativity around you? What is something that keeps you going that you believe is unbreakable in a way that you don’t lose focus on what you’ve set your goal on?
You are the people who you spend time with. I went out and found the positive people and spent more time with them. I also don’t try and change people who are not ready to be changed. I look to serve those that want help. It makes the path much easier and the impact higher. Thanks for sharing. Marc
mr.winn why dont you print out your c.v there.
your schools/university….whatever.
work history……achievements to date…whatever.
this is always a good place to start……when beginning a project.
I am not sure I see the relevance. Perhaps you can explain why that helps? Marc
You are so correct. That is exactly what I am trying to do now. There are so many people hurting because of jobs, I have to help! If we all did more of this, the world would change. Thanks for being that person.
Thanks Yevonne. Marc
Keep it up Marc!
Thanks Augustine.
Great post Marc, and a pleasure to meet you and share thoughts at Le Collinette on Monday evening with James. I love your vision!
Thanks Tony. It was great to meet you as well. M
I’m afraid to say that for me it is self interest first, as I have to eat and what not. I can’t see how I’d survive otherwise. Perhaps entities like Google give away Gmail for free because they are already blessed with some form of financial independence. I couldn’t do that with my software. I’m open to be enlightened on how this applies to every man or works in what I’d call reality.
Google started by giving away search for free. It was quite some time before they made money from Adwords. They built their strategy around creating a community of users first and funded that appropriately.
I think the freemium software model is fairly well established these days. It finds a good balance between giving and receiving. It starts with giving first though.
And as for reality. There we have a subjective concept…
Thanks for the reply, I see where you are coming from more clearly now. Alas my software requires manual installation and training before someone can use it, so I cannot see how I could do the giving part. Perhaps I need to make my software better eh!