The We R Human Manifesto

Some do new year resolutions. I do 10 year resolutions and a manifesto.

In 10 years, my vision is to inspire and help a 1,000,000 small business entrepreneurs, leaders and coaches build kinder and defensible growing businesses.

Here is my manifesto on how I'm going to do it.

These 5 core pillars are how I'm helping mission driven underdog companies scale and make a dent in the universe, all without losing their soul.

1. Build Our Cult Customer Mecca

Truly passionate entrepreneurs create cult brands. When someone cares so strongly about a problem while being equally convinced about their own magic bean, they can't help but attract followers.

These are pioneers deep in the game who are very confident in what they like and need, but because they don't see anyone speaking to people like them, they carve out their own piece of paradise.

They stake out their territory far from others, plant a flag and wait. On the lighter end, this looks like niching down, on the more extreme end, it's an act of rebellion. And it's scary as hell to do, but if done right, it sounds the right call.

Because as the world gets more remote and lonelier, people are yearning to find their tribe. Often they don't realize they need it, until they experience it and only then do they see what they've been missing all along: acceptance.

And in hyper competitive markets, companies that create real havens to gather and bolster their type of "weirdos" will be very hard to beat.

Because their strength is more than any individual product, new feature or fancy deal. Their core advantage is in their community, a community in action. In other words, it's a movement.

And when a customer feels like they're in a movement, they are having hella more fun, making life-long friends and attaching a deeper sense of purpose when buying the brand.

These very same cult customers will be far more loyal, more profitable and more forgiving, which is exactly the high octane fuel a rocket ship needs to take off.

2. Craft an Indispensable Love Letter

When people truly enjoy the core work they are doing, their work becomes a canvas for self-expression.

And when they feel deeply connected to their customers, their craft becomes a series of love letters to woo their end users. Letters with 2 main themes: certainty and delight.

Certainty is the foundation of all great relationships. Just like a suitor trying to earn their lover's hand, fledgling companies are trying to earn their customer's trust, their absolute and unimpeachable trust.

Because when a person can rely on the guarantee of a product, that's one less thing to worry about in their chaotic world.

Guarantees are simple but extraordinarily hard to fulfill, especially in growth stages. It requires steep back-end discipline and a whole host of battle tested processes.

Next, the art of delighting. Spontaneity and gifts work for both, beloveds and patrons. And passionate employees love to tinker and dream up of new ways to inject joy into their whole product experience.

But to consistently delight their core base is no easy feat either. It requires an engine of innovation, a culture of creativity and strong tastemakers spread throughout the enterprise.

After a while, these persistent dual notes of devotion break through the noise. After experiencing the brand's clockwork reliability alongside their non-stop micro-drips of joy, the customer trips over a tipping point and they fall for them. And they fall pretty hard.

At this stage, the product becomes an indispensable tool for navigating their life. From here on out, it's till death do them apart.

3. Authentic Bootstrappy Growth

Too many companies fly without knowing where the ground is.

In an era of first to market and scale till you whale, entrepreneurs have forgotten the fundamentals of a business. They overleverage without paying their dues to the gods of commerce.

Even John D. Rockefeller, the original empire builder knew this. Long before he borrowed oodles of money to aggressively eat up market share, Rockefeller had the most profitable and stable refinery in the entire country. At a time when oil startups were going belly-up left and right, his cash flow was consistently growing every year.

The problem is not the money, the problem is the timing.

For premature businesses, “free cash” can easily cloud their leaders' judgement and sap their discipline. And they're ok with it because they can move faster now and growth forgives all sins. In fact, hyper-growth can snap it out of existence.

But the bootstrappers have a different mentality.

Without the luxury of time, people and resources, these bare knuckled boxers obsess on the most valuable parts of their products and services, and amplify it to the n-th degree. With no comfort blanket to fall back on, these leaders have to be gutsy, curious and intentional human beings working without ego and in deep partnership with each other.

Since they answer to no one, they also don't feel pressured to rush the process and produce inauthentic results. Instead they feel a deep pride in building a self-sustaining enterprise. And since they clearly understand their core profit engine, they work urgently to protect it.

Once they have earned their stripes and they've set up a robust pressure tested airship, they're now ready to soar.

4. The Truly Happy Employee Universe

Whenever I walk into a Trader Joes grocery, I feel happy.

No matter how busy it gets or how unprepared I am, I know I am in a safe space. Almost every employee I meet is smiling, helpful and awfully patient. There's also a camaraderie between them that's just really uplifting to watch. When a co-worker asks for help, people nearby will drop everything and rush over. Often this happens even when they don't ask.

Sometimes I wish the real world was more like Trader Joe's.

But I also know that a great culture is more than just hiring sparkling personalities. Structure drives behavior. There's an entire industry of human resources at work behind the scenes to help these human beings be their best.

It starts with strong incentives. High performers thrive when they feel respected, have skin in the game and can be around long enough to see the fruits of their labor. And incentive practices like profit sharing, fantastic living wages, intentional generous benefits and promoting from within inspires this cultural brilliance.

Next, employees need to be brought into the fold. Great companies push for transparency and education in their numbers and initiatives. This is not just to build trust, but to empower their employees to understand the business inside out and take the lead.

The more the employees feel a sense of ownership in the enterprise, the more they will move mountains and dig up valleys to carve a path to the promised land. At that point, management is optional.

To build products that will change the world, create a universe of truly happy employees.

5. Save The World Business Model

If we want to build a 100 year organization, this last pillar is critical.

Companies love paying lip-service to their causes and charities. They have noble intentions but often it's an add-on activity that employees tepidly volunteer for. People generally feel decent about themselves afterwards, the one-off impact is a nice PR headline and then everyone goes home.

But some companies want to do more... way more. It's in their DNA.

The dilemma is that they want to free the orcas without being Greenpeace. They want to save the world but don't want to be a charity or leave it to their best intentions.

The most remarkable and resilient companies in the world have found a way to operationalize their values and build good acts into their profit model.

This includes ethical production practices, investing and partnering with local communities, holding partners up and down the value chain to a higher standard and to have a net positive impact on the environment.

The rise of B corps signals this new era. But companies can be even more creative. For example, Ben & Jerry's creates ice cream flavors dedicated to activist causes they care about. Or Patagonia often urges its customers to buy less to minimize environmental impact.

This is the hardest pillar to lay down.

Many try and then eventually fall by the wayside because their other 4 pillars weren't as strong. Executing this requires true guts, tenacity, a deep know-how of the business and a phenomenally disciplined organization.

But if one can pull this off, it's the closest shot they'll get to immortality.

Conclusion

Congrats, if you read this far, you must be highly bored or as weird as me.

Maybe I’m crazy and maybe this is unrealistic, but we are all only on this planet for a few more decades and then we’re back into the cosmos of love.

What if we took all our time, joy, energy, talents and blessings and poured it into a labor of love that forges a fiercely tight-knit community that really enjoys playing the great game of business and making the world 1% better and kinder everyday?

We’d definitely get rich in the process. But more importantly, we would live a life of being true to oneself in a lifetime of service to others.

And the payout on that is infinite.