Want to build something that lasts?

Once upon a time, a couple of thousand years ago, there was a guy. He saw a lot of things wrong with his society, and he spent a lot of time thinking about how he wanted to change things. This was before Facebook and Snapchat, so he had to go round just telling people about his ideas. Nowadays, he’d be able to do some video blogs, but he built his operation the hard way, by getting out there and talking to people.

He had some great ideas, and used a lot of storytelling to get his ideas across. He wanted people to be less prejudiced, and to be kinder to one another, so he told a story about a Samaritan who helped out a fellow traveller who had been beaten and robbed. It’s a clever story, because it shows that if you help people out, you get rewarded, and the hero was a Samaritan, although at the time, the Samaritans were a despised group who probably would have demonised by the Daily Mail today.

His ideas caught on fast, and he got a group of 12 people working for him spreading the word, and getting people organised. Eventually, the ideas spread across the whole world, and this started off one of the biggest enterprises in the world.

No, not Microsoft, Microsoft is tiny compared with the business this guy started, when you take into account total customer base x spend x customer loyalty x 2000 years.

What do we learn here?

Whether you think that Jesus was the son of God and that made his ideas fly, or that he was just a good guy with some great ideas and a dedicated marketing team (my personal take on it) there’s lot to learn from this, in life and in business.

Here are a few – do email me and tell me yours

• A really clear message, summing up some ideas that had been around for a while in a succinct way
• Getting key supporters organised in a close knit team
• Not going for the sale first, but bringing people round to your way of thinking before asking them for anything
• Being honest about your own doubts and humanity
• Being remarkable
• Great publicity events – that loaves and fishes idea is still going viral

More stories about business

I love writing about business, and I love using little stories like this one to illustrate what we can learn and apply to our own businesses.  If you’d like more of these, you can get them sent to your inbox once a week to help you boost your business.  Get your first instalment today…