Why We Always Ask Why Most people focus directly on lofty goals they want to achieve in their life, how much money they want to make, and what kind of job they want to spend their days working on. That’s not us – well, not exactly. At Single Origin, we are asking a slightly different question than how. We ask “why?” We’ve found that asking “Why” helps steer us towards the answers to other questions. Rather than focusing on an exit strategy, or a headcount number, we’re focused on simply creating an amazing experience for both partner and vendor alike. Some people may feel that asking why just isn’t enough to run a business – but let me explain why we think it is. Every part of our company is focused on that question – from how we run operations internally, to how clients are treated, to how transparent we are. When designing a new structure or system, we always reference the “why” allowing us to ensure every part of the company is connected to what drives us.
"We always reference the “why” allowing us to ensure every part of the company is connected to what drives us." People often get caught up in how they are going to scale from 0-100 employees, or how will they buy their dream house. Once you identify why you want to accomplish these things, you can evaluate how beneficial they actually are. For example, if I am in the market for a new vehicle, I ask myself what I want out of the car and how I want it to make me feel. After identifying why I’m in need of a new vehicle and what my desires are, I can search for the right vehicle much more easily by comparing vehicles against that reasoning. Asking “why” makes the steps of getting to my goal much more clearly defined.
People seem to think that business has to be run a certain way – that the status quo is the “best” way to do things. Why? How can the status quo be right all the time? At Single Origin, we obviously want to grow our business. What business doesn’t want to grow? We also want to make a living, what business doesn’t want to be profitable? When starting Single Origin, we focused on asking ourselves why being profitable, growing, amazing client experience and enjoying every day of work couldn’t be intertwined together. The reality is – they can, and because we’ve focused on building our business around this very idea, we have no doubt that we will grow for all the right reasons. And it’s all because we asked why.