People don’t buy what you do – they buy why you do it.

I’m sorry – I should have told you about this ages ago.

Because it has the power to change entirely the way you want the world to see you.

If you run a business – in fact if you’re selling anything; a political message, poetry, a marriage proposal or your gardening skills – I implore you to set aside 18 minutes of your life to look at this talk by Simon Sinek, the slightly awkward but brilliant author of Start With Why.

These 18 magical, powerful, inspiring minutes get right to the nub of why some of us succeed in our communications and some of us fail.

Leaders, Sinek says, don’t start by telling you what they are doing, or how they are doing it. No, whether they are Martin Luther-King, Apple’s Steve Jobs or the Wright Brothers, they begin by telling you why they are doing it.

What does this mean for brands and how they position themselves in the marketplace?

It means this:

You should be communicating about what you are, not what you sell.

Or as Sinek so eloquently puts it:

“People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it”.