How to make Meaning

How do you make meaning?

Guy Kawasaki says that making meaning starts with identifying something you want to change about the world. Not improve. Change. There’s a difference.

Improvement is incremental. Change is transformational.

Once you know what change you want to make, everything else flows from that. Your product is the vehicle. Your marketing is the story. Your community is the proof.

But making meaning requires more than a statement. It requires that the change you want to make is actually visible in how you operate – in how you treat people, in how you make decisions, in what you’re willing to sacrifice.

You can’t claim to be making meaning and then behave in ways that contradict it. The meaning has to run all the way through.

The test: if you removed all your marketing, would the meaning still be visible in your product and your behaviour? If yes, you’re making meaning. If no, you’re marketing a meaning you haven’t yet created.