Manifesto Writing Changed My Business Forever (My Story)

I realised I had a problem working with my clients. It wasn’t a fatal flaw, but it was slowing progress down.

I work with business experts or thought leaders, and I help them come up with their big idea – a new piece of IP that they could launch into the marketplace as a new product or a service.

And usually this meant a keynote presentation, a book or a course. And in the early days, I was designing board games.

What I found was that they’d come to me and they’d say, ‘I’ve got this idea for a book’. And we’d start working on the book, but it just wouldn’t hold up. It’d have a few holes in it, or it didn’t work out in some way.

Seth Godin and My Breakthrough

The breakthrough around this came from reading one of Seth Godin’s books. I love Seth Godin. I’ve read all of his books. I’m a big fan.

And it was in Permission Marketing or one of those early books – perhaps, Unleashing the Idea Virus. He had written this five-word phrase or sentence that changed my business forever. He said,

“Everything starts with a manifesto.”

How to write a book like Seth Godin

What is a Manifesto?

And I thought, oh, that’s an interesting idea, but what does that mean? What’s a manifesto?

I didn’t know what a manifesto was, so I had to do some research on this. I looked up manifesto in the dictionaries, and they all kind of said the same thing.

“A manifesto is a public declaration of your intention.”

Looking for Manifesto Examples

I thought, okay, that’s good. Then I looked for some examples. And this didn’t start out too well because all of the popular examples I found were from serial killers. Which wasn’t something that I wanted to associate with.

Then I looked up art manifestos on Wikipedia, and there were almost 70 of them, which was pretty amazing.

Then I discovered that in various countries around the world, during elections, the politicians would make their election promises in the form of a manifesto. If you vote for me, I’ll deliver this, this, and this.

The Big Missing: Business Manifestos

But the big missing was that no one in the business world talked about manifestos – unless of course you were a revolutionary in the form of a startup. They were talking about manifestos, but the rest of the business world wasn’t.

And I thought, oh, that’s a bit strange. They have to be creating the future or setting intentions in some way. And I realised it was right in front of my face. They were using Vision Statements, Mission Statements, Core Values and Purpose Statements.

Manifesto as the Umbrella Term

They’re all statements of intention. And that’s when I realised the big thought that the manifesto was an umbrella term where all the other forms fit underneath it.

This meant a vision, a mission, a purpose statement, and values are all forms of manifestos.

The business guys and girls just didn’t call it that, but I knew I was onto something substantial.

Creating Your Business Philosophy

But what was even more important was when I went back to my clients, we could work on their idea or their brand philosophy or business philosophy.

And to use an architectural metaphor that became the foundation of my work and their idea. From my days as an architect, I knew that if you lay a strong foundation, then you can build a strong building on top of it.

Now I only work with my clients first on their manifesto or their philosophy to build that foundation. This happens before we build a book or a keynote or something on top of that.

And this speeds up the process. My clients become excited about seeing their work with fresh eyes because we’ve described that in a new way – as a manifesto or as a philosophy.

Plus, they also get excited because it’s much quicker to express it in a new form as a keynote or a course or a book.

This is the story of how I started manifesto writing, or working on manifestos.

And this is the most powerful way I could think of to come up with creating ideas and creating the future.

More on Manifesto Writing – How to Write Your Manifesto

If you want to create your future for yourself, for your business, for your community or for the world, then you need to start with a manifesto too. To get started, read these posts next:

• 10 Powerful Ways to Write a Business Manifesto That Builds Authority
• Your Ultimate Guide to Write a Powerful Design Manifesto
• Write a Personal Manifesto – Seven Ways to be Inspired