Business as a Devotional Practice

In an interview, the neuroscientist and podcaster Andrew Huberman asks his friend, the legendary music producer Rick Rubin, ‘How does one convince themselves that what they are doing and working on is worth it?… Like, how do I know if I am on the right path?’ Rubin replies,

‘the question of worth -- it is reliant on an outcome. It's not the mindset to make something great. The outcome happens, you're making the best thing you can make. It's a devotional practice. Whatever happens after that happens, and that part that happens after it is completely out of your control. Putting any energy into that part that's out of your control is a waste of time. All it does is undermine your work. Your work is to make the best thing you can. So any thought you have about outcome undermines the whole thing.’

Rubin’s point about creative pursuits is something that I have come to understand only recently. While watching my favourite ambient producer Loscil perform live with his collaborator Lawrence English, I was struck by the wondrous complexity and boundless capacity of their music. It moved in multitudinous ways: at times expanding into the universe, at times sinking like a boulder, at times flickering like a flame, at times undulating like a calm sea… It painted, narrated, evoked, created a whole world, and enveloped everything. I realised that this kind of music could have only emerged out of not only decades of practice but also a unique personal musical language developed out of a burning passion for the art form and a pressing need for self-expression. This cannot be taught in theory or performance classes; nor can it be motivated by the pursuit of money or fame. This is where art merges with life and where the only drive is to tell one’s story and create something as beautiful as possible.

A bird sings because it has a song, and artists create art because they have to express the art within themselves. Addressing imaginary critics who chastise his elegy as a weak sentimental act, a vain bid for praise, or a self-indulgent private activity that neglects pressing sociopolitical issues and scientific progress, Lord Tennyson writes, ‘Behold, ye speak an idle thing:/ Ye never knew the sacred dust:/ I do but sing because I must,/ And pipe but as the linnets sing.’ Art is self-justificatory; it is an end in itself.?

I think this mentality, whereby one is fully committed to the process of making something as good as possible as an end in itself, also applies to business. Of course, financial considerations cannot be extricated from business: most businesses have to be profitable; most business owners have financial objectives; numerical metrics are also a measure of managerial competence. However, business is also about creation: there are countless ways of making money, and many entrepreneurs start their own companies because they want to bring something new into existence and make an impact in the world. There are infinite things you could create, and figuring out what to do is hard work: you need to align your interests, skills, knowledge, material needs, and sense of value, which are constantly evolving with new experiences. Once you decide on what to do, there are also countless ways of operating your company and allocating your time and resources. From business ideation to operations, to choose between the numerous paths, you need to focus on a core motive, and I think the devotional artistic mindset is superior to pure profit drive.?

For one thing, it is a better compass for making good products. Profit maximisation does not necessitate continuous product improvement: say, if a product with certain flaws is selling well, it might well be possible to keep scaling your revenue and profit by expanding your advertising campaigns and making extravagant marketing claims without ever improving the product itself. This extracts profits to the detriment of consumers. By contrast, if you are dedicated to making the best thing you can make, it requires you to constantly consider how you can make the product better, and that will most likely benefit both your company and your consumers in the long term. AG1’s green powder, one of the most successful DTC nutritional products in the world, has gone through 52 iterations, and this would not have happened without a genuine obsession with product quality.?

It also helps the entrepreneur stay focussed. If you are purely motivated by profit, you are more likely to fall prey to the shiny object syndrome: if something else seems more lucrative, why not abandon your current project and try something else? Obviously, pivoting is extremely common in the startup world and often works out financially; it might very likely be the best thing to do, if you have tried everything you can for a certain idea and failed to make it work. However, what it also shows is that your original project is a venture and not a vocation. People have different utility functions and pursue entrepreneurial opportunities for different reasons, but if you want to take one idea as far as possible, it tends to require a devotional mindset. Devotion is all-consuming; it knows no compromises and requires you to go all in. What was devotion for medieval mystics like Julian of Norwich? She lived in permanent seclusion in a cell for decades, thought about nothing but God, and wrote one of the most important mystical texts in English. What was devotion for the greatest entrepreneurs like Bill Gates? He took out the radio from his car’s dashboard for fear that if he turned it on, he would not be thinking about Microsoft. Again, people have different priorities, and not everyone wants to do only one thing single-mindedly. However, if you are not spending 100% of your time on something, your devotion remains lacking; it might be a conscious choice, but you should not be surprised if your project is not as great as it could be.?

Devotion is a mindset that can be applied to any project. Some businesses naturally inspire more devotion than others because they have the potential to create more objective value in the world: say, a pharmaceutical company working on a cure for cancer versus a consumer startup making candies. However, every entrepreneur can treat his or her project as if it meant the world, and very often, it does. This mindset guides the company’s most important strategic decisions and then trickles down to everything the company does: product features, customer service, marketing materials… Just as you can tell how much thought the writer put into a piece of writing, you can intuit how much care and love the entrepreneur put into a company. As Jeff Bezos points out, there are two types of entrepreneurs: missionaries and mercenaries. He writes, 'The mercenaries are trying to flip their stock. The missionaries love their product or their service and love their customer and are trying to build a great service.’

A business is so much more than a way to generate wealth; it is an opportunity to create something original, something good and beautiful, through which one connects with others and leaves a footprint in the world, As Steve Jobs said,?

There’s lots of ways to be, as a person. And some people express their deep appreciation in different ways. But one of the ways that I?believe people express their appreciation to the rest of humanity is to make something wonderful and put it out?there. And you never meet the people. You never shake their hands. You never hear their story or tell yours. But somehow, in the act of making something with a great deal of care and love, something’s transmitted there. And it’s a way of expressing to the rest of our species our deep appreciation. So we need to be true to who we are and remember what’s really important to?us.