Recently, my team and I went in to a client location and met with their entire sales team, conducting a video shoot with each individual member for the purpose of extracting real humanized content that would then be edited into :30 - :90 segments for deployment on social media, primarily Facebook and Instagram.

The purpose of this, of course, is to help them better tell their story.

One of the questions we asked was "what is your why?" For those of you familiar with Simon Sinek - author of "Start With Why," you know the context of this question - it's about examining why you get up to go to work every day, and of course, the concept is that if a company can start with "why" they're doing what they're doing, they're chances of connecting with their audience and being influential and successful increases significantly.

The answers were interesting, to the point where I was a little confused by what I was hearing - but I'm not here to judge - so I did the only thing I could think of, which is examine my "why."

Then, a couple months later, it hit me like a ton of bricks. A new friend of mine, Will Acuff from Corner To Corner in Nashville, asked me to speak at a seminar for 40 CEOs in Nashville at Pathway Lending. The topic - Facebook Ads.

Absolutely, I said. So I coordinated with Erin Hayes, Marketing Manager at Pathway, who is phenomenal, and we merged our slide deck together to cover just about every single topic related to Facebook Marketing, and power packed this thing to provide a ton of value to the people in the room.

While presenting (or maybe right before or after), I realized my why. I wasn't speaking at the audience. I was collaborating with them. This was clearly an engaged group of 40 intelligent, driven people - each feeling the intense weight of carrying a business on their shoulders.

I found myself being not just their spotter for the reps they were putting up on Facebook, wanting to be their entire Fitness Regimen for their business.

Translation - My Why (what gets me excited about what I do and why I go to work every day) is - Supporting Small, Scrappy CEOs and Entrepreneurs and Side Hustles.

I realized that this audience were my people. Period. They were bought in to any semblance of anything that could possibly help them grow their business and they wanted to soak it in like a freaking sponge.

Any meeting I've ever been in (and there have been a good 300+ over the last 10 years) with this kind of energy, makes me feel like Earvin "Magic" Johnson bringing the ball up the court in the NBA Finals.

So while right now my primary way of Supporting Scrappy CEOs and Entrepreneurs and Side Hustles is to help them build a better data-driven digital presence - mainly through WordPress web design, content creation, Facebook ads and Google Adwords Express Campaigns, the opportunities to help are endless. And always exploring this is my "why."

As you search for your "Why" or your company's "Why" - like our clients did - I encourage you to reflect, dig deep and take your time. It took me a while.

So I want to say thank you to Pathway Lending, Corner To Corner, and all 40 CEOs / Entrepreneurs and Side Hustlers in the audience that night for helping me finally find it.

It took a presentation on Facebook Ads to get me there. It was the energy from the audience that smacked me right in the face. Thank you.
Thanks for reading / watching - and have a great day!

Paul Hickey has created and grown businesses via digital strategy and internet marketing for more than 10 years. His sweet spot is using analytics to design and build websites and grow the audience and revenue of businesses via SEO/Blogging, Google Adwords, Bing Ads, Facebook and Instagram Ads, Social Media Content Marketing and Email Marketing. The part that he’s most passionate about is quantifying next marketing actions based on real data.