Why do you do what you do every day? How easily can you answer that question?

If you’re in marketing or communication, or you’re a fan of the TED Talk series, you’ve probably seen the now-classic Simon Sinek video, “How great leaders inspire action.” It’s been viewed more than 50 million times on the TED website alone, not to mention the 7 million views that TED’s YouTube upload has earned. We should all be so lucky. We should be one-tenth as lucky. And then there’s the book, “Start With Why,” and all of the follow-up materials and videos that continue to help people realize their mission and craft it in a way that matches their customers’ values.

So why am I talking to you about your why?

Because it’s still not easy to find, but it’s rewarding as hell when you do.

And I’m a process person, so I want to share my process for identifying and unpacking your why, using some methods you’ve probably never thought of–maybe never even heard of.

I’m doing this in a five-part series, which will follow this introductory article. Those five parts are what I’m going to start calling the “One (To) Three Four Five Ways to Your Why.” Why is that the name of this series? Because I’m cheesy, and these are my five parts:

  1. The One Thing: I’m borrowing this idea from the creative brief where I work, which is, “What’s the one thing you want people to do, think or feel after seeing this campaign?” But I’m layering on a very important element, which another co-worker lives by, which should be a no-brainer but is often completely forgotten, which is, in the mind of the customer, “What’s in it for me?” More about each in part one.
  2. Get Who To By: Another borrowed idea but one that makes a ton of sense in this context. Without giving too much away, the vaunted ad agency BBDO informs its campaigns by crafting a message around getting a target audience who’s in a particular mindset or lifestage to take a desired action by communicating a specific message. You’ll see how three audience-first factors strengthen this equation for your business.
  3. Three Formulas: In this one–which, I admit, is out of order compared to the rest–we’ll look at three formulas to help you write your elusive “why” statement, or your unique selling proposition, or your value proposition, or your positioning statement. Since this process is many-sizes-fit-many, I want to try three equations to see if they look good on us.
  4. Four Causes: Let’s get Aristotelian. The ancient philosopher had an amazing way to give meaning to simple objects that I like to apply to businesses, campaigns or products. That meaning comes from a combination of what it is, how it was made, who made it, and why it was made. You’ve probably never thought of your business like this.
  5. Five Whys: Let’s get iterative and interrogative. This Toyota-originated process to get to the root cause of a problem is also, I feel, a great way to get to the root reason for a thing’s existence, or the root motivator behind a person’s actions.