Why do you do what you do?

In theater, good performance is about more than just memorizing a bunch of words vocal tones and and facial expressions. Someone who is just regurgitating the lines that they have memorized and going through the general motions of their character is not going to do well in that role and will have a tough time obtaining new roles in the future.

In order to be a successful actor, on or off screen, you need to really get into the role of your character. In order to do that, you first need to figure out what it is that drives the character. What motivates them to do whatever it is that they do? Once you understand that it becomes easy to assume the role of that person.

The reason for this is because once you know what drives a person you can know with a fair degree of accuracy how they will feel and act when certain circumstances occur. Then as an actor you say and do the things that they would do. Even if you are restricted to specific lines due to the nature of the script you will know what the proper tone, inflection and pitch for your voice are based on how the character feels due to circumstance.

If knowing what drives a person is important in acting it is even more so in business. If you have no idea what motivates a person to buy a product, then you have no way of knowing whether or not they will buy a product that you have to offer. Assuming you want to be successful in business, you need to know your target audience. You need to ask yourself who is your target audience? And what do they tend to buy and why?

You can often increase sales dramatically just by putting your product in front of a more favorable audience. For example a lemonade stand is likely to make more money outside on a hot day near a sporting event than if it were inside on a cold day at a grocery store. Many of the same people might be in both locations. But they are driven more by their thirst on a hot sunny day outside than they would be on a cold day indoors.

But even more importantly, in order to be a successful businessperson, you need to know what drives you. You need to know why you are in business in the first place. Is this a temporary or one time thing? Are you just selling a bunch of stuff that you had in your garage? Are you attempting to replace your full time job with this business?

IF it is a long term business plan that you have there are more things to consider. Are you in love with money and willing to do whatever is necessary to make as much as possible in as short a time as you can? Are you driven by the need to take care of your family? Are you looking to revolutionize an industry in some way? Is it your goal to create some form of world change? Do you just want to make an extra couple of hundred dollars a month. Is it your goal to make hundreds of thousands or more a year?

Some of these things are very different from each other and methods that work in one will spell disaster for others. Part of the success plan for your business needs to be a vision statement of some kind that clearly spells out what drives you and why this business is a good fit for that motivation. If you are starting a business be sure to include this. If you are already in a business and do not have such a thing already, create it. Now. If you do not know why you are doing what you are doing, you are just going through the motions. Other people can sense this and are automatically repulsed by it. And, it becomes much easier to successfully meet your goals once you know why you do what you do.