One of my favorite movies, “The Tao of Steve”, has been on HBO fairly regularly lately. This philosophical comedy features an overweight, pot smoking kindergarten teacher who somehow kills it with the ladies due to a teaching he conveniently calls the Tao of Steve. This philosophy consists of:
- Be desireless (or appear that way)
- Be excellent (in her presence)
- Be gone (we always pursue that which flees from us)
In essence, the philosophy is about being the best you can without ulterior motives, and I can’t help but draw business conclusions out of this.
- Ultimately, businesses desire money from their consumers but if you are too forward about this, it will scare your consumers off.
- Create an excellent product: the greatest product of your kind, or if you can’t do that it must appear like the greatest product.
- Scarcity improves demand. Look at how Apple fans clamor for each little morsel of news that Apple puts out. Or Ubuntu fans. Or any number of other examples. This constant yearning for more generates a phenomenal self-propelled marketing machine.
After the movie, I went on to Wikipedia and researched a bit more of the original Tao Te Ching by Lao tzu and enjoyed reading the synopsis there. I’ll leave you with a quote from the Tao, but what are your thoughts on how this relates to business?
- We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel;
- But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the wheel depends.
- We turn clay to make a vessel;
- But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the vessel depends.
- We pierce doors and windows to make a house;
- And it is on these spaces where there is nothing that the usefulness of the house depends.
- Therefore just as we take advantage of what is, we should recognize the usefulness of what is not.
