The Awesome Inc team recently returned from a weekend in the beautiful Smoky Mountains spent enjoying the outdoors, building community, and reflecting on the core of entrepreneurship. Awesome Inc staff, interns, startup founders, spouses, and friends alike strived to discover the answer to “Why do I and my company exist?” We then examined the effect of this “why” on the “how” and the “what” of ourselves and our ideas. Each entry in the slate of sessions for the weekend spoke to this question, some by real-world training in the “how” and others by the refocusing of the “what.” But as Simon Sinek so eloquently put it, the best companies “start with the why.”

In accordance with this philosophy, the first session of the weekend was “Your Why Has to be Stronger”, presented by Awesome Inc co-founder Brian Raney. He emphasized that the importance of discovering the why behind your work far exceeds the importance of the how or the what in entrepreneurship. Every organization knows what they do, the products they sell or the services they provide. Some even know how they will do it better than their competitors and leverage their competitive advantage. Very few have sought to understand why they find what they do a worthwhile use of their time and efforts. Yet this is what sets successful companies and entrepreneurs apart. This is because we will fail, sometimes very often, at what we do or how we do it. If there is not a strong reason why, there is no inspiration or drive to overcome the obstacles that inhibit the how and the what.

Awesome Inc has spent years discovering the why for itself. Today, we can say that Awesome Inc exists to help people pursue their definition of awesome. That is why we devote our time to building a high-tech startup community in Kentucky with our various initiatives like the Awesome Fellowship and Awesome Inc U. Without that why, whenever an initiative flopped (there have been a few), we would become stuck, because we failed at our what. But because our purpose is to help people, we still succeed, because even in those failures we are helping people in their pursuit of Awesome. For entrepreneurs, this has to be the same. The why can’t be money, because the reality is not all companies end up making money. But if the purpose is to fill a need, a passion to create change, then the why is strong enough.

Each of the sessions that followed contributed to this theme. Gary Ditsch taught about figuring out how to measure the correct things in growing a business, by focusing on what you really want to achieve. Garrett Ebel spoke about surrounding yourself with a team of people who share your why, and Elzaba Matthews told her personal journey of pursuing her why, a story that spanned years of hard work across the globe.

Between sessions, in the true spirit of Rule #17 (“Bring the fun!), attendees enjoyed morning workouts, challenging hikes, tubing adventures, and late-night games.

The full list of retreat sessions can be found below, and the corresponding notes here.

• Brian Raney, Awesome Inc Co-founder, Your Why Has to Be Stronger Than All Your Obstacles. Awesome Inc exists to help people pursue their definition of Awesome. This session explored the importance of knowing your Why and how to find it.
• Amanda Murray and Theresa Simcic, Awesome Inc Directors, Six Ways to Make People Like You. This session covered 6 ways to make people like you based off of the classic book by Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People.
• Gary Ditsch, Kentucky Entrepreneur and Bootcamp member, Learning about metrics from Pied Piper. Daily Active Users and other metrics you may or may not want to analyze.
• Morgan Franklin, Entrepreneur and 5 Across coach, The most important number in any business. Sales are crucial to any business and creating sales online can be difficult. This session examined how video can develop online relationships to deliver sales.
• Garrett Ebel, Recruiting and Building an All-Star Team. What are you going to look for when compiling this team of heroes? This session discussed culture, recruitment, and team building and why these are all mission critical to running and growing a successful and sustainable business!
• Dan Beldy, Venture capitalist, Fundraising & Managing Investors: how to optimize both. Tips and advice from a VC on topics related to fundraising and managing investor relationships.
• Brian Raney & Elzaba Matthews, Persistence pays. Why your why matters