When people ask me, “What does Awesome Inc do?”, I’ve started to give them an answer that they don’t expect. Actually, I don’t even answer the question at first. Instead I answer a different, but more important question, “Why does Awesome Inc exist?”

The truth is, what we do is much less significant than why we exist. What we do will change over time. Why we do it will remain constant. People might not be interested in what we do, but everyone can get behind why we do it. To be honest, a lot of our team isn’t all that interested or motivated by what we do. Despite that, every single member of our team will make (and has already made) considerable sacrifices for why we do it.

The response people may expect is something like: “Awesome Inc is a co-working space”, “we write software”, “we host events for entrepreneurs”, “we are an incubator for startups”, “we are a coding school”, or a listing of any number of the things that we do. Instead, I say, “Awesome Inc exists to help people pursue their definition of awesome.”

Assisting people in the pursuit of their own goals and dreams is our primary purpose and motivation. What we do is just a vehicle for us to fulfill this purpose.

We dubbed the month of May “Motivational May”. The purpose of Motivational May is to encourage people to reflect on their definition of Awesome and then set tangible goals, professionally and personally, that move them closer to their definition of Awesome.

At the beginning of the month, we had everyone (who was brave enough) write down their May goals on post-it notes and track them in this doc each week. The goals that we set were BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals). No one was allowed to set a goal that was going to be easy to hit. It had to be at least a little scary with a chance of failure.

Many of the post-it note goals won’t be achieved this month, but that’s okay. As long as each individual is working toward their BHAG and tracking progress then they are pursuing their definition of Awesome. And as long as their “why” is stronger than their fear, doubts, and excuses, they will eventually reach that definition of awesome.