There is no doubt that the why of any organisation is of paramount importance. This is further popularised and cemented by Simon Sinek in his fantastic book “Start with Why”. If you’re feeling lazy, you can grasp most of the concepts in his wildly popular TED talk.
The main idea is we all live for the why and not the what. Every company knows the what. They can describe the products they sell, their industry or even their fiercest competitors. Moving deeper, some companies might even know the how of what they do. For example, their own unique competitive advantages, value propositions and even core values. However, very few companies know or can articulate their why, which is their fundamental belief and purpose of being.
Simon shared that Kodak was actually the inventor of the digital camera. But why did they fail, or in fact, one of the biggest casualty out of the dawn of the digital camera era? It is because they mistaken their why. They thought they are in the film business rather than the memory business. Imagine them knowing their why. They would have done everything they can, including disrupting their own business model so that they can fulfil their mission for people to preserve their memories in whatever form it may be.
“People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it” - Simon Sinek
As we are trying to find our why for Epitro, we realised that it is actually very difficult to find a Why for an investment holding company. It’s not very inspiring if the why is just to make money, even though it is an obvious end goal. Sole pursuit of money leads to a soulless life.
Thus, we started a journey of inner reflection. As we dig deeper, we hit our fundamental belief - stewardship. Stewardship means being a guardian or taking care of whatever that was entrusted. In short, we do not own it.
“The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world, and all who lives in it” - Psalms 24:1
Putting it into business context: Whatever capital & financial success we have is a blessing from God. Does this mean we can’t enjoy the wealth or fruits of our labour? To many, enjoying the fruits of labour and financial stewardship are 2 opposing idea that is of a cognitive dissonance. Some might even think it’s a hypocrisy. However, I beg to differ. I believe we can enjoy the fruits of our labour while being mindful on how we spend or invest.
An analogy is of having a child. It might start of as a personal selfish reason. For example, “I want 2 kids because they look cute together”. However, as they arrive to this world, we quickly realised that everything is not awesome all the time and that they do not adhere to our personal desires. They cry when they want to cry, smile when they want to smile and whatever self serving reason you had in mind before quickly becomes an illusion.
I believe God gives us a child so that we have a cause greater than oneself. Ultimately, we are merely stewards of this child. Those that think they own the child will be in for a rude awakening.
In fact, so strongly does this resonates, that many parents would lay down their life for their child. Many would labour to provide the best education and to raise them the best that they could afford. In my culture, parents would save every pennies so that they can pass the bulk of the wealth to the next generation. This concept of stewardship is inherently subconsciously written in our DNA. Somehow, for most, we view ourselves as stewards of this child, that eventually they will make their own decision when they grow up, and if we have to let them go, we will.
Taking this concept further, everything we have belongs to God. We can’t actually take it with us when we die. Thus, we must have this awareness that we are guardians of this blessing while we are on earth. That’s why one of our core values, and the only one with a bias to action - outreach, is so important. We need to impact our communities from this blessing because we are mere stewards. And as stewards, we need to spend prudently and invest wisely so that we can continue to give generously to the communities.
“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep, and gain what he cannot lose” - Jim Elliott
To embody this crucial concept, our company is named Epitro, which is short for Epitropos, which means stewardship in Greek. We also aim to give a bigger and bigger portion of our profits to causes that impact our world. In fact, we envision that after a few generations, most of the profits of Epitro will be channeled to that cause. This will be written more extensively in the future.
“Finance is not merely about making money. It’s about achieving our deep goals and protecting the fruits of our labour. It’s about stewardship and, therefore, about achieving the good society” - Robert J Shiller
So in short, why do we exist? We exist to invest well so that we can be good stewards of God’s blessing. That is our reason of being.
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