Evolving How You Work To Deliver On Your Purpose
April 28, 2022 | On the Profits with Purpose Podcast
Katie Burkhart appeared on the Profits with Purpose podcast for a conversation with host Marc Freedman. She talked about the challenges of actually aligning your business with your purpose and shared her system for how to do it.
Listen to the episode below.
read the transcript
excuse any typos as we tried to capture the conversation as it happened.
Marc: Welcome to Profits with Purpose. Today's guest is Katie Burkhart. Katie puts a point on business. She's the mastermind behind MatterLogic, the simple system for running a purpose-driven business, and has quickly become one of the go-to experts in this space. She's also a serial entrepreneur building the Matter Ecosystem, including Matter 7 and MatterPulse, defining matter as worthy of time. These companies deliver critical focus, perspective, and alignment while distilling the big picture into pointed actions.
Katie speaks worldwide as a keynote speaker, podcast guest, and workshop facilitator. She's an entrepreneur and contributor, and her work has been published in The Startup, UX Collective, and Boston Content. She’s a thorough pragmatist intent on being useful, a language extractor eliminating jargon and empty labels, and an officially registered Jedi who also loves Star Trek and LOTR.
Katie, why don't you tell us about your background and how you ended up starting MatterLogic?
Katie: Oh, well, first, thank you so much for having me today, Marc. I'm really excited to talk to someone who has such a clear purpose and pathway in your own work and business. So, I really got into this somewhat accidentally, in that I'm someone who got her first job as a lifeguard as a teenager at my local pool. And unfortunately, as I had grown up, less and less people came to the pool—which is a sad state of affairs and the shifting of how we spend childhood—but that's a conversation for another time. But what I learned in that process was that I did not want to have a job where I basically watch the clock tick by for hours of my day only to come back the next day and watch the time tick by again. For me, it's all about the fact that we get one life. So many days, so many hours, so many weeks, and we need to really be thoughtful about how we spend it.
And what that means for each of us is going to be a little different. I ended up getting into business because I was working with predominantly nonprofit organizations. But very quickly, other businesses who had self-selected into having a purpose, into knowing what their value was even though they would build this intentional strategy, had a really hard time making decisions and running their business against that strategy. They would become unfocused.
So, I ended up going out and doing a lot of research work, continuing to work with clients, testing different things out, talking to other practitioners. And I ended up saying, “You know what? We really need to get into the how of being a purpose-driven business. How we actually take that and put it throughout our company, all the way into how we have meetings.”
And that's how MatterLogic came about in the simplest of terms. It is a logic. It's a way to think about business. It's a way to run your business. And what it really does is it has you ask “What's the point,” from why your business exists all the way down to why you're sitting in this meeting today.
Marc: So, what made you realize that the way companies look at how they do business needed to change?
Katie: For me, there was a couple of different factors. So certainly as someone in a different generation, I think you're seeing people coming up who are saying, “No. Just coming to work, pushing paper, and collecting my paycheck just isn't efficient for me as a person.” And it's certainly not leading to the best work by any means.
I think then what ended up happening...which was certainly not something I foretold, but I think it expedited something that was already happening—which was what I like to call the Great Pause. Where we ended up with a global pandemic, everybody at the same time had their life significantly disrupted and was put in a position that was disrupted long enough for them to be in a position to say, “Hey, do I want to go back to the life that I had? Is the way that I'm spending my time worth it, or do I want to do something else?”
And that has now led to what a lot of people are calling the Great Resignation. But I think it's less about resigning. It's actually more about opting into a different way of doing things. And that requires you to step back from what you were doing before. And I'm seeing a lot of businesses are in a position now of having to rapidly change how they've been going about doing things. Some people are doing it really seamlessly. A lot of people are not, and that's where I really get excited to come in and help.
Marc: Yeah. I think the—and I like your switch from the Great Resignation to a different, more positive “I really need to look at what am I doing, and going forward, is that really where I'm going to be happy?” Right? That's all about somebody's purpose. And if that purpose is positive, then obviously a business can successfully prepare itself for what's coming in the future. So, let's talk about MatterLogic and the idea behind it. Can you tell us a little bit more?
Katie: Absolutely. So, the idea behind this was that I had really, after trying a bunch of different things and seeing what was out there, found on one hand that there was a lot of great thought leadership out there on the market. People have—purpose is not actually a new idea, but what didn't seem to have come about is “How do I get it from knowing I should have this thing into how I operationalize it throughout my business?” And even in what's coming out recently, there still seems to be this gap in how you go about doing that. We have thought about “Do we actually build technology to support that?” We even went down that road a little ways. But what we learned in that is that business is already so noisy. So, let's sort of step back and think about this as a person.
Most of us wake up, our phone is already...has so many notifications on it. We're bombarded with how many different media channels, all trying to get our attention. We've got social media, which is in and of itself its own source of phenomenal noise. We also have our family who requires our attention, our job that requires our attention. A lot of us have side hustles or something else that we're working on, which requires our attention, and it can get really noisy really fast. And that says nothing about the noise within the business itself, where we have competing priorities. We've got a team that's got friction with another team because we're not exactly sure what really needs to get accomplished. We're sitting in—the biggest complaint that people seem to have right now is just the number of aimless meetings that they're sitting in that are just not a good use of their time.
So that's where we really sat down and said, “You know what? This is really an issue of garbage in, garbage out. We can continue to give people more of the tech, but if they don't have the underlying skills and perspective to use it, they’re probably still going to get garbage out. And it's not necessarily going to help to move them forward.” So, this is really about evolving how we do work and working with teams to help them to shape that. We want to give some structure, certainly, but we want to make sure that they walk away from the process really owning how they're going to do what they do every day.
Marc: So, let's talk about why it's important for a business to have purpose besides making money.
Katie: So, let me talk a little bit about what does it really mean to be purpose-driven? Because that's a conversation that comes up a lot, and you get a lot of different answers. And the way that I like to look at purposes is a way to focus the business. And my favorite way to talk about it is to talk about Forrest Gump, which is one of my favorite movies. I don't know if you like it, but I love it. I rewatch it all at the time and there's a great—
Marc: “Life was like a box of chocolates.” <laugh>
Katie: Yes, it is. But there's the great scene, right? Where he's been shot in the butt with his million-dollar wound—which he never saw a nickel of that million dollars—and is watching TV aimlessly. It's a wonderful moment of just noise. Because that's what he's doing.
And one of the other members is like, “Oh my God, I can't take this noise anymore. I'm going to teach you how to play ping pong.” And he does that by first saying to Forrest, “Never take your eye off the ball.” And Forrest, being Forrest, does that very effectively. And what we found in business is for the past how many decades, that ball has been making money, right? And everything we've done has been to make more money. It doesn't matter if we make a product nobody really needs, as long as I can convince you to buy it.
It doesn't matter if I damage the planet in the process, as long as I can make money today, right now. It doesn't matter how badly I burn out people—how far and how much I micromanage them so that they really hate their job—as long as we're turning out the highest level of efficiency. What we're seeing happen is we're saying that's a) miserable and not what anybody wants to do and b) it's not really an effective way to run a business. What you do when you become purpose-driven is you say, “What is the value that I deliver? How do I improve someone's life?” And that's what the ball becomes, and everything that you do drives towards delivering that value.
So, you want to be looking at “What is it exactly that we do? How do we do it best? How do we make sure that we can deliver the value once? And we can deliver it again and again and again?” And by doing that, what you'll find is that profit becomes the outcome of effectively delivering that value. Nothing says that you delivered value to me, then that I paid you for something. And then I went so far as to pay you again because it added—it improved my life in some way.
And then what you can do is take that money and invest it into your business, which is... Something I'm sure you understand is that there is money spent on things we didn't need to spend money on. And we need to save that money. We then need to wisely invest the money that we're bringing in—into supporting our team, into helping them to learn, grow, and develop new skills, into exploring new and better ways to do things. But doing that with a real intentionality of what we want the end result to be, which is delivering that value.
Marc: Basically, making sure that a company is aligned with a clear and intentional strategy.
Katie: Yes, yes. And just making money, I think for most of us, is phenomenally demotivating. And it's also, in all honesty, a really terrible strategy because it's nonspecific. And it really does not allow you to make any deliberate choices. And it's where I think you get a lot of people spinning wheels, competing priorities, noise, coming back into business versus being able to say, “What's the point? Does this, or does this not help us to fulfill this purpose?” If it doesn't, take it all right off the table.
Marc: Okay. Pretty cool. So, let's talk about challenges associated with founding and how you overcome them.
Katie: Ooh. So, speaking for myself, I would say one of the biggest challenges...and it's twofold. And these are things that I tell clients, and then you have to remember to give yourself your own advice. One: “It's not about you” is one of the things that I talk to people about a lot, and that’s a hard thing for us to hear, especially as founders who are so excited and so passionate about whatever we're building, including myself. I do it. I can't wait to get up and work on what I'm working on, but what I have to remember all the time and remind myself of is I am not the person I serve. I am here to help other people. So, I need to spend more of my time listening to them to make sure that I don't end up building a really cool gizmo that doesn't actually do anything for anybody else.
So, I would say that that's a big challenge, and I don't have a one-size-fits-all silver bullet for how you do that. Listening, only to say that it never stops. And the more that you can do that, listening with money attached, the more you'll learn. And here's what I mean by that. When I went out as a founder—I am a very curious person by nature—and I had a lot of conversations with people about ways we could solve this problem and help companies and nonprofits to be more focused and to help their people to better work. And I learned a lot, and there was a lot of enthusiasm. But once I actually went out to pitch selling a service and somebody had to give me money for it, the conversation changed into what was a cool idea versus what was worth it for me to pay for.
So, I always suggest to people, even if you're not really ready to sell yet, have the conversation as if you were because you're going to get different responses once they have to put that money on the line as far as whether or not it's valuable enough to them. So that's one.
The other piece is: Telling your story is three quarters of the battle. And it's, generally speaking, not something you can develop all by yourself. And I tell people this all the time, helping people to do their story is part of what we do because you have no perspective on yourself. But speaking for myself, I spent quite a lot of time trying to do my own story. And it wasn't until I brought somebody in to help me that we made significant progress in being able to express it and express it the right way.
Because if you can't—language is what makes meaning, right?—so if you can't express it to someone in a way that they understand it, you're not going to...you go no further. There was actually an article published which talked about the minimally viable line language test or something like that, where they were really looking at, “How do you make sure that the people you're trying to talk to understand what you're saying? And not only understand it but get excited about it before you even start building anything?” Make sure that you know how to do that because you could very easily be having a conversation where you think you're saying the same thing, but you're saying two different things. Or you're having a hard time getting people to understand what it is that you're doing and seeing how all the pieces fit together. So, I would say in challenges, those are two I've experienced. And I would definitely say getting help, an outside perspective on that second one can be a real game changer.
Marc: Absolutely. So, you know, doing research on your business, MatterLogic, we find you kind of unique. And I was just wondering, are you the only one that's kind of got this specific method in place? And I mean, it's great when there's very little competition, but what aligns itself similar to what you guys are doing? Or is there anything that aligns itself?
Katie: We haven't found anything. And I always say that with a very large asterisk because I'm a big believer that the world is a very big place. And there are probably people out there with brilliant ideas, and I just have not met them yet. But as of right now, we have not found anyone that's really focused on the how aspect of this equation.
Most people are very focused on making sure that organizations have a purpose and know what it is, but most don't want to get into the, “Ooh, now we’ve got to get in; we’ve got to go all the way down to the meetings. Mm.” Whereas I'm like, yes, let's go down into that. This is going to be great and make sure that things are really going together.
So, I haven't found one, but we have certainly found and have seen—and I don't know what your experience has been, but—have seen an interesting uptick over the last nine months of people being more willing to share their frameworks and methodologies because I think they're seeing a need for us to think about doing things differently in a wide variety of areas. And I'm so excited to see that out there because it can give us more we can learn from—for the things that are relevant to our area or just learn in general—which at least for me is a really exciting thing.
Marc: Yeah. It seems like everybody was focused on the why.
Katie: Yes.
Marc: Simon Sinek. Thank you very much.
Katie: Yes.
Marc: And it's valuable, a hundred percent, but as you said, not many focused on the how. Which is..I'm not sure you can get to the why if you don't know the how. Or how does the why get developed if you don't know the how, and it's a kind of like on both sides of the why.
Katie: Right. Yes. And you've just brilliantly articulated where I think a lot of groups sit right now—including even nonprofits, which surprises people. Where they're like, “We're so excited about this, and now it's stuck.” Or you end up with what we call fluff. Which is some statement like “We bring joy to the world.”
It's like, you've only gone one step past “We make money.” How do you use that strategically to make decisions? How can I focus in on that? That's so big and broad, but it's because they haven't looked at the other half of the equation to figure it out. So, one of the ways that I like to think about this is—you mentioned I'm a registered Jedi; I'm also a huge Lord of the Rings fan—and the piece that we look at is, we get very into the why and people generating this purpose statement. But we like to tell people “You need the whole core strategy,” which is five pieces. Your purpose, your vision, your mission, your values, and your story.
And if there's one piece I can leave behind, it's to try to get all five. And the way we like to look at it is, your purpose tells you the value you deliver. It's like, “Why do we exist?” And in Lord of the Rings, we need to understand why we're all here and coming together in the first place, right? Then we need to look at our vision, right? Lord of the Rings does a wonderful job of the vision because it starts with that in the beginning. It shows us how wonderful the Shire is. And our vision is to make sure that we preserve the Shire and that hopefully the whole world gets to experience this wonderful piece at the end. So, when you're thinking about vision, it's like, “What's the world going to look like if we're really successful?” And hopefully that's a place people want to go.
When you look at your mission, it's the actions that you're going to take to get there. What specifically are you going to do? So, in the case of Lord of the Rings, they've got to get up the mountain and put the ring into the fire. And that's what we need to accomplish. This mission to get to this vision. It's phenomenally tactical.
Your values are how you go about doing it. How are you going to do it? That's unique to you. That's going to help you with what only you can do. Your mission is about your unique capabilities. Not just anyone could carry the ring up the mountain. It had to be Frodo the Hobbit. Nobody else was going to, was going to bring that to the table, and his particular way of doing it was going to make that happen. And doing it in partnership with his friend, Sam. How do we put those values in place?
And then, what really brings it all together is the story. How do we make sure that we're communicating all these pieces in a way that people understand? And the Lord of the Rings is a wonderful example of many others, of how we follow this structure of understanding where the obstacles are and how do we, as a business, serve as a guide to help these people with what they need to accomplish.
Marc: Yeah, that's a great example I think a lot of people can relate to. So, as we discussed before we began the podcast, our company puts very much focus on positive social impact. And I was just wondering if there's initiatives you have in place within your organization that also creates social impact.
Katie: Ooh, that's a great question. So, one of the things that we do is—when we work with partners and someone refers us business, provided the business closes— what we do is we send them so much money as a thank you. But then, we take that same amount and we donate it to either a charity of their choice, or if they're not a hundred percent sure, we have a tendency to give it to 1% for the Planet. Because we're pretty big believers that if we do so many things, it was hard to pick one charity that we all felt good about, with the exception of the fact that we all supported that if we don't have a planet, we don't have people. We're definitely not doing work.
So how about we start there and make sure that we're supporting that piece? So that's been a really exciting thing to do, and we find the people that we're working with appreciate it. I can't tell you if it motivates them to refer us more business or not. But at the end of the day, I don't care. What I care about is that we're thanking them and we're doing our best to support the planet at the same time.
Marc: Well, what's the best piece of advice you've ever been given?
Katie: I would have to say there are two pieces of advice because I can't pick just one. One is, “If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room.” And the second one is related, which is, “Don't take advice from someone who's not where you want to be.” And there are lots of people out there giving advice all the time, whether you ask for it or not. So, I've found that a good filtering mechanism.
Marc: I like that. Is there anything else that I haven't mentioned that you want to touch on?
Katie: Oh, what a great question. Probably the piece that I would touch on always is that I think so many of us look at our work and we say, “I'm not saving lives, so I can't have a purpose. I can't be purpose-driven.” And I cannot shout enough, with enough enthusiasm, that that is completely wrong.
And there is really no such thing as valueless work. Anything you do can be purposeful. It's about asking the question, “How do I make someone's life better” and making sure that that's what you're orienting everything to do. And if you're not sure how you do that, please let me know so that we can have a conversation about it. Because I want to see more people be able to have this type of focus in what they're doing—to be able to cut down the noise in their life and their business for their team—so that they're able to do their best work and to ultimately live their best lives.
Marc: Cool. So cool. Katie, I want to thank you for joining us on Profits with Purpose. If somebody wanted to get in touch with you, how would they do that?
Katie: Best way to get in touch with me is to find me on LinkedIn. You just throw in my name, and you'll be able to pull me up. You're welcome to follow me, connect with me, and if you want to go so far to send me a message, I'm always happy to exchange messages there, have conversation, answer questions. I'm also happy to jump on a meeting with you if you're so inclined to get to know me for any reason.
And then the second place to say, “Hey, I thought this MatterLogic thing you're talking about sounds pretty neat, and I really like the idea of there being a point to what I'm doing every day.” Please go ahead and go to matterlogic.co/weekly to join our community. I send something out every single week that is intentionally practical that you can use to make sure that you're asking that question. You're saying no to the things that don't fit, and you're helping your company to do what they do better.
Marc: Great. Thanks again. We'll make sure we include that in all the show notes, and we appreciate you being with us. Have a great day.
Katie: Thank you so much for having me, Marc.