One Core: The Deeper Purpose That Drives Everything

Finding What You Can’t NOT Do

Let me tell you about the second-worst business advice I ever followed.

“Find your why.“

Sounds good, right? Except every time I tried this exercise, I’d come up with bullshit like “I want to help people” or “I want to make a difference” or “I want financial freedom.”

These aren’t whys. These are what you’re supposed to say at networking events.

Real purpose isn’t something you discover in a weekend workshop. It’s something you excavate from years of paying attention to what actually drives you, even when it’s inconvenient.

Your Core isn’t your surface motivation.

It’s the thing that would make you do this work even if nobody paid you. It’s what pisses you off enough that you can’t help but fight against it. It’s what you’ve been unconsciously building toward your entire career.

Beyond the Greeting Card Version

Most “find your purpose” advice stops at the greeting card level.

They’ll have you write mission statements that sound like they came from a corporate retreat. “To empower individuals to reach their full potential through innovative solutions.”

Yuck.

Your real Core is messier than that. It’s probably connected to something that hurt you or frustrated you so much that you decided to do something about it. It’s personal before it’s professional.

I’ll give you an example. My Core isn’t “help people build better businesses.” That’s too clean, too strategic.

My actual Core is proving that you don’t have to sacrifice who you are to be successful. Because I spent years watching creative, intelligent people twist themselves into pretzels trying to fit into business frameworks that were designed for different types of humans.

That pisses me off. So I can’t help but fight against it, even when it’s not profitable.

See the difference? One sounds like a LinkedIn headline. The other comes from actual experience and emotion.

The Shadow Side of Purpose

Your Core usually emerges from your deepest wounds or biggest frustrations.

The thing that hurt you most becomes the thing you’re most driven to heal in others.

Someone who felt invisible growing up becomes obsessed with helping others be seen and heard. Someone who was told they weren’t smart enough builds their career around proving that intelligence comes in many forms. Someone who experienced financial insecurity can’t stop teaching others how to create freedom.

This isn’t therapy. It’s pattern recognition.

Your personal pain often becomes your universal purpose. Not because you want to stay stuck in the past, but because you’ve learned something through that experience that others need to know.

Why Most People Get This Wrong

The biggest mistake I see is people trying to manufacture a purpose based on what they think will resonate with their audience.

They research what’s popular, what sells, what gets engagement. Then they reverse-engineer a purpose that sounds good from the outside but doesn’t connect to their actual drives.

This creates what I call “purpose fatigue.” You get tired of talking about something you don’t actually care about that much.

Signs you’re working from an authentic Core:

• It energizes you even when you’re exhausted
• You pursue it even when it’s not profitable
• You get angry when you see it being violated
• You naturally integrate it into every area of your life
• You’ve been unconsciously driven by it for years

Signs you’re working from a manufactured Core:

• It sounds good but doesn’t motivate daily action
• You only think about it when doing marketing
• It feels separate from your personal values
• You chose it because it seemed strategic
• You need to remind yourself what it is

The Integration Test

Your Core should show up everywhere, not just in your business bio.

If someone followed you around for a week, would they be able to guess your Core from how you make decisions, what you get excited about, what makes you angry?

If your Core is helping people escape systems that diminish their humanity, does that show up in how you design your own work? How you treat your team? How you structure your offers? How you spend your free time?

If it doesn’t, you might be working from strategy instead of authentic drive.

The Economics of Authentic Purpose

What’s the business case for doing this work, even though it feels touchy-feely?

When you operate from an authentic Core, you make better decisions. You don’t waste time on opportunities that sound good but feel wrong. You attract people who care about the same things you care about, which creates deeper relationships and higher lifetime value.

You also create sustainable motivation. Building a business is hard. External motivators (money, recognition, competition) eventually fade. Internal motivators compound over time.

I’ve watched people build successful businesses around purposes they don’t actually care about. They burn out, sell the business, or pivot into something completely different within a few years.

The people who build things that last are driven by something deeper than market opportunity.

My Messy Discovery Process

I didn’t figure out my Core through meditation or vision boards.

I noticed that in every job I’d ever had, I kept gravitating toward the same type of problem. I’d see people with good ideas getting overlooked because they couldn’t play corporate politics. I’d watch creative types burn out trying to follow productivity systems designed for accountants. I’d see solopreneurs copying marketing tactics that worked for completely different personality types.

The pattern was always the same: people trying to succeed by becoming someone else.

That’s what I couldn’t stop fighting against. Even when it wasn’t my job. Even when nobody asked me to.

That’s how I knew I’d found my Core. It was something I was already doing unconsciously.

The Three Levels of Core Development

I’ve noticed that Cores exist at different levels of depth.

• Level 1: Personal Cores – “Find joy in everything I do” These drive your personal behavior but don’t necessarily translate to business impact.
• Level 2: Professional Cores – “Make complex business concepts simple and actionable” These drive how you approach your work but are still pretty tactical.
• Level 3: Universal Cores – “Help people see possibilities they didn’t know existed” These transcend industry boundaries and create potential for massive impact.

The most powerful worlds are built on Level 3 Cores that can be applied across different contexts while remaining authentic to who you are.

When Your Core Evolves

Your Core doesn’t change, but your understanding of it deepens over time.

What starts as a personal drive (“I want creative freedom”) might evolve into a professional mission (“Help others build businesses that honor their creativity”) and eventually become a universal purpose (“Prove that authentic expression creates more value than conformity”).

The core essence stays the same. But its application and impact expand as you gain experience and confidence.

This is why you don’t need to have it perfectly figured out before you start. You just need to start from something that feels true and let it evolve through experience.

The Sustainability Question

Could you pursue this purpose for the next 20 years without getting bored or burned out?

If your Core is too narrow, you’ll outgrow it. If it’s too strategic, you’ll get tired of it. If it’s too disconnected from who you actually are, you’ll eventually abandon it.

But if it comes from something deep and real, it becomes more interesting over time, not less.

I’ve been exploring the same basic Core for over a decade, and I’m more energized by it now than when I started. Because I keep finding new applications and deeper understanding.

The Ripple Effect

When you operate from a clear Core, it affects everything.

You create content because you have something to say, not because you need to post something. You attract clients who share your values, not just people who need your services. You make business decisions based on what advances your deeper purpose, not just what might make money.

Most importantly, you build something that matters to you. Not just something that works.

Your Core isn’t just about your business. It’s about your contribution to the world. What do you want to be true because you existed?

That’s worth figuring out.

Even if it takes longer than a weekend workshop.