What does it mean to create something valuable?
It’s not about what you think is brilliant. It’s about what others perceive as meaningful, useful, or transformative in their own lives.
That starts with a shift: from pushing ideas outward, to listening inward.
Real value comes from tuning into what people truly care about. Their needs. Their desires. Sometimes even their unspoken pain points—the ones they haven’t named, but feel every day. To uncover these, you need to listen closely, ask better questions, and be willing to dig beneath the surface.
And once you’ve created value, your job isn’t finished. You have to keep recreating it. Over time. With consistency. With care. Not just for your customers, but for your colleagues, your community, and your partners.
Because here’s the truth: reciprocal value, and not just revenue, is the engine of lasting business success.
When you give genuine value and also value others in return, you stop thinking in funnels. Funnels are linear. They imply a beginning, middle, and end. It’s a transaction that’s closed, a customer journey that’s over. But that’s not how real growth works.
The best businesses think in circles.
Circles are continuous. They invite return, reciprocity, and renewal. That’s why circular thinking generates compounding value.
Here are three reasons why:
1. Circles allow you to invest in people.
Value isn’t built by extracting as much as you can from a single transaction. It’s created by investing in the relationships behind the transaction. When you treat people as partners in value creation, whether they’re clients, employees, or collaborators, you plant the seeds for trust, loyalty, and long-term impact.
2. Circles provide you with excellent timing.
Linear thinking assumes “once and done.” But in reality, timing matters as much as the offer itself. Circles allow you to re-enter at different points, to meet people where they are today, not where they were yesterday. That means your value evolves alongside the shifting needs of your ecosystem.
3. Circles create valuable feedback loops.
In a funnel, feedback is an afterthought. In a circle, feedback is the core mechanism of growth. Every conversation, survey, and interaction becomes a source of insight. That insight fuels better solutions, which fuels deeper trust, which fuels even more feedback, and the cycle continues.
The Circle of Value is simple but powerful: when you share success, you multiply it.
If you want to build something truly enduring, don’t just ask:
What’s valuable to me?
Ask:
What's valuable to us?
Because when value is shared, success stops being a one-time win—and becomes an infinite return.
Want to learn more? Grab your copy of The Six Circle Strategy here. And, if you have any questions, we'd love to hear from you!
