How a moment of personal reflection helped shape the philosophy behind Real Prosperity.
A little over a week ago, I found myself thinking about the direction of our country, the conduct of its people, and something that has troubled me more and more. We can become so convinced of our own righteousness that we fail to see when our actions contradict the very principles we claim to defend. I believe Satan is a master of deception, and perhaps his most effective deceptions are the ones that persuade us we're doing good when we're actually causing harm. It's easy to recognize that possibility in other people. It's a lot harder to recognize it in ourselves.
Then something rather ordinary happened, and I think it may have helped set in motion the idea that has since become Real Prosperity.
Two Simple Questions
Someone on Facebook asked whether members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints still refer to themselves as Mormons. The responses were nearly unanimous: members explained the importance of using the revealed name of the Church, consistent with the counsel of President Russell M. Nelson.
I grew up proudly calling myself a Mormon. When I was about ten, my father bought me a book titled Me, I'm a Mormon. The name has always carried good associations for me, and I still feel affection for it. I was tempted to reply that I don't deny being a Mormon when someone calls me one.
But before posting, I stopped and asked myself two questions. What is the purpose? What good will it bring?
I knew what my reply would probably accomplish: an argument. Not greater understanding, not a stronger relationship, not anything particularly constructive -- just another chance to assert my opinion. I let it go and said nothing.
That might seem insignificant, but for me it meant something. I had chosen not to defend an opinion simply because I believed I was entitled to express it. Instead, I asked whether expressing it would serve a worthwhile purpose.
From Being Right to Doing Good
I've spent a good deal of my life forming strong opinions. I enjoy discussing ideas, questioning assumptions, and defending positions I believe are correct, and none of that is wrong in itself. But I've come to see that being right about something doesn't make every expression of that belief wise or helpful. There's a difference between defending the truth and defending our pride, and sometimes the two feel remarkably alike. Sometimes the most constructive response is to listen, reconsider, or simply stay quiet.
That doesn't mean avoiding hard conversations. There are times when speaking an uncomfortable truth is necessary, even when it creates disagreement. But I want to be more deliberate about my purpose. Am I trying to help someone understand? Am I trying to understand better myself? Am I trying to solve a problem? Or am I just trying to win?
Those questions have started shaping more than my conversations. They've started shaping how I think about the things I'm building.
An Unexpected Connection to Economics
Not long afterward, I began developing the idea that became Real Prosperity. Its premise fits in one question: what if we could create an economic environment where doing the right thing is more profitable than doing the wrong thing?
I've spent years building technology and thinking about the relationships between businesses and their customers, and one practice troubles me in particular: vendor lock-in. A company creates a useful product. Customers adopt it, invest in it, and gradually come to depend on it. Eventually the difficulty of leaving becomes one of the company's greatest competitive advantages. The customer may no longer think the product is the best choice available, but leaving has become too expensive, complicated or disruptive. The company keeps earning revenue -- not necessarily because its product is still better, but because its customers have become captive.
And I found myself asking a familiar question. What good does that bring?
It can certainly benefit the company financially. And not every switching cost is artificial or exploitative; some arise naturally from valuable integrations, long-term investments, and the complexity of changing systems. But when a business deliberately manufactures dependency to protect its revenue, something has gone wrong. The relationship has drifted away from earning loyalty through value, and I began wondering whether there might be a better arrangement.
What If the Product Were Enough?
What if businesses competed by making their products so valuable that customers wanted to stay? What if customer freedom became a competitive advantage? What if easy data portability, transparent pricing, self-serve cancellation and real interoperability made people more willing to become customers in the first place? What if companies found that removing needless barriers to leaving actually improved trust, adoption, referrals and long-term profit?
I don't know whether those advantages would outweigh the financial benefits of lock-in in every market. That's something to investigate, not assume. But the possibility is worth exploring, because if we can show that businesses do better by preserving customer freedom, we may have found a way to line up commercial incentives with human well-being. Not by demanding that entrepreneurs give up the pursuit of wealth, and not by punishing successful businesses, but by making real value creation the more attractive path to prosperity.
Making money isn't the problem. Making dependency the product is. And the principle underneath all of it is remarkably simple: the product should be the reason a customer buys it, and the product should also be the reason the customer stays.
The Same Standard Must Apply to Me
Here's where my earlier reflection matters most. It's easy to spot questionable incentives in other companies, and easy to criticize practices that restrict customer freedom. But what happens when I face a decision that could make one of my own enterprises more profitable at the expense of those principles? Will I recognize the conflict? Will I rationalize an exception? Will I convince myself that the greater good justifies something I'd condemn in a competitor? Those are uncomfortable questions, and they're exactly the ones I need to keep asking.
I have commercial ambitions. I hope my enterprises succeed, and I'd welcome substantial financial success. I make no apology for that. But I don't want financial success to become the excuse for conduct that contradicts the reasons I started building in the first place. If Real Prosperity is to mean anything, its principles have to apply to its founder -- perhaps especially to its founder. And if someone shows that one of my ideas is mistaken, I want to be willing to admit it. A movement devoted to improving economic behavior can't afford to become so convinced of its own righteousness that it stops examining its own conduct. That would reproduce the very problem it's trying to address.
Truth Is Greater Than My Understanding of It
My faith has played an important part in these reflections. I believe the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ contains extraordinary truth. I also believe there's much more truth to discover, and that my present understanding is incomplete. I've often struggled to tell the promptings of the Holy Ghost from my own thoughts. I don't claim to know whether my hesitation over that Facebook comment was a spiritual prompting or ordinary judgment, and I certainly don't claim that Real Prosperity is a divinely revealed economic program. It's an idea developed by a fallible man who is trying to understand how the world might become better.
My faith moves me to seek truth, exercise charity, respect agency, and examine my own behavior. But Real Prosperity doesn't require anyone to share my religious beliefs. Its propositions should be open to investigation, criticism and evidence. If an economic principle works, we should be able to demonstrate its benefits. If it doesn't, we should be willing to change it. Truth doesn't become less true because I was wrong about it, and moving closer to the truth matters more than protecting my reputation for having been right.
Perhaps This Is Where Change Begins
I've been thinking about the enormous ambition behind Real Prosperity. Changing the incentives that govern commercial relationships is no small undertaking, and I have no illusion that one website, one entrepreneur or one movement can simply announce a better economic system into existence. Centuries of established practice, powerful institutions and complicated human motives are involved.
But perhaps meaningful change doesn't always begin with something enormous. Perhaps it begins with a small decision. A person lets an argument go that would do no good. A business drops a restriction its customers never needed. A developer makes customer data portable. An entrepreneur earns loyalty instead of manufacturing dependency. An organization admits an uncomfortable truth instead of hiding it.
None of those decisions changes the world by itself, but each is a choice about what kind of world we're helping create. And when better choices prove worthwhile, others may start making them too. Real Prosperity exists to find out whether they do.
The Question I Want to Keep Asking
I still worry about the direction of our country. I still worry about the conduct of people who are absolutely convinced they're doing right, and I still believe human beings are remarkably good at deceiving themselves. But I'm more and more aware that the most important place to look for those tendencies is in myself.
I can't control the convictions of a whole nation, make every business behave ethically, or get rid of greed, pride and the hunger for power. What I can do is examine my own motives, build products that reflect my principles, welcome correction, and try to make the things I create good for the people who use them. And perhaps, if those efforts prove worthwhile, others will find their own reasons to adopt similar principles.
I don't know how far the ripples will travel. But I know the questions I want to ask before dropping the next pebble into the water: What is the purpose? What good will it bring?
Those two questions kept me out of an unnecessary argument. Perhaps they can also help me build something worthwhile. And if somewhere along the way I find out I was wrong, I hope I'll have the humility to be grateful for the correction, because the goal was always to do some good.