Rob Foster and Chris Deutsch walked 68 miles in an attempt to meet with the Dalai Lama.

Grand gestures have always been important in business. Car dealerships use huge inflatable monsters atop their stores to announce sales, searchlights direct people to large events and Goodyear floats a blimp to advertise its tires. To attract attention to their startup, the founders of I Live Inspired decided to walk.

On Oct. 17, co-founders Rob Foster and Chris Deutsch started out in Hope, Ind., and walked 68 miles for seven days and seven nights to Buddha, Ind. Their goal was to reach the Tibetan Cultural Center in Bloomington, Ind., on Oct. 24 to see the Dalai Lama speak; more importantly, they hoped to get a seven-minute meeting with the Dalai Lama to boost their inspirational text message service. “The Dalai Lama’s message, while certainly not unique, transcends religions, cultures and all boundaries,” Foster said. “We want to spread it to our generation by combining it with our mission of inspiring through daily calls to action.”

Foster and Deutsch created I Live Inspired to provide subscribers with daily messages from knowledgeable sources. The messages are selected to benefit people with specific needs, such as recovering from cancer, becoming better parents, reducing stress or improving finances. The people who provide the 14 different categories of messages include Greg Anderson, the founder of Cancer Recovery Foundation International; Marguerite Kelly, columnist for the Washington Post; and Stephen M.R. Covey, author of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” The I Live Inspired Web site allows each community to share their stories of inspiration.

Foster and Deutsch’s plan is to give 75 percent of the money from the Dalai Lama’s category to a charity of his choice. In starting out in Hope, Ind., they wanted to show how hopeful they were to get the meeting. To get the word out, they started a blog to document their journey.

“We have no money to speak of, but we do have a service that might change the world,” Deutsch said. “We knew it would be tough for two guys nobody’s heard of to meet with the Fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet, so we just decided to walk. Seven days, seven nights and maybe he’ll give us seven minutes for a meeting.”

In the end, word of the trip spread fast and Foster and Deutsch did get a meeting with the Dalai Lama, who gave them each a traditional white Buddhist scarf, which he had blessed. “Our hope was that the walk would inspire people and the outpouring of support was incredible,” Deutsch said. “Everyday we got e-mails and messages from people telling us that they felt inspired just reading about our trip on the blog and in the press.

“Additionally, it was a great opportunity to get the word out and get people interested in our service. Since we have come back, we have had numerous offers from authors interested in being a part of our service and best of all, we have been able to launch the ‘Teachings from the Dalai Lama’ channel. We are eager to pursue other inspirational leaders.”