Build a great company on a powerful foundation!
GRETCHEN HOLLAND HAS A DREAM. And it’s not really about recovering a favorite childhood treat from growing up in Maryland eating snowballs.
It’s really about helping kids with disabilities to have real work over the summer, to do great work and serve customers.
And if you can achieve that while delivering something refreshing on a hot day, how fantastic!
Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus have been on a journey they call “Minimalism.” It’s about designing a life which is not based on consumerism, but on what’s really necessary in life.
I had the chance this week to view the great documentary they’ve produced. It’s quite thought-provoking.
It got me thinking about the fact that we’ve built up business approaches which are also based on using way more resources than necessary. The question for me is: Is there such a thing as a minimalist business?
YOUR BRAND ISN’T WHAT YOU SAY IT IS.
It’s defined by what others think about you.
Isn’t that frustrating? Here you’re spending all this effort and money to create a strong brand image. Does it matter at all?
Yes, but not the way you’d like it to.
Your work at developing your identity and reputation is about how you want your organization to behave. You see, every touchpoint makes up what the market thinks about you. Read the rest of this entry »
THE US SPACE PROGRAM was actually conceived in 1960 under Eisenhower, but John F Kennedy really launched it in a speech on May 25, 1961:
“… I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.”
Having grown up during this time, the Space Race became a powerful foundation for how I viewed the world.
WE WOULD LIKE TO THINK that we have a very generous culture. And we pretty much do, in many respects.
But we struggle with receiving gifts, especially at the personal level.
We have lots of ways to deflect compliments and praise:
THE WORD “STEWARDSHIP” CROPPED UP in several conversations for me recently, so it seems that God’s asking me to pay attention to the idea.
The word originally came from “servant of the house,” but over time expanded to the role of chief servant. Well, these days few of us have servants, much less more than one, so why is the concept important?
Because it’s about taking care. Of the house, of possessions, of the gifts you’ve been given in your life.
This is something each of us needs to do.
SOMETIMES COMPANIES CAN STRUGGLE with connecting up with the right kind of volunteering opportunities.
It’s not a matter of finding people in need – there are an overwhelming number of worthy organizations out there who need our help and support.
I was excited to find out that our very own City of Fort Collins has a Volunteer Services Program. So I sat down with Charlotte Boney this week to find out more.
Photo by Anthony Easton, flickr
FOLLOW YOUR PASSION.
We’ve been telling our kids this for decades now, and there’s some powerful truth behind it.
But it’s a limited view of the world.
If we have everyone just seeking personal fulfillment, there’s no guarantee that we’ll actually have a stable and functioning society. Yet we hold up this great American ideal that we’re all independent, self-sufficient, and self-fulfilling.
MUSICIANS STRUGGLE FOR VISIBILITY. It’s a common issue, even though we have more access to media than in the history of mankind.
But that’s the problem. There’s SO much talent, and SO many media channels, and everyone is SO over-stimulated with information.
We still have limited attention to give to the things in our lives.
RYAN WALLACE OPENED A GREAT PUB here in Fort Collins three years ago. William Oliver’s Publick House has great food, wonderful drinks … It’s a place that you enjoy taking friends.
But there’s a lot more to the story.
I found out that they instituted a no-tipping policy last September, so I was eager to find out why he made the decision and what the results have been. After all, very few restaurants have the courage to make this magnitude of change.
The Values-Based Business 