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What Matters Now

Merry Christmas! We hope everyone had a wonderful day with family and loved ones. As we get ready for a New Year, we wanted to share a message from Bill Taylor and Seth Godin that will give us, 70 words of unconventional wisdom for 2010.

What better way for business thinkers to celebrate the holiday season than with the gift of great ideas? As the year 2009 — as difficult, divisive, worrisome, and hopeful a year since, well, 2008 — draws to a close, my friend Seth Godin, the innovator, writer, and blogger extraordinaire, has persuaded 70 other innovators, writers, and bloggers to participate in a project he calls What Matters Now.

The idea is simple: Each of us suggests one word — literally one word — that all of us should think about in 2010, and then takes one page to explain why and how that word matters.

The result is an intriguing, inspiring, and at times downright moving collection of unconventional wisdom that is available free to everyone as of this morning. I urge you to download the PDF, process its diverse ideas, messages, and calls to action, and then share it with as many friends, associates, and colleagues as possible. Think of it as an intellectual yule log meant to brighten your spirits and light a fire for the future.

What struck me about the ideas in What Matters Now is that they arrange themselves into a few distinct (but related) categories. (The collection itself does not impose these categories, this is my interpretation.) A bunch of the words involve the stuff of human emotion and motivation — what makes us tick. Seth begins the PDF with a riff on generosity. "When the economy tanks it's natural to think of yourself first," he writes. "You have a family to feed and a mortgage to pay. Getting more appears to be the order of business. It turns out that the connected economy doesn't respect this natural instinct. Instead, we're rewarded for being generous. Generous with our time and money, but most important generous with our art."

Hugh MacLeod, a blogger and cartoonist with a truly distinctive voice, offers a take on meaning: "The best way to get approval is not to need it," he writes. "Don't try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether. Never compare your inside with somebody else's outside. The more talented somebody is, the less they need the props."

Meanwhile, Derek Sivers, an entrepreneur and programmer, offers a nicely dispassionate take on passion. "If you think you haven't found your passion yet, you're probably expecting it to be overwhelming," he writes. "Instead, just notice what excites you and what scares you on a small moment-to-moment level."

A second set of words falls under the category of progress — how good ideas spread, how positive change takes hold. Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell, who write the Church of the Customer blog, urge marketers and innovators to focus on the One-Percenters — the "small percentage of the tribe within the larger tribe who spread the word" about new products, new ideas, and changes of all sorts. "They are the roots of word of mouth," Jackie and Ben argue. "This year, your job is to find them and attract them."

Guy Kawasaki, Apple's legendary evangelist for the Macintosh computer, offers ten great tactics to act on his word, which is, not surprisingly, evangelism. "Provide a safe first step," he argues. "Don't put up any big hurdles in the beginning of the process. The path to adopting a cause needs a slippery slope."

In his riff on how progress gets made, my friend, colleague, and Fast Company cofounder Alan Webber highlights the word unsustainability. "Everyone is pursuing sustainability," he writes. "But if change happens when the cost of the status quo is greater than the risk of change, we really need to focus on raising the costs of the unsustainable systems that represent the unsustainable status quo."

A third (and for our purposes here) final set of words falls under a category I think of as surprise — unexpected twists on familiar themes. John Moore, who writes the Brand Autopsy blog, urges companies to focus on the power of sacrifice — the virtue of losing customers in order to gain the ones that matter. "Costco wins customers by losing customers," he argues. "Its membership model shuns consumers not willing to pay the yearly membership fee. Its broad but shallow merchandise mix turns off consumers wanting more choices. Costco makes deliberate sacrifices because its customers will also make deliberate sacrifices in exchange for lower prices."

Meanwhile, the energetic and ubiquitous Arianna Huffington reminds us of the need to slow down and recognize the virtue of (who would have guessed it!) sleep. "I've had to learn to unplug and recharge," she writes." To trade multi-tasking for uni-tasking and — occasionally — no-tasking. It's left me healthier, happier, and more able to try to make a difference in the world. My eyes have been opened to the value of regularly closing them."

Unfortunately, nothing about this collection of ideas will close your eyes or put you to sleep. But if you put some of these eye-opening ideas to work, they may just help you to sleep more soundly in 2010, which promises to be another year of challenge and change.

Again, you can download the free PDF here. Happy Holidays!

Have a great week unless you choose otherwise.

Drago

PS - We just finished 12 new videos for Prestigious Properties. The videos were designed to educate visitors and make Prestigious Properties website more sticky with higher conversions rates. To see the first three videos Click Here! or to see them live on Prestigious Properties website Click Here!

Testimonial Of The Week - Wow! I am not generally a person who is at a loss for words, but this is very interesting. Something exciting is going to happen. I can feel it. I cannot express to you how excited I am about having met you both. I have worked hard for over 11 years to get to this point and I can feel the wheels beginning to lift off of the ground. Thank you both for everything you are doing and have done to this point.
(Jay Timms, Bringyourlifetolife.com)

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Success Profile

This week's success profile is Jack & Margaret Lee.

Three short years ago the Lee's were totally blindsided when their 19 year old daughter Janice took her own life. They were at a loss at how they, Janice's doctor's or teachers could not have noticed the signs of mental illness which were, in retrospect, very blatant. The Lee's conclusion was that, as a society we are subconciously taught to diminish or ignore these signals because of the fear, and /or embarrassment associated with mental illness. This is the "STIGMA" that immobilizes action.

Well Jack and Margaret decided to take action and created Blue Wave.

Blue Wave's mission is to eliminate the stigma associated with mental illness in youth through a process of education and active involvement of our youth in our schools. We believe that awareness and understanding will absolutely save lives.

Suicide is the second biggest killer of youth in Canada. This must end; and this is Blue Wave's cause.

If you or anyone you know is dealing with depression or mental illness please visit www.ok2bblue.com

Can The Adam Advertising Group help your business, or do you have a success story we should hear about?

Contact Drago Adam at drago@AdamAdGroup.com
or call 604 937 - 8886 or 866 923 - 6477

PS : We wanted to say Thank You for sharing your Monday Mornings with us. The MMM started three years ago with 35 subscribers, today's issue is going out to over 27,804 Weekly Subscribers.

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Quote Of The Week

"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently."

(Warren Buffett)

Word Of The Week

Veracity (vuh-Rass-uh-tee) Devotion to the truth: truthfulness.

eg : English poet Thomas Gray wrote, "Any fool may write a most valuable book by chance, if he will only tell us what he heard and saw with veracity."