A Little Good (Business) News

If there’s one thing I know it’s that everyone can use some good news. How often does your business share good news with your customers? I know I personally chose the charities and non profits that I support based on who actually follows up with donors and shares where their donations are going to and the difference the organization is making in the world. I buy products from stores and sellers who not only are committed to product quality but also make a point in giving back when they can. I know I’m not alone in those choices either, countless customers also state that these things are important to them.

Do you know how often you’ve lost a customer simply because you didn’t bother to keep them in the loop on anything more than what you’re selling (if that!) or that you need more money? It really comes down to a question of once you’ve conquered product/service quality what efforts do you make to remind customers that you’re there? Because people are easily bored and easily distracted, people like to try new things, people do shop around for price so they may not just shop with you if a product is available for less elsewhere that isn’t a big inconvenience for them to buy it there, needs and priorities change, and people are constantly dealing with all manner of challenges, changes, issues, concerns and struggles, so if you don’t make any or sufficient effort to connect with them, they’ll shop wherever is easiest, quickest, cheapest or most interesting to them at the moment.

Whether you keep your supporters and customers informed daily, weekly, bi-weekly or monthly, it’s really easy to come up with a little good news. You can share good news about what’s going on in your business like new milestones you reach. You can share customer stories as they have to do directly with your business or organization or as they have to do with the greater community. You can share employee stories about good things that they’ve seen or things they’re loving in the business right now. If you’re a local business or organization you can share about good news in the community. And the best part is because you’re reminding people that there’s still good in the world and that good things do happen, they begin to associate your business with good news and a bright spot in their day and look forward to hearing from you. Do you include good news in your marketing and business communications?

Kids Sometimes Ask Tough Questions

Kids always ask the tough questions, don’t they?! This weekend you may get a couple of those tough ones, questions that are especially tough to help them understand if you’re not religious (Jewish or Christian) with the events of Passover and Good Friday (both starting or happening on Friday, today) and Easter (Sunday for most of the world). Yes, some of the questions they may ask will have to do with the stories behind the events, which if you’re not familiar with them you can answer with a simple online search. But beyond sharing the basic stories, you may have the opportunity to discuss some deeper topics that help address some of the ‘why’ questions behind these stories and give your kids some application on topics that they hear adults discuss but may have been too young to really start understanding, until now.

Choice: Throughout these two events (Passover and Good Friday/Easter) people had to make decisions. Some of them chose based on their fears, and some chose based on their faith, love and compassion. Just like the people in these stories, we’re given tons of choices to make each day. Sometimes we choose to take action or disregard the information, and face whatever the results or consequences might be. Sometimes we’re too blind to see the right choice or too stubborn to make the right choice. But when we really care about something or someone we’ll make the best choice we possibly can because the result matters to us.

New Life: I know what comes to mind when we talk about ‘new life’ during this time of year are all the baby animals, and that’s certainly a healthy way to talk about new life. But sometimes a new life means starting over or starting fresh as we see in the Passover story, which is something that can help kids who are moving to a new town or state, or even just a new school. Sometimes new life means having an experience that completely changes your perspective or brings you to a level of knowledge and understanding that means you’ll never look at life again in the way that you used to as we see in the story of Good Friday/Easter, and kids experience as they learn the truth about Santa and others like him or interact with someone who is homeless. As we see in nature, new life definitely can be a good thing, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t come with growing pains.

Hope: Our third topic could have been death because it’s relevant to both events, but as important as it is to come to terms with the concept of death, I think it’s more important to teach your kids about hope. Why is hope so important? Because when you make the tough choices and when you have to live through the growing pains of new life, one of the best supports and encouragements can be the hope you have about your destination and what you’re creating. We don’t work on addressing race conflicts or climate change because it’s as easy to “fix” as it is to make a cup of coffee or lemonade, we do it because we have hope that if we take action now someday the world will be less in crisis mode and instead in the direction of healing and community. So many generations before us have believed in a better world, is that what we’re passing on to the next generation?

Whether you have a time of religious celebration this weekend, gather with family ‘just because’, or it’s just a normal weekend for you, I encourage you to be a little more open and patient with your kids when they ask some of those tough questions, because every question is an opportunity for connection and communication if we’re willing to make it such.

Hope at Winter Solstice

Winter officially arrived yesterday. I find it interesting that the official arrival of the season is typically far into the actual season. For example, we’ve had winter temperatures off and on since Halloween, we had snow last week and yet winter only arrived today, not to mention that other parts of the US had snow long before this and usually we do before December too. Spring and Autumn are transition points, while Summer and Winter are true points of change because those are the points in the year that we begin to get more or less sunlight. As much as I dislike winter, the winter solstice means that while yesterday had the least amount of light all year, today and all the days leading up to summer will have increasingly more.

This week much of the thought is about hope. Kids have hope that Santa will come down the chimneys (or whatever other magical ways he gets in), we have hope because we celebrate the birth of Jesus, and we have hope that soon we’ll have more sunlight because we’ve celebrated the winter solstice. Hope is defined as “to look forward to with desire and reasonable confidence. To believe, desire, or trust.” Hope is interesting because it buoys you in the short term based on things that may not come to frutition for months or even years yet. Often that’s where our success and victory journeys start: with a dream or idea that we think is attainable and think we should work towards, believing that we can bring it to life.

This year has had many bumps in the road for all of us, we haven’t all had the typical journey that we usually take when workign towards victories or success. But I don’t think the challenges of this year should discourage us or destroy our hope in those victories or success plans. I think we should still believe in them, it just may take a little longer, and a little more work, and maybe the end result will be a little different than what we were expecting. But that’s OK because we can’t ever fully predict where we will end up on our victory or success journeys, what matters most is that you start with a goal in mind, one that you think you can bring to life.

The end of a year and the change of the seasons are both good times for us to reevaluate where we’re at in life and what victory and success journeys we’re on. Maybe all that needs to happen is for us to bring new life to the hope that got us started on the journey in the first place. What hopes and dreams do you have as we finish this year and start a new one?

A Little Holiday Magic

Impossible is a word that’s often floated around during the Christmas holidays: it’s impossible for Jesus to be born through a virgin, it’s impossible for Santa to visit everyone’s houses in one night, it’s impossible for Santa to get into houses that don’t have a chimney, it’s impossible for reindeer to fly, it’s impossible to get certain wished-for gifts. And yet there’s something about the holiday season that makes us believe, even just a little bit, that maybe some, or all of it is possible. Each year it seems like we need some of that holiday magic, and this year is no different.

One of the phrases we’ve used often this year is “I can do this.” We’ve said it to encourage ourselves and motivate ourselves to keep going when the going seems impossible. We haven’t succeeded every time or with everything this year (many of us call it a failure of a year), but I think it has helped us do a better job on the steps we could take, and helped us give our best effort even when we knew it wouldn’t be enough. Going back to the holidays, I’m sure it’s a phrase that was used by all of the people in the Biblical Christmas story when they were given their roles in the story, the validity of which would be questioned throughout history. As much as they trusted God to make everything work out, not only was it surreal to be part of His plan, but being skeptical humans we naturally have some doubts and fears about things that may come to pass, things that we’d really like to work but we’re realistic in knowing that they don’t always.

Maybe Santa isn’t real but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t use a little of his Christmas magic, especially this year, to turn what’s been impossible and give us some hope for good things in the future. I don’t want to go into 2021 with fears of it being a worse year than this was, and I certainly don’t want to encourage the next generation to think that way either. So I’ve unpacked as much Christmas magic as I could, spread as much cheer as I could and have done my best to encourage people to keep moving forward with life, hopes, dreams and plans. Maybe we’re not dreaming big dreams anymore, maybe our dreams are much smaller and shorter term. But what that really means is we’ve got lots of room for some really big magic to come along and surprise us.

The Dark Side of the Christmas Stories

It has always fascinated me that the Christmas stories include so much struggle and not-good stuff in them. Who really wants to talk about it being too dark to see to deliver gifts or that it’s entirely possible coal will be what’s delivered to your stocking? Shouldn’t it be a much better and easier journey for the Holy Son of God Jesus to enter the world rather than having Joseph not want to be part of the journey, having to journey far from home at the time of birth and giving birth in a less-than-ideal location? None of that brings light to my eyes, or the eyes of any kid. Instead, it makes people scared that Christmas might not happen.

I’m all about a good story, and I understand that most hero stories have some challenge in them as well as an awesome ending, which is true for the large percentage of Christmas stories (except for those who actually receive coal of course). So yes, it’s absolutely normal and how stories usually go, but with something this important, it just sometimes feels like it shouldn’t have had to go that way. And that’s where we arrived countless times with this year: do we really have to go through all of this challenge and what is the chance on getting a miracle and really awesome ending? I’m sure many of us would accept a lackluster or abrupt ending to this story as long as it was a definite ending at this point.

Yet, the Christmas stories are those that keep giving. The more I reflected on how frustrating it was that neither story is all magic, the more I appreciated how much easier it made it to believe in and relate to them, especially in this year, not to mention that we’ve been able to relate every year since they were first shared/happened. If even the most magical happenings and stories include some serious challenges and struggles, it’s not so hard to believe that our normal lives would include them as well. That doesn’t mean I necessarily want or invite in more challenges, I’d definitely take a Christmas miracle, especially this year.

Again, none of this makes up for or helps change the challenges and dissatisfaction we have with how this holiday season will go for many of us, but I hope it gives us and our kids the courage to keep going. And maybe we can find a little of Santa’s creative spirit that led him to Rudolph to apply to our lives and situation this year.

Ready for a Fresh Start

We’ve finished 5 months of 2020, although they felt more like at least a year in and of themselves. Of course with finishing another month means we’ve entered into a new one. I love fresh starts and new months because we sometimes do get stuck in ruts and need a little help, psychological or physical or otherwise, to get out and moving again. It’s particularly interesting because we’re really beginning to emerge from months of being stuck at home to fight or avoid the virus, and now restrictions are being lifted and slowly we’re able to get back to a level of business as usual over the next few months.

Fresh starts don’t mean that the past can be erased or forgotten. On my other blog today I referenced the phrase “you can forgive someone but not forget their actions.” The past couple of months have been painful on many levels, pain that most of us alive today haven’t experienced before. With the events of George’s mistreatment and death, plus the unacceptable deaths of other African Americans over the past few weeks, months and years related to racism or inaccurate racial profiling, the pain has reached a new point as we enter this new month. We clearly haven’t won the war on racism yet, and regardless of how some people are acting today, we haven’t beaten the virus yet either (just take a look at the news and the many thousand new cases that have appeared in our country and other countries around the world today alone).

So where do we go from here with our brand shiny new month? I think we start by remembering that we don’t have to do life alone. That means that we support each other with our ears and hearts as we listen, with our bank accounts as we buy the products and services others sell, and physically supporting each other in whatever ways and whenever it’s safe to do so. There’s no rule that says we have to go big or go home with life right now, it’s going to be the small but steady steps we take in truly learning to work together as a community, hearing the issues we each have, truly caring about the issues we each have, and being willing to work a little harder so we all have win-win-win experiences whenever possible.

Life wasn’t perfect 4 months ago, and it won’t be perfect 4 months from now. But we can choose with each new day to make that day as good as or better than the day before. Choose to do one kind act for someone, choose to do one thing that will help the economy start moving again, choose to do one thing that will make your future better each and every day. We may have our own individual dreams and goals in life, but no one should ever think or feel that they’re alone, because they’re not.  We’re all part of this world together.

The Choice of Hope

Tomorrow is Easter, primarily celebrated in the religious world, but also a time for families with kids to play with eggs, tell stories about the Easter bunny and eat candy. What I want to talk about today is central to both sides of the Easter story, and that’s the topic of hope. Just like Valentine’s Day is important because it gets us talking about love and the importance of it in our lives, Easter is a time for us to talk about new life and hope.

As leaders, as people the next generation looks to, it’s important to set a good example for them, and one of the most important aspects is in the area of hope. There will always be challenges to face in life, however we do have a choice how we deal with them. Even if we don’t have the skills needed or knowledge needed to conquer the situation, having hope can help us get through it with courage and keep moving forward. It’s almost as important to teach the next generation about things like hope and courage, as it is to teach them about math and reading.

Hope isn’t only about having a positive outlook on the future even if the future doesn’t look so positive, it’s about taking actions to breathe new life into your situations, into your life, into your relationships, bringing that positive outlook closer to reality. It’s about choosing to be stronger than your circumstances, not letting fear overly influence your decision making, helping others with a kind word or deed, choosing life over suffering, moving forward even when it feels like you’re moving backwards, and looking for the good in each person and day.

Tomorrow is a chance to start fresh with yourself, your family, or your life if you need to. We can choose hope, we can choose to teach hope, but hope can’t be forced on us. Will you choose hope?

Living Today

The new year has arrived and we’re almost a week in! I love that we have life divided into days, months, years and lifetimes. It helps us to process better and plan both short-term and long-term goals which give us small and large victories throughout our lives.  Each one is filled with a different set of opportunities for us to live and love and build relationships and be successful.

I don’t always go with a year theme, but lots of people do. I’ve seen lots of different words this year including spaciousness, time, intention, substance, experience, purpose, promise, change and clarity. This year I’ll be doing something different and not doing monthly themes for every month as I’ve done in the past, but instead going with a yearly theme. This year’s theme is going to be ‘today.’

Why ‘today’? Not because of how fast-paced our world is, but rather because I want us to take a step back and live in today, accomplish things today, appreciate today, learn from today and enjoy today. Yes, we’ll still talk about goals, planning, the future, and the bigger picture, but I want to focus on appreciating, enjoying and acting on each day.

As we’re constantly reminded of in the news each day is a gift. What you do in that day may make or break your future. It can overcome what you’ve done in the past. You can end the day satisfied with what you got done that day or feeling like it was all a waste. It may be one of your last days, will you look back and know you lived it well?

What will you do with today?

The Drive of Success

This month one of the big stories in the US has been about the lottery. Two jackpots were extremely large numbers, in the hundreds of millions and above, and it took a good couple of draws before anyone won the big pots. Friends and I have talked about how unbelievable it was that no one won until someone did, and that the pots could get as large as they did. Someone said that maybe it got that large because it is as random a draw as they say it is.

So each time that no one won people bought another ticket, and with the pots as large as they were people who don’t usually play were buying tickets too. I know that the likelihood of winning is extremely low (almost impossible), but the fact is someone has to win at some point in time, and people eventually did. Although it’s not the best thing to do with your money I thought there were some interesting lessons that could be learned and applied to our success from the lottery craze these past few weeks.

These two most recent pots both showed the importance and value of perseverance. Lottery in general means you buy a ticket for the upcoming draw and that ticket is only good for that specific draw, not all future ones or any in the past. Also true is the fact that if you don’t buy a ticket you can’t win. If you want to win sometimes the only way to do so is to try, and keep trying.

The other thing these large pots speak to is hope.  People don’t work for success unless they’ve got something they’re looking forward to as a result of that success.  Maybe it’s more time with family, a better life, or making a difference, but people don’t apply themselves to something that they don’t have even a sliver of a belief that it could come true.

You may not have won the lottery this past month, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t have success in your life.  Success is something that almost anyone can achieve, especially those who believe in themselves, put their minds to it, and make the effort.  What is driving your success?

Thankful to be Alive

Second chances are a powerful thing. This week we learned that the boys and their soccer coach who went missing while visiting a cave in Thailand were still alive. They were in the cave for 9 days before they were found, and in the days since then people from around the world have been providing the expertise they have in caves and engineering to try to help and get the kids out before they run out of oxygen or the cave floods. Of course many of us are reminded of the Chilean miners who were trapped in a cave for 69 days in 2010. It took a serious effort to get them all out, and while the situation is different, it’s no less overwhelming or scary for the family members of the children and the soccer coach.

I believe that blame does have a place, but not here and now. It can come after we know how the story ends, hopefully with tales of rescue. This week for the kids and parents has been an opportunity to reconnect and share messages that may never have gotten out if they weren’t found. It’s an opportunity for them to talk again and see each other again.

Every day we deal with tragedies, and the loss of people who are killed accidentally or intentionally. There are very few cases of people who have absolutely no one who will miss them, there’s almost always someone left behind who will have to deal with the loss. In so many of those cases there wasn’t the opportunity for last messages, for apologies, for anything except to deal with the loss. But these families have had the chance this week to reconnect, even if it’s with a lot of earth between them.

We’re not guaranteed anything but today. You can’t predict or control what others do, you only have control over yourself. Don’t make light of second chances. Live and love today not because it might be your last day, but because you’re alive today.