I guess very few experiences are genuinely life changing.
Sometimes we go through an event and it changes our attitude to something, or we enjoy (or hate) something so much we decide to do more (or less) of it in the future...
But rarely does something affect us so profoundly that everything changes.
I actually had one of those experiences in April at the ActionCOACH Business Excellence Forum conference.
Generally speaking the conference was great with lots of inspirational and motivational speakers with brilliant business ideas. I came back with a notebook full of them and some of them I've even acted upon.
But there was one speaker, called Paul Dunn, who talked about things guys at these conferences tend to talk about. Things like making lots of small changes instead of trying to make whacking great big ones and so on...
But then he started talking about a... I hardly know how to describe it... a movement he's involved with called Buy1Give1. Sometimes shortened to B - 1 - G -1. Not Bigi as someone once said!.
Buy1Give1 struck a chord with all three of us directors and I think it made an impact for different reasons.
For me giving to charity is a complicated thing (in my mind). After all, who do you give to, how much and how do you know it gets to the right place? I occasionally will text in a donation in response to a TV advert but I'm put off doing this by the telephone calls that inevitably follow and I usually give something at Children In Need time.
For me, though, B1G1 gives us as a business a fantastic opportunity to make impacts which we control. We control how much we spend and it's amazing how a few dollars can make huge impacts on peoples' lives when given in the right way.
For Renee, I think it was to do with the fact that B1G1 gives us a reason to create impacts and as we create more impacts we build stories that we can share... (and please note the language - it's not about giving to charity, it's about impacting someone's life).
For Rowena it was more about the opportunity to include the team, to provide them with budgets and opportunities to make impacts by contributing to one of many, many projects there are available.
B1G1 makes it very easy for me to have an impact on someone's life who hasn't been as fortunate as I have. It also gives me a reason and a way of doing it regularly, quietly and in a small way without the need or requirement for a grand gesture.
And I like that.
It's not for everyone but if you'd like to see how it works visit www.b1g1.com
Thank you.
