My First Movember

This year I have decided to take part in Movember with my wonderful colleagues at Apis Design. The goal is to raise awareness and funds for men’s health issues, namely prostate cancer initiatives through the Movember Foundation and Prostate Cancer Canada.

Help Me Out

I will post my progress over the course of the month here on my blog and at my Mo Space. You can help by checking out my Mo Space and tweeting about it, liking it on Facebook, rating my page, and/or donating to the cause.

You can also follow the Apis Design team progress at the Apis blog (here’s our announcement post).

What Movember is, from the Movember FAQs page:

Movember is the month formerly known as November, where men and women across the globe join together raise awareness and funds for men’s health issues. Men grow a Mo (moustache) for 30 days to become walking, talking billboards, for our men’s health causes – specifically prostate cancer.

Thanks for your support!

Let the Mo Grow!

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Good and Evil – The TWKM Logo

I believe that life can be better. I believe that we also all have the capacity to make life better — for ourselves and for others — in simple ways. We don’t necessarily need to fly to Africa to build a well (although that is great!), we can also make life better in consistent, small, simple gestures and actions:

• Helping someone understand something better.
• Brushing the snow off of your partner’s/parent’s/roomate’s car in the morning.
• Making your boss look good.
• Helping with your co-worker’s work load.
• Picking up a piece of garbage that you did not throw there.
• Helping others going through challenging times.
• Sending a gift or letter to a sick friend.
• etc., etc.

These are not gigantic life-changing actions, rather they are small, simple gestures that show that you care about another, that show you care enough to try to make their lives just the tiniest bit easier or more enjoyable.

The TWKM logo reflects my belief that life can be better, and that we can make life better. I discovered the basis of the logo in the back of my mother’s well-worn Bible. There was a page that showed Biblical symbols, some referring to the Trinity, some referring to symbols that early Christians used to secretly identify each other when they were being hunted by the Romans.

Of the multiple pages of symbols, the one that really seemed to resonate with me was a simple circle that had a line drawn vertically through it. The left side was colored black, and the right left unfilled. It symbolized Good and Evil.

I loved the simplicity of the symbol, and how much it stated with so little embellishment. But I saw in the symbol a sad stalemate. Good vs. Evil, static, with no change. They both existed there in a state in which neither side prevailed.

While this may be true and both Good and Evil exist in equal measure, I redrew the symbol to be more dynamic, showing that Good can overcome Evil. That there can be more Good than Evil. Basically, that we can make life better.

The TWKM logo is built off of the idea of that symbol, but it says so much more. The curved divider between the two sections shows that Good is forcing the boundary and encroaching on Evil’s territory. It is stressing it and actively working against it. By Good’s small and simple gestures and actions, it is making headway and growing, stealing space from Evil.

I love the simplicity of the TWKM logo, but I love more the complex message it conveys. This simple logo serves as a mini-manifesto that I strive to live and do business by. I work to make this logo a truth in my personal life by helping others in any way I can. With Gadgets by TWKM, I also work to make this logo a truth by not only make lives easier through gadgets and tools designed to simplify or streamline our lives, but also through donating to charities who are working to make life better for the people they support.

Do you have any other examples of simple symbols or logos that simply or discretely send a message? Do you have any other examples of small gestures that can make life better? Share them in the comments.

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People Make Things Happen, Teams of People Make Great Things Happen

This post was partially inspired by a tweet from @RevRunWisdom: “The biggest mistake you can make in this world is trying to do everything yourself #teamwork” and partially from me realizing that although I’m pretty good at most things, I’m not THE EXPERT of most anything.

More and more lately I am coming to realize the value and importance of working within a team and finding the right people to fill that team. I am a quick-learner and capable of doing most anything reasonably well, so I have spent a lot of my life trying to do things myself. I usually do a pretty good job, too, no matter what it is.

Even though I can get a decent result doing it myself, it usually takes me four times as long and is not quite near the quality that a professional or someone much more suited to the task could accomplish. Beyond that, when it is all said and done, I have no one to share my success or failure with, no other ideas to consider and implement, no other skill sets and knowledge to learn and grow from.

I have built websites, iPhone apps, conceptualized businesses, painted, woodworked, fixed my own car, etc. and I do a good job because I am proud of the work I do, but the things I have built have been limited by my skill sets, my mindsets, my capacity and patience to learn a new skill (as well as the apparent future value of expending the time to learn that skill),  and my time. A team with the right people in it destroys a lot of those limits.

The point is, you can only do what you can do. You can only learn and grow from others.

Any product should be a well-oiled system (be it a business, electronic device, website etc.) and you need experts working on each component for that to become true. You are probably not an expert of each of those components. Sorry.

Sure, you could probably build it near as good as them. You could probably do it cheaper (although, your time IS worth money). You may not have to split the fruits of your labour with anyone, but you also won’t have anyone to split the crappy bits with, either.

As Hugh MacLeod says, seek out the exceptional minds. Pay them well, inspire them, work with them. A lot more can be built a lot more quickly with a team of people, than you can do yourself.

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Mission Statement — The Foundation of Your Business

After learning a lot on the subject, I am convinced that business is changing. But it isn’t just that business is changing, society is changing and as a result, everything including business is changing. Or needs to change to survive. Some of the old tried and true ways of operating are no longer so solid.

Those companies that have recognized this already are hugely successful. They are speaking to employees and customers on levels that resonate with them. It all starts at the top, at the genesis of the business and the people involved in the business. I remember reading that the most important thing in any business is it’s Mission Statement, which communicates the core values that the business operates from.

I’ve seen a lot of Mission Statements that really miss the point, and I don’t think that the Mission Statement is the first step, I think it is the product of the first step. Before you craft a Mission Statement you have to think long and hard about what the company you want to form believes in, which will most likely be very strongly tied to what you believe in. Some of the theories I am really taking note of lately come from Simon Sinek and Dan Pink. In a TED talk that Simon Sinek presented, he said that people don’t work with you or buy from you because you have a better or cheaper product, or a product that fits their specific goals for that product. They do these things because they believe what you believe.

I think that most people believe in something. Whether it is something spiritual and transcendent or something tied to survival, we all believe in something. Some believe in the pursuit of fortune and fame, others in family, others in philanthropy. No matter what it is you believe, it is important that you are surrounded by others who believe these things as well. It may not be a good match to have a capitalistic business hire philanthropic employees as their goals may be too different, for example.

So before you craft your Mission Statement, think about what it is you believe and what belief you want your company’s actions to be measured against. Don’t stop there, though, because a Mission Statement only COMMUNICATES what your core values are. You still have to ACT ACCORDING TO YOUR CORE VALUES. If your personal core values are the foundation of you as a person, then you Mission Statement is the foundation of your business. Always remember that actions speak far louder than words, and employees and customers can both pick up on a company (or person) who says they stand for one thing, but their actions don’t confirm that they do.

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Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk

I’ve been reading Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk lately and it is so far a really great book. Although I have kept up to date with The progression of social media and the different tools available, at times I’ve found it difficult to understand how it all fit together for different applications.

At my worst I think I pretty much boycotted social media because I feel that it can be a bit of a misnomer. That’s a discussion for a later time, but the point is that this book really solidified a full social media strategy for myself and my realtor mother who I will be helping develop a social media strategy.

I would definitely recommend checking out Gary’s book. It discusses the importance of building a personal brand, as well as a lot of tips and tools to get started. I haven’t read all of it yet, but from what I’m seeing so far, it is a good book for beginners and the more experienced alike. It would definitely help you build a social media strategy, and give you some ideas to get started.

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