The New Impact Ecosystem:
What’s Your Role?
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Tangentially related: I would like to recommend to you, audiobooks (if you’re not already into them), FREE from your local library, at that. THOUSANDS. (Hey, your tax dollars).
When I was younger and grew tired of pretending to myself that I was still reading a textbook, I used to think it would be cool if I could just download knowledge into my brain; that maybe one day, we’ll plug a cable in our belly buttons and this would bring the end of having to read the slow way. And of course, as I got older, a USB stick might have replaced that cable in this fantasy in my head.
I’ve always loved learning, but before Peace Corps I didn’t listen to podcasts or books; now, I devour them both voraciously.
And also, I can’t not speed them up. (Have you tried this?)
I’ve learned more in the past 2 years by speeding up audio than the prior 5, easily. Well, differently. Now I’m enjoying and finishing one book just about every 2-3 days and ‘am on track to “read” 120+ books in 2020. Regular books, big books, normal books, non-fiction, biographies, memoirs.
Here’s what I’ve been reading in 2020; love GoodReads.
And I know what you’re thinking, “Goodness! How much time do you have?” Well, I am lucky to have some time yes, and I do work, but a book may be only a little more than an hour a day. Can you find an hour in your current day? Could you replace some Netflix time? Would you?
More than the privilege of making time though, it’s disproportionally due to slowly speeding up the audio.
I started at 1.2x — 1.5x, challenging myself to test the boundaries of my comprehension and focus. And perhaps maybe not surprisingly actually, speeding them up actually improved my focus and attention. So I hung out around 2x for awhile, plateaued at 2.5x for another 6 months or so, and slowly pushed my way up toward a regular 2.8x — 3.6x speed, largely dependent on the pace of the podcast host or narrator. Now, just over two years later, I’m often flirting with 4x speed, without a loss of comprehension, retention, nor enjoyment.
I don’t share this to boast, just to encourage you that if you’re the kind of person who values the efficiency of learning quickly, it’s so very possible. You may very well amaze yourself with how much your brain can process this way. You also might find yourself surprised at how quickly you come to realize how slowly most people often speak.
Imagine enjoying an hour-long podcast in less than only 20 minutes.
I M A G I N E. Lol.
I want to invite you to challenge yourself to slowly speed up your audio.
I can’t recommend it enough. So I’m here, recommending it. In fact, I am highly unlikely to ever read in a traditional way again. (Wonder what that’s gonna do for my editing work…)
I prefer the OverDrive app over Libby for downloading library audiobooks because it’s easier to find the .mp3 files in my phone and play them in the Podcast Addict AntennaPod app on Android, which currently goes up to 5x4x speed, where most others top out at 2x.
It’s not lost on me that speeding up audiobooks today is getting us pretty damn close to something like that USB belly button nonsense I pined for as a college student. When I think about all the talk of Artificial Intelligence and so on, this is it. This is how that happens to us. Through us.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that it actually comes as something we experience like a slowly boiling frog.
‘Til one day it just feels like it’s all as normal as it ever was.
https://www.fastcompany.com/embed/7db5f9c320ac6?rel=1&src=embed&veggiemode=1
At the end of the segment, Blake shares TOMS’ latest commercial (below) and why TOMS recently added the sign-off, “For One, Another” after their now famous creed, “One for One.”
I’ve just got to say, “Well done team.”
This is a brilliant commercial.
Not just for the great song, “Nothing More” by The Alternate Routes. And its lyrics which obviously sync up well with each clip intentionally… But for all the people.
Because TOMS is about people.
WITH EVERY PAIR YOU PURCHASE, TOMS WILL GIVE A PAIR OF NEW SHOES TO A CHILD IN NEED. ONE FOR ONE.
On the surface, that might seem a minor, grammatical change – and in some ways it absolutely is – but how we choose to speak about ourselves, our work, and each other is no minor, inconsequential thing.
As Adam Braun of Pencils of Promise says,
As much as this applies to people, for a company to ignore this is an equally missed opportunity. For a company building an intentional brand – a brand that matters – it is not something to be overlooked.
Our words are incredibly important – even something as simple as a slogan.
Especially a slogan.
It directly expresses the vision in the TOMS brand. One for One.
For one another.
Yes.
So don’t overlook that. For yourself or your company.
(But for now—and as this is the blog of an editor— I am going to have to overlook the glaring comma typo here in writing “For one, another”…)
Once again, I must also note, this is not just about the semantics of branding or marketing.
This is the TOMS vision made manifest in a great commercial, with all those people participating, front and center–those receiving AND those giving–as always; and secondarily is the branding component.
The branding works only because that first part is genuine. And it shows really well here.
More companies are catching on to all this psychology though. So as they do, we consumers will have to hone our discerning eye to spot the trend-following frauds from those genuine.
A warning: It will become more difficult.
I’m happy to see that this thread of collaboration and purpose – the same reason I proposed “with” in place of “for” – continues to run through the intentional fabric of TOMS still.
Messaging on point.
Again, well done Blake and the current TOMS team! Cheers to 10 years.
It was probably no later than 10:30am on this particular Saturday and we were already headed home – likely from an early morning at Home Depot. (Plus, CarTalk starts at 11.) Oh, dad had his projects. Around the house, there was always something to be done. Of course. Even if it didn’t have to be done. Naturally. My dad is an early riser and a hard worker; today still, he often skips breakfast. (Me too, actually. I’m just not hungry until I’ve been awake for 2 hours.) Anyway, at that age, I generally always enjoyed helping him with those projects; still, I did not rise quite so enthusiastically on Saturday mornings. In my younger years, the wafted smell from the kitchen of pancakes with his perfectly crisped edges made it easier, sometimes.
I’d eat 20.
I remember now just where we were on Wantagh Avenue – no more than a 3 minutes drive to the house, but today we were about to stop at the local Cards & Gifts shop on the corner to pick up the newspaper. Dad had cancelled our weekend delivery of Newsday because the paper was never fully wrapped in its plastic when it rained.
And wet news is no news to be read.
He had already called and complained a number of times by this point and had had enough. But mom still wanted the week’s Penny Saver coupons. Now, we’d been tasked with buying the Saturday paper ourselves at the local Cards & Gifts shop on the corner on the way home from mornings at Home Depot.
“You’re about to enter high school this year,” was likely how the conversation started. “Your mother and I think maybe it’s time you consider working a part-time job.”
I actually agreed.
“But,” he went on, “when someone asks how old you are – you’re not 13. You’re almost 14. It sounds better.”
It did sound better. I was more mature already.
How could I have known that just one minute later, as my dad parked in front of the store and waited in the car, I was about to have my first real job interview.
She must have been judging me as her tilted head curiously looked me over for longer than what might have been normal under circumstances of a typical $0.50 cash transaction. (And her squinted eyes, raised eyebrow, and closed mouth with slight chin uplift told me she wasn’t so subtle.)
I passed the scrutiny of her discerning eye.
“How old are you?” were literally the first words out of the cashier’s mouth.
“I’m almost 14,” I simpered, a little proud.
“Would you like a job?”
And that was that.
We’d no longer be buying the Saturday paper at the local Cards & Gifts shop on the corner on the way home from mornings at Home Depot.
I brought it home now. (Fo’ free!)
My first real job was assembling the newspapers at that local Cards & Gifts shop on the corner every Saturday morning at 7:30 and Sundays at 7. For four years, all through high school, I was paid one crisp $20 bill per weekend CASH (off the books, under the table, bada bing bada boom) for the almost 2 hours of work, not including the effort required of a teenager to never once sleep in. (Sometimes I was late. But a few minutes here or there never really mattered much as I saw it; the day’s news had already been printed.) I hated missing sleepovers or leaving a party early in those later high school years … but alas, such is life for the working man.
I’m still not an enthusiastic riser.
The back of my head and my desk of Sapporo cases, already 2/3rds smaller by the time of this photo.
One day, I came into the office to find cases and cases of unopened Sapporo beer 12-pack tallboys, leftover from a recent launch event, piled somewhat haphazardly near the copy machine area … which was right next to me.
Seated from my chair’s vantage point, I noticed that a stack of four looked to be suspiciously just about the same height as my small desk. So after learning that nothing was expected to happen with them, I simply slid the piles across the floor, flush next to mine; and extended it quite colorfully into the executive style corner office desk I now fantasized it to be.
Hey, this was a cool desk. Blake would have a desk like this, I thought.
For that matter though (since we’re on the subject), TOMS founder Blake Mycoskie’s desk was about 20 feet or so from mine and not as replete. TOMS and its literal warehouse of an office building wasn’t yet that large of a business to warrant a yuppity c-suite corner office desk, let alone for an intern. (Plus thankfully, that wasn’t really the TOMS aesthetic.)
Space was tight; the beer fit.
But, I wasn’t alone among my colleagues in the oddity of my workspace upgrade. There were people who sat on giant yoga balls for posture or barefoot with massagers under their heels too. And many worked with music in their ears.
Still, every Friday from then on, my fancy desk got one or two Sapporo case-sizes smaller – my shelving design more creative, as we took a regular case or two home to the Intern House for the weekend.
All 15 of us lived together on the beach.
It was a fine time.
Spring ‘09 Interns and TOMS founder Blake Mycoskie
Water. The Original Drink.
If I was in charge of a water campaign.
(…The fact that water shouldn’t need a marketing campaign aside.)
I hear it all the time. Setting aside that it’s actually a pretty lame first question, when we meet someone new, the answer is usually not even an after-thought… but I notice it quite a bit. (Actually, now I can’t not notice it.)
“Nice to meet you. What do you do?” “I work for Company B.”
Catch that?
Branding and marketing have always interested me, but even having changed majors six times or so in college, those two did not make my short list.
Well lo and behold, in the Spring ’09 I was two years out of college and a marketing intern at the headquarters of TOMS Shoes in Santa Monica, CA. Now, the One for One company known solely as TOMS (pun if you want to).
At the time (and ever since) I had been reading quite a bit of books and blogs on where business and capitalism in general, were thought to be headed. (Seth Godin among them, of course.)
With giving at its core, TOMS Shoes is the epitome of a for-profit company with a social mission. TOMS is proving that it is possible to do good and still do well at the same time. Blake Mycoskie started TOMS Shoes in 2006, and you could easily propose that TOMS – and Blake – were the on the forefront of conscious consumerism. “Capitalism 2.0” as I’ve heard it called.
At the time, our mission statement read:
Pretty awesome sounding company if you ask me. Or any of the million other people who have since caught ear and bought a pair or two – giving an equal number of new shoes to children in need.
(Knowing correctly, that your customers can be your greatest storytellers and marketers, TOMS began by budgeting exactly $0 for advertising.)
In June 2009 the mission statement at TOMS Shoes changed.
If you look at TOMS.com now or inside the sole of any pair, you will see a slightly different sentence.
It reads,
“New” shoes. People would wonder and often ask, “Will the children get the same shoes I buy? Or even new ones?” Fair question. Yes, good clarification.
Adding “One for One.” Umpfh. Yes too, awesome punch!
Words are important; what we say – how we speak – the words we choose to use say a lot. Framing is key.
George Lakoff confirmed this for me.
When people I’d just met would ask me, “What do you do?”,
I never once said, “I work for TOMS Shoes.”
Where capitalism and business are going – or where the smart ones paying attention at least, are going – is toward genuine connections, toward making a difference, and doing something that matters.
It’s important to recognize the mindset typical of your target demographic. If you’re in the business of changing the world, then I would argue that “your people” probably don’t want you doing something for them or to them.
The people you’re looking for work together, collectively. We look to make personal connections as we collaborate creatively, changing the world in small and big ways.
Yes, we want to both make a difference and build relationships along the way too. And we do.
I want to work with you.
Moreover (and admittedly, perhaps a bit tangentially), if we (as in the societal “we”) are going to make it a norm… then in the very least, I want to feel that solid nook between your thumb and forefinger when I shake your hand. I want you to feel mine too and I want you to look me in the eyes as well… if only for that brief moment; that’s one (small) connection. No sad floppy fish handshakes here.
(“Alright, psych degree!”)
Similarly, when we wear our “consumer hats”, we want to feel connected to the businesses and companies that we purchase from. It’s our handshake.
Of course, we hope that connection is genuine. Customers are smart – so in businesses that are too, it had better be. We customers no longer want to merely feel like consuming, heartless cogs and naturally, how we spend our dollar should reflect that.
And at TOMS, it is genuine.
Giving Partners on the ground in countries where shoes are made and given help ensure that the children, our communities abroad – first and foremost – are done right by our purchases.
TOMS gets it. And that is where smart businesses are going – where capitalism is going. Where it needs to go.
“I work with TOMS Shoes,” I would say.
On this philosophy alone, there is no better word to be the first word of the mission statement of a company like TOMS than the word “With.”
So literally on the very last day of our internship, with an encouraging alley-oop from my good buddy and fellow intern (now staff), Larry Cohen, I pitched this to Blake in our last intern meeting with him.
This is how I changed the mission statement at TOMS.
notice the missn stmt change? "WITH every pair" replaces "FOR every pair," a suggestn from an intrn: "with" is collective + collaborative.
— TOMS (@TOMS) June 10, 2009
I didn’t do it alone.
I didn’t add the word “new” nor suggest the phrase “One for One.”
It’s not a huge change either; it’s literally one word. That first word. The essence is still very much the same.
But I did poke the box; Seth Godin would be proud. And that’s pretty cool.
Two last points. The first, on office culture.
Blake wanted to hear this.
As Boss Man, he worked to create TOMS as a space to allow for this … to encourage it.
I hope you’ll join me in realizing too, this is all just semantics. My entire point here is the real difference.
And the real difference is how you choose to answer that pretty lame first question for yourself, every day:
“I work with…” or “I work for…”
“Nice to meet you. What do you do?”
Thanks for your help finding a matching font, Vanessa.
