 |
 |
|
Posts from the 'A-Has in the Ether' Category
January 23rd, 2007 by Lani Voivod
There are companies with grand missions. And there are many companies working on a lot of the same issues.
But what if there was one company dedicated to creating at least one new company every single year since 1996 to adopt grand missions and conquer the world’s BIGGEST issues?
There is. It’s Idealab.
Fueled by their “Think Ahead” mantra, Idealab began “with the dream of creating ground-breaking companies whose products and services would change the way people think, live, and work.” A quick scan of the dozens of legacy and currently operating companies on their homepage demonstrates they’ve done a fine job with that dream.
Lucky for humanity, one of their most pressing dreams these days is to “build affordable renewable energy systems” - such as harnessing the power of solar energy - once and for all. The company they’ve assigned to this task since 2001 is Energy Innovations. And according to Andrew Beebe, former dot com exec and president, the idea behind Energy Innovations was spawned by one all-mighty “A-Ha”:
For me, when I sold Bigstep, my first company, I wanted to find something big that would have impact on planet. I did full market scan for something huge and immediately impactful. The real “a-ha” moment for me on solar came when I was reading a Moore’s Law. If you want to make solar cost effective, one of the ideal ways is to concentrate sunlight. People have dreamed about that for a long time, but microprocessors were too expensive. Now that Moore’s Law has been on a march for 40 years, a full fledged microprocessor that can track the sun costs only twenty cents. That is down from $2000 just two decades ago. This already has effected personal electronics as we see in computers and cell phones but until recently had not been brought to energy.
If just one “A-Ha” - a bold insight followed by determined, joy-filled action - is powerful enough to potentially solve the world’s energy crisis, don’t you think it’s worth paying closer attention to YOUR next epiphany?
Yeah. We do, too.
And if you need help doing something with it, we’re here for you.
Thanks to Jonathan Greenblatt and www.WorldChanging.com for a terrific, eye-opening interview. BTW, their “Manifesto” ain’t so shabby, either:
WorldChanging.com works from a simple premise: that the tools, models and ideas for building a better future lie all around us. That plenty of people are working on tools for change, but the fields in which they work remain unconnected. That the motive, means and opportunity for profound positive change are already present. That another world is not just possible, it’s here. We only need to put the pieces together.
There are incredible people doing incredible things out in the world these days. By all means, join the party!
(Good luck Andrew, Idealab, and Energy Innovations. We’re rooting for you!!!)
Want to increase the number of “A-Has” you have in YOUR life and business? Sign up for our ezine, “The Inciter,” at EpiphaniesInc.com! Posted in A-Has in the Ether | 3 Comments »
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007 at 12:38 pm and is filed under A-Has in the Ether.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
January 20th, 2007 by Lani Voivod
The gorgeous and super-savvy  Erin Blaskie! For her ingenious use of three of the hottest topics of the New Year to prove a useful point. The winning blog post headline is…
“What Do American Idol, Oprah and iPhone Have in Common?”
And as a bonus - for us, anyway - this headline was inspired by a giant “A-Ha!” (And I’m willing to bet it works out to Erin’s advantage.)
To find out the one-word answer of what these three unlikely amigos have in common, you’ll have to go to Erin’s blog yourself. I’m not going to spill the beans. But I will say the tip she offers in the post is well worth the click.
For FREE articles, tips, and strategies designed to catapult your content and electrify your business, sign up for our ezine, “The Inciter,” at EpiphaniesInc.com!
Posted in A-Has in the Ether, Insight + Action | 2 Comments »
This entry was posted
on Saturday, January 20th, 2007 at 10:20 pm and is filed under A-Has in the Ether, Insight + Action.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
January 16th, 2007 by Allen Voivod
Imagine 11 solo professionals and small business owners in a hotel conference room, all with the fierce determination to improve what they offer to their clients and prospects.
A mentor revealing the secrets to killer presentations even as he weaves one or three of his own.
Improv exercises that train you to link any image - and I mean ANY image - to your main marketing message.
That, in a nutshell, was day 2 of Adam Urbanski’s Platinum VIP Mastermind Retreat in sunny Garden Grove, CA. And if you want an even smaller nutshell, try this one: A 3 minute, 44 second audio recap of the biggest insights from the eventful second day.
(And, no doubt, partially fueled by the wine I had at dinner that night. Thanks for being the founder of the feast again, Adam!)
Posted in A-Has in the Ether, Dances With Gurus, Lessons Learned, Masterminding | No Comments »
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, January 16th, 2007 at 5:20 pm and is filed under A-Has in the Ether, Dances With Gurus, Lessons Learned, Masterminding.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
January 16th, 2007 by Allen Voivod
Two days locked in a room with a marketing mentor (that’s Adam Urbanski) and a select group of savvy business owners. Free-form firestorms of ideas, strategy, and executable plans. Coffee, cookies, and concentrated advice.
Lani had to stay home with our beautiful, increasingly energetic son for this one, so Allen (that’s me) filed this audio dispatch (2 minutes, 19 seconds) from deep inside Adam’s Platinum VIP Mastermind Retreat, revealing the big insights from Day One:
Posted in A-Has in the Ether, Dances With Gurus, Lessons Learned, Masterminding | No Comments »
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, January 16th, 2007 at 4:18 pm and is filed under A-Has in the Ether, Dances With Gurus, Lessons Learned, Masterminding.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
January 7th, 2007 by Lani Voivod
In 2007, one of the things I want to get better at is logging the “A-Has” I find out in the *real* world (whatever THAT is!). Cuz I DO come across them, often and always. I just don’t always have my handy-dandy blogging machine close by. (Cue melancholy violin solo.)
Anywho…
There’s this AMAZING business woman, Stacy Brice, and her natural penchant for “A-Ha-ing Herself” is downright humbling. Stacy is the brains, brawn, and dare I say, MOXIE, behind the incomparable AssistU - birthingplace of the finest Virtual Assistants on Earth.
She’s also methodically laying claim to one of the best and most underused words in the English language: Moxie. Ohhhh, but it’s a beautiful word! The definition on Dictionary.com hardly does it justice…
| 2. |
courage and aggressiveness; nerve. |
 It’s bigger. It’s bolder. And Stacy knows this. Here’s HER definition:
Moxie. It’s an attitude; a way of being in the world that creates immense freedom. It’s where savvy, committed, smart and highly skilled meet spunky, shameless, gutsy, and brazen.
She’s got a blog called Virtual Moxie, and she’s offers Moxie Coaching to lucky female professionals who earn the privilege of her time and experience. (She’s also an active contributor to several others (including Virtualosophy and The Virtual Wire.)
Through her coaching, Stacy pursues her one-woman mission to make sure other smart, success-minded women get over the crippling Ms. Nice Gal thing and take pride in becoming “too big for their britches.” Not in an “I ate too much turkey on Thanksgiving” kind of way, but in work, life, and vision. I’ve been having some issues with claiming my mojo lately, so I really appreciate that kind of, well, moxie. 
I call all this to your attention simply to demonstrate how powerful an “A-Ha!” - bold insight PLUS joy-filled action - can be. Stacy earns “Epiphanies, Inc. Posterchild” status with a simple sentence she shares on her www.MoxieCoach.com site:
Moxie Coaching was born, as so many of my adventures are, with a sudden spark followed by a flood (and I mean a flood) of creativity.
That’s it, people. That’s the whole game, the entire recipe, right there is a divine little sentence.
Sudden sparks may come and go, but the ones that get that wild OOMPH! of action being them? Oh, yeah. That’s the sweet spot, right there.
Good things are born.
Destinies are met.
The world becomes a better, more vibrant, more moxie-full place.
For FREE articles, tips, and strategies designed to catapult your content and electrify your business, sign up for our ezine, “The Inciter,” at EpiphaniesInc.com!
Posted in A-Has in the Ether, Call in the Coach, How do you "A-Ha Yourself"?, Insight + Action | No Comments »
This entry was posted
on Sunday, January 7th, 2007 at 1:59 am and is filed under A-Has in the Ether, Call in the Coach, How do you "A-Ha Yourself"?, Insight + Action.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
November 27th, 2006 by Allen Voivod
 I like my pop culture as much as the next guy. And probably a heck of a lot more. So when Giant Magazine debuted a while back, I was pretty thrilled. Though it was a bi-monthly (and, thus, didn’t address the pop culture fix I needed the way Entertainment Weekly did), Giant more than made up for it with a deeper level of detail, the luxury of the every-other-month schedule.
And then they went through some sort of editorial shake-up, which resulted in an entirely new look, feel and focus. I’m sure there was a reason. I’m sure it had to do with money and circulation numbers or some such accounting. I was certain I was going to be annoyed that the magazine I liked had been wiped off the face of the earth.
 Here’s the first issue of the new-look Giant (they’re three issues into the re-design now). I would have rebelled against it entirely if not for the words of new Editor-in-Chief Smokey D. Fontaine in his first editorial letter, quoting Editorial Director Scott Poulson-Bryant as saying “hustle is the new talent.”
This, needless to say, is catching some flack from people who are picking the definition of “hustle” that means to con someone. And who don’t like the new-look Giant.
But despite being initially put off by the new design, I read their use of “hustle” in the positive - to act quickly and forcefully, especially in getting things done.
And as evidence that my take is the correct one, their back page feature is titled “Hustle” and subtitled, “How You Can Be…”
So far, they’ve featured Marc Ecko, Dallas Austin, and Stephen Stoute. Would these three ever have crossed my radar otherwise? Doubt it. Am I thankful to Giant for changing their format for this reason alone? Oh my, yes.
The big idea? Look for inspiration in places you aren’t expecting it - places that might even turn you off at first blush. That’s a good place to find ideas that might otherwise have never occurred to you.
Posted in A-Has in the Ether, Lessons Learned | No Comments »
This entry was posted
on Monday, November 27th, 2006 at 12:53 am and is filed under A-Has in the Ether, Lessons Learned.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
November 20th, 2006 by Lani Voivod
What happens when the goddess of the “Aha! Moment” finds her way into your inbox?
- You pay attention. (Especially if your company is build around the power of the A-Ha - that’s bold insight PLUS some joy-filled action - in life and in business.)
- You blog about it. (Which is what I’m doing here.)
 Meet Aha-phrodite, “the inspired Muse of paying attention to possibility and new ideas.” She’s the creation of workshop facilitator and creativity coach Jill Badonsky, and she’s also one of the nine “Modern Day Muses” noted in Jill’s book, pictured to the right.
Turns out Aha-phrodite has some insightful opinions about generating ideas, enhancing your creativity, and finding answers you’re looking for, right smack dab in the middle of the present moment. Lucky for us, they’re summarized right here in this article on one of my favorite websites, www.creativity-portal.com.
Did you see the movie Finding Nemo? In the article, Jill flags the anecdote below as the perfect example of a trained pro grabbing from the moment to create one of the funniest animated characters of the decade:
Andrew Stanton, the director of the animated hit, Finding Nemo was trying to come up with the sidekick character to Nemo. Sidekick characters are usually rather dopey males. Stanton was distracted by his wife watching Ellen on TV in the next room. He heard Ellen change the subject about five times in one sentence … that’s how he came up with the character for Dory. He did not miss the random circumstantial gift present in the moment because he was paying attention and making a connection.
If Andrew Stanton can turn background noise into a killer character that helps a kid flick become one of the top-selling movies of 2003, you can tune into what’s happening in your environment and turn it into gold, too.
Oh - and if you want to see an awesome visual representation of the creative process in all its glory, check out Jill’s Muse Map! Very cool. (Bravo, Jill!)
For FREE articles, tips, and strategies designed to catapult your content and electrify your business, sign up for our ezine, “The Inciter,” at EpiphaniesInc.com!
Posted in A-Has in the Ether, Insight + Action | No Comments »
This entry was posted
on Monday, November 20th, 2006 at 2:54 pm and is filed under A-Has in the Ether, Insight + Action.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
November 14th, 2006 by Lani Voivod
Oh, what a happy day it was, when I walked into our town’s library last week and my eyes zoomed in on one of the dozens of magazine covers displayed in the reading room:
 “Flashes of insight in a BRAINSTORM”
“Tap Your Creative Powers”
And the name of the feature article…
“AHA! The Eureka Moment” !!!!!!!
Come on - I LIVE for synchronicity like this! The cover of a smarty mag diving right into the science behind the very moment around which Allen and I have decided to build our business. Oh, yeah. Cool, indeed. (And as an added bonus, this cover appeared before my very eyes just two days after I agreed to do a two-hour session on Business Brainstorming for an upcoming workshop. Woohoo!)
The article kicks off with an Einstein anecdote - how one of his sudden flashes of insight literally turned the concept of time and space inside and out. Now, we may not all have such humanity-shaking breakthroughs. But we all DO have our own mega-important insights that rock our own worlds and businesses.
As authors Buenther Knoblich and Michael Oellinger put it:
We all know how it feels for a solution to a tough problem to suddenly appear in our mind. The chips fall into place, the lightbulb goes on - and the answer seems so obvious that we are amazed we had not noticed it sooner, which is what creates the “Aha!” feeling. But what happens in the mind to produce this eureka moment? The answer could help all of us to be consummate creators.
I’ll be honest. If you want to really understand the neuroscience behind this question, you’re looking in the wrong place, bub. But if you want a quick list of what you can do to have more breakthrough moments in your life - then pal, pull up a chair and get ready to…
- SLEEP! That’s right. Cat nap, power nap, meditative shutdown, or the deep, eight-hour bed flop. All these time outs are prime playgrounds for churning ideas and problems, and restructuring them to create solutions you may not have considered in the harsh light of the waking world.
- GET FRUSTRATED! Yup. Often, our mightest “Aha!” moments come after we face a challenge using our previous knowledge and experiences to no avail. Our stale know-how has us running in circles, wasting time “reapplyng methods we already know to be futile.” The upswing? “This mounting failure is precisely what drives us to restructure a problem. The increasingly tense stalemate initiates unconscious processes that change our mental representation of the problem…Suddenly, novel possibilities emerge.”
- DUMB IT DOWN! Ever heard of the phrase “TMI”? It stands for “Too Much Information.” Believe it or not, if you know a lot in your field or niche, TMI is a threat to your “Aha!” moments. When you’re steeped deep in your own knowledge and expertise, “habitual use of familiar objects and problem-solving strategies limits the ways [you] employ them.” So while, like Einstein, you depend on a certain level of education or experience to climb up the proverbial ladder, you often have to find ways to get out of your own too-smart-for-its-own-good head to bust through to the next level of enlightenment.
- PERK UP! Wander. Meander. Break away and get yourself in a good mood. In the article, the authors suggest a good ol’ ping pong game, or an ice cream cone - something simple that’ll give you a boost out of flat-lining emotions or trouble-shooting thinking. Let your brain take a break from its toils. “Plenty of research has shown that a positive attitude helps the unconscious brain look at a problem from a different angle, improving your chances of solving it.” Got it? Good!
Remember, the best “Aha!” moments ultimately lead to the all-powerful “A-Ha!” - bold insight PLUS joy-filled action - that fertile birthing ground for monuments, businesses, paradigm shifts, theories of relativity…and your next inspired venture.
Increase the number of “Aha!” moments in your life, and the chance for the ”A-Ha!” that rocks your world increases exponentially.
Dig it!
For FREE articles, tips, and strategies designed to catapult your content and electrify your business, sign up for our ezine, “The Inciter,” at EpiphaniesInc.com!
Posted in A-Has in the Ether, Brainstorm Blitz | No Comments »
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, November 14th, 2006 at 11:29 pm and is filed under A-Has in the Ether, Brainstorm Blitz.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
November 9th, 2006 by Allen Voivod
It was possibly the craziest thing I’ve said all year.
 Lani and I were out on a walk, discussing our first ebook The Rumsfeld Diaries, and Lani asked me what my ultimate goal was. And I said, “I’d really like to see Donald Rumsfeld out of there.”
Talk about your David-versus-Goliath idea. And to make that our first info-product?! I must have been out of my gourd. But there it was, the honest, rock-bottom truth.
That Lani backed me on it is a testament to her belief in the power of the “A-Ha!” and everything we’ve reinvented our business to celebrate.
And nearly everyone I talked to - many of whom are chronicled on the Rumsfeld blog - told me Rumsfeld could not, would not be forced to resign ever.
Today, the impossible happened. | |
