kung fu fighting – phippsy – birra moretti in the office

good morning bigmoose blog reader.

i wanted to say thank you.

thank you for clicking on my weekly ramblings.

thank you for your consistency, we have a really strong open rate, which i really appreciate.

so as the alarm went off this morning tania enquired was it 5.30, my normal time to emerge from my duck down filled cocoon, to which i replied it was in fact 5am, as it was blog day.

where do the weeks go, she enquired, and i felt the same, time seems to fly by, and i wondered if this was an age thing or if the gen z’s reading this feel the same, please let me know, i’d be interested to discover more.

i think it’s probably because we have lots going on that we feel this way, and i am really glad my world has lots of exciting stuff happening.

yesterday our bigmoose team whatsapp group chat pinged with the news that we had saved our 116th person from suicide.

what a start to the day.

what a purpose.

what a reward.

i feel very fortunate, and as i sit here in the quietness before the world wakes up, i reflect that as an ice hockey goalie, whose performance on the ice was measured in wins and losses, and a red light going on behind me if i made a mistake, my world was very different.

i now have a greater responsibility to ‘get it right’ a responsibility me and our whole team take extremely seriously, our efforts are literally changing and saving lives, and we couldn’t be prouder.

and i think this responsibility is what drives me, and makes me so passionate.

when i present talks to audiences of people i’ve never met.

when i have meetings with people I’ve never met.

when i go out for dinner with friends.

i don’t stop.

one such occasion happened this week.

i met up with two great friends, for confidentiality we’ll call them ‘phippsy’ and ‘mr lay’.

well mr lay has signed up to fundraise and take a bike at project 1 million 2.0, and has been a rockstar since bigmoose was created.

phippsy hasn’t signed up for a bike.

yet.

as i drove to the restaurant, i reminisced about our ski trips together, and how phippsy is one of the greatest raconteurs i know, so it was very interesting to watch mr lay wax lyrical about the spin bike event, in a brilliant sales pitch, which i could not have done better myself, so whilst he hasn’t signed up yet, my instinct tells me there is a strong possibility, but it was wonderful to see somebody so enthusiastic fully invested in the project.

we reached 60 bikes this week, so we are getting closer, but we still have a long way to go, but we doing our absolute best to fill all 100, so if you feel like joining us on 29th november drop me a line, it’d be cool to get a bike signup from this blog.

as well as pushing the bike event hard this week, i did my 21st talk of the year, in bristol to capio recruitment, to a group of very young people. causing me to wonder how it would go, especially as this was a very cool bristol crowd, and i am old enough to be a parent, or even grandparent!

the open plan room where i was presenting had a foosball table, an actual football, and a birra moretti draft setup.

as i was introduced by the lovely m.d. chris i breathed deeply.

unfortunately, it started badly for them.

they laughed at one of my jokes.

this is always dangerous, as i need little encouragement.

and as i grew into the talk they laughed again, this was rocket fuel, and the hour flew by.

me and the gen z’s got on, and at the end i had a number of poignant conversations, and i am positively hopeful that we will work together moving forward.

my oh my, the power of doing these talks, crazy, and at the end of this year it will be very interesting to calculate the measurable value, and plan our 2026 strategy, which i think has to include more of the same, and with my partner back with a new kidney, it will be brilliant to tell the bigmoose story to audiences far and wide.

today is chloe’s last day in work before her transplant on october 6th, so it’s gonna be an emotional day, but i am excited for her to get a replacement kidney, which hopefully will allow her to live life pain free, and grow into becoming the woman she is destined to be, the world needs her.

have a wonderful week, and as a young lady who we met very recently, and came into the office, and left having signed up for a bike, said “you don’t grow in your comfort zone.”

blue skies,

jeff

p.s. i refuse to believe that absolutely everybody was kung fu fighting, and even if they were, not all of them would have fought with expert timing.