vulnerability – a quarter of a million pledged – big news

good morning blog reader,

this week i learnt two things that i kind of knew, but hadn’t really evaluated very much.

showing vulnerability is powerful, and attractive.

and my own personal resilience probably comes from my ice hockey career.

this week has been very successful for bigmoose, and for me personally, with the most important success being another three people telling us we saved their lives.

but really, three more people are directly staying alive, because of you.

i may not know you, but i’m willing to bet you have helped bigmoose, directly or indirectly at some point in time.

are you nodding?

you may have volunteered.

you may have fundraised.

you may have signed up to monthly giving.

but there will be a reason why you read this blog, and hopefully it is because you feel some ownership, and that bigmoose is partly yours.

it’s the sum of all of us.

all working cohesively to mesh together to produce a body of work that creates hope for fellow humans who really need us.

and it’s working well.

and as i look out of my office window, at the beautiful vista that mother nature has painted for me, with bright sunshine replacing last night’s full moon that shone brightly into my bedroom at 1.43am i smile.

chloe and i have followed our instincts.

we have created a charity that is doing incredible work.

saving 159 lives is a net result we could only have dreamed of when we started.

and i think the reason people like you have helped us is because we aren’t afraid.

we aren’t afraid to dream big.

we aren’t afraid to get things wrong.

we just aren’t afraid.

and hopefully that transparency and tenacity is attractive.

i think it is.

i think it’s what draws people towards working with us.

we will make big decisions, which sometimes don’t always please everybody, but we will make them, because it is our responsibility, and you have entrusted us to navigate the route, and we relish the challenge, and thank you for trusting us.

and we will show up, with vulnerability, like we did this week with a situation which had seen a relationship go sour, but we approached the situation with honesty, admitted making errors, and apologised, which led to the relationship being reignited, and galvanising to the extent that it took on an even stronger dynamic than it originally had, powerful shizzle this vulnerability mullarkey.

and regarding my earlier reference to my own resilience being grown during my hockey career, i was asked a question this week by someone about how i managed to stay so positive with my health challenges.

after much thought i concluded that hockey had really taught me to be mentally tough, and i think unequivocally that to play professional sport of any kind, demands a mental strength, which copes with high pressure situations, and the skills i learnt in this chapter of my life have held me in good stead for what life throws at me, and hopefully allows me to continue to thrive even in the most challenging of situations.

deep blog today gang.

also this week we signed up three more bikes for project one million 3.0 taking us past a quarter of a million pounds pledged, still a long way to go, but a great milestone nonetheless.

one bike coming from a five minute talk at a networking meeting, pretty good roi and roe (return on investment/energy).

so the order of the day is get more talks.

so if you can help plug me into anybody in your network, an introduction would be brilliant, thank you.

finally, a quick anecdote about the power of conversations.

last christmas (sounds like a wham song) i was at a family member’s home, when a friend of theirs visited.

after exchanging seasonal pleasantries, he enquired about what i do.

the genie had been invited out of the lamp.

five minutes of distilled storytelling and he suggested he could link me into potential funders.

this week he emailed me, and has lined me up with a call with an absolute power player, who is connected to an invite only foundation, very exciting indeed, and it reminded me of our bigmoose chairperson beth’s saying that “every conversation is potentially a fundraising conversation”.

i hope you’ve had a great week, and next week delivers some exciting consequences.

thank you for reading.

thank you for supporting.

and thank you for believing in our vision, i hope we make you happy.

blue skies,

jeff

c