Into the Maddening Crowd

Photo credit: caribb / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND

I love the promise of airports.  While I’d certainly rather be the traveler than the volunteer chauffeur, I’m happy to drop off others when they need a ride.  I do it for the contact high of fluttery excitement, a feeling which taps into a pool of memories which still pulse with anticipation.  The trip up to the airport makes me feel like anything is possible.

I felt the same when we sent our Growing Gratitude app off to the App Store.  Clicking SUBMIT and pouring champagne, it felt like anything was possible.  One thing I have learned about being a volunteer airport chauffeur is that that feeling does not last.  The drive up is exhilarating with thoughts of fresh surroundings and the thrill of time spent out of context.  The drive home is still, quiet, lulling with thoughts of groceries and what’s on the DVR.  The post-App-Store-submission week was like that for me – still, quiet, lulling.  I was very aware of being the chauffeur and not the traveler, of groceries and what was on the DVR.

Our app arrived, safe and sound.  No worse for wear.  Looking incredibly like it had when we’d dropped it off the week before, even after having experienced so much.  Kansas City, Missouri to Cupertino, California.  Being one of 700,000 apps in the App Store is like being in a small airport where a year’s worth of travelers all show up for the same flight.  Crowded doesn’t cover it.

And instead of the drivers holding signs with passengers’ names on them, the travelers hold the signs.  “Want to launch birds at monkeys and make your DMV wait fly by?  I’m the app for you!”  “Manage your kids’ homework and keep track of the wine in your cellar for just $1.99!”

Ours shouts as best it can above the din, “I’m going to change the way we say thank you! I’m fun, easy, personal, authentic!  I’m free!”

There we are, at our destination and not at our destination.  We’re building a bigger megaphone, a taller platform, a bolder sign.  It’s fun launching birds at monkeys, and I love an app which organizes everything from my pantry to the bodega of my dreams.  But that’s not us.

Our team will help us drown out all that App Store clamor and lift us above the booming crowd because, in doing so, they lift up themselves as well.  Lift up each other.  Gratitude – feeling it, knowing it, sharing it, “getting” it – is good for us, for all of us.  “We cannot hold a torch to light another’s path without brightening our own.”  Let’s turn the amp up to 11 and spread the word!

We’ve arrived…kind of.  The end of the trip is the beginning of our great journey.  And as we’re on the verge of becoming the world traveler we dreamed of, sharing smiles across the globe, the exhilaration of what’s to come rattles our teeth, with all of the jolty vibration of a jet engine and the stomach-flipping anticipation of a trip into uncharted territory.

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For more about the Growing Gratitude app, visit our website & the preview of our app in iTunes.  We’re recruiting more gratitude pioneers to use our exciting new app and to help us spread the word – and their thankfulness.  “I’m going to change the way we say thank you! I’m fun, easy, personal, authentic!  I’m free!”

Welcome to the new world. I think we’re going to like it here.

I’ve been really excited to write this post.  After months of hinting around at what our big launch would be about, it’s a relief to be able to share our mission and how we will pursue it.  I’ve summed it up like this: Growing Gratitude helps make gratitude contagious because using our app to express your thankfulness is easy, personal, authentic and fun.  We’ve designed a smartphone app which will bring us all closer together and encourage users to “pass it on”.

Our motto, for now, is this: “Welcome to the new world.  I think we’re going to like it here.”  And the more I see people interact with the idea of Growing Gratitude, the more I do like it here.  Growing Gratitude was designed with the intention of bringing out the best in us as often as possible.  What could be better than that?

Most of you know that I am pursuing funding for the website and iOS/Android apps through IndieGoGo, a crowdfunding platform.  Our campaign launched 6 days ago and ends on Nov. 18.  So far, supporters have pledged almost $6,935, which is amazing!  It feels like walking on clouds, having people see what you see in an idea and support it, too.  I am beyond grateful for that.

I am also in this interesting spot of being very cognizant of the gap between where we are now in terms of funding and what we need to get Growing Gratitude onto solid ground for our app launch.  We’ve got a ways to go.

There are 3 key ways that you can contribute to our mission:

1. Make a financial contribution at our Growing Gratitude IndieGoGo campaign. Even $5 is helpful and means a lot in terms of a show of  your support.
2. Spread this link around as often as you can.  Research says that people need to see something 7 times before acting on it, so more = better in terms of inspiring action in potential supporters.  http://igg.me/p/262283?a=1608333
3. Shoot a thank-you video on your phone and email it to me (at amy@growinggratitude.com).  I want people to understand the power of the thank-you video, and what better way to “get it” than to make our own video and view others’ videos?

Thank you in advance for your support.  Together we WILL do this.  Go gratitude!

Off We Go(Go)!

Big news!  It’s a momentous time in the life of Growing Gratitude, make-or-break time.  Our IndieGoGo campaign kicks off on Thursday.  Thursday!  What does that mean, you ask?  IndieGoGo is a crowdfunding website which hosts a variety of

Photo credit: bibendum84 / Foter / CC BY-SA

projects.  Folks visit the site either just perusing the projects that are out there right now  (I do this sometimes) or go there because they know of a specific project which is seeking funding this way. The projects set a goal, which represents the amount of money they need to complete the project.  People who are interested in and excited about their projects choose to contribute, meaning that they make a financial pledge to help the project reach their goal, and in exchange they receive perks based on the level of their contribution (like the public radio fundraising model).

I have contributed to several projects.  While putting the Growing Gratitude IndieGoGo campaign together, I’ve given a lot of thought to why I back certain projects. It usually comes down to this:  I back projects that, in their own particular way, make the world a better place to live. I certainly understand the situation of having an idea and wanting to see it through but not the funding to make it happen.  When that idea is something that has the potential to benefit people beyond ourselves, crowdfunding sites like IndieGoGo are ideal as they allow us to rally around the idea, stand together behind it and to become part of the team with our backing.

This is your chance to get the whole story on what I’ve been hinting around at all these months! Head on over to the Growing Gratitude campaign page on IndieGoGo this Thursday to see what we’re all about! Investigate, engage, and then please share the link to our campaign all over the place!

Welcome to the new world. I think we’re going to like it here.

Go Team Growing Gratitude!

The Other Hardest Part

Some say that the waiting is the hardest part.  Waiting is no fun, but the hardest?  I don’t think so.  Since I submitted the

Photo by kimb0lene @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/kimb0lene/4934240873/

Growing Gratitude project to Kickstarter for approval, I’ve gone to a party, breakfast with my friends and a pumpkin patch with my family.  The waiting is not the hardest part.  The hardest part, in business as in life, is that which is out of our control.  I can fill the waiting time up with all kinds of activities and forget, even for hours at a time, that it all hangs in the balance.  But taking something which contains a piece of me inside it and handing it over to be measured, judged, perhaps dismissed altogether…it’s excruciating.

That feeling of helplessness could do me in if I let it.   It helps me understand the choices that some students from my school would make.  Why suffer the discomfort of putting yourself out there when you could make a joke, play it off and check out?  The prospect of embarrassment and judgment is a lot to ask from kids who don’t have the life experience to illustrate the payoff of taking such risks.  I’ve got that experience and am still losing sleep and needing to write about it and checking my email every ten minutes!

Ok, so that side of me has had its airtime.  My other side (the one I amplify to drown out the other) is celebrating already!  Of course the Kickstarter folks will “get” the idea, “get” that behind the idea of my project are dedication and commitment to follow-through and that hosting our Growing Gratitude project on Kickstarter will be mutually beneficial.

The optimistic part of me that has allowed me to get this far on this adventure (into my fourth month with no income-earning job and having invested what must be at least 200 hours into fleshing out the vision and the practical steps to realizing that vision) has always believed.  She knows that the job at this point is to help people see what I see and feel what I feel about Growing Gratitude.  She knows that I can and that they will.

I am beyond excited to get the Growing Gratitude app out and on phones across the country, to see what becomes of this idea and how the vision gets stretched in other hands.  I had a daydream the other day.  It took place in this place called Colt State Park in Rhode Island where I lived for a while growing up.  I remember part of it being a strip of grassy park next to a seawall of big, white rocks where waves would glide up and explode.  In the daydream, I’m standing in that park and handing kites out to people standing in line.  They’re trying them out.  It’s tricky doing something new, and it’s windy out there, so there are some brilliant crashes.  Some of those folks give them back, but just as many try again.  I’m giving advice and sharing technique tips, but I end up listening more than I’m talking.  They’re doing things with the kites I’d never imagined.  It’s my kite, and they’re showing me how to use it.

And as we all get better and the show more spectacular, the line is getting longer.  But it doesn’t feel like a line anymore.  It feels like a party—or a festival.  And then I get it.  One of those moments like in the movies when the noise around you fades away and everything slows down so you can see it clearly and take in the whole of a scene, how the pieces fit together.  In that moment I get that they’re our kites, not mine.  And that when you supply the raw materials, like this app, part of the job is being a partygoer, stepping back and taking it all in.

Because it’s more about learning than teaching and more about sharing than selling.  And remembering that is just what I need to silence that other unwelcome voice.  If the folks at Kickstarter don’t “get” it, someone else will.  Giving up on this would be like giving up on us, turning off the wind and letting kites spin into oblivion.  And this party is just getting started.

Wondering what the Growing Gratitude app is all about? Good! Stay tuned, friends! In the meantime, sign up for updates on our website and check us out on our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter!  You won’t want to miss what we have in store!

Eight(y) is Enough

Photo courtesy of emdot (http://www.flickr.com/photos/emdot/42197427/) .

What’s more important – what we know or what we don’t know?

I’ve been asking myself this a lot lately as I delve into the preparations for the role of tech. startup founder, small business owner, solopreneur, mompreneur, crazy lady.

I think about the skills I have honed in my personal and professional lives, the leadership qualities I have developed and the complicated interpersonal situations that I have managed and – in many cases – facilitated a solution to.  I think about all of that, and I get so frustrated that I can’t be that person here yet.  Instead of walking into a room of wily middle schoolers and helping them to refocus and to keep their eye on the prize, I find myself reading every day to learn things from absolute scratch and doing things I never imagined could be part of this adventure, like shooting and editing a video.

Don’t get me wrong – I love to learn.  But it’s so strange to feel so incompetent at so many things out here, especially when all I would have to do to see the take-charge me is to walk back into my school.  I’m not on a circular course right now, and my path is taking me further and further away from my comfort zone.  They say that’s where the magic happens (unless you get lost in the woods!).

The upside to this month’s journey has been the meticulous whittling of Growing Gratitude’s mission.  The office floor is covered in shavings and sawdust, and only the very heart of it remains.  When you do eighty takes of a video (while I am naturally prone to exaggeration, take me at my word on this one), what does not ring perfectly true really stands out.  I knew what Growing Gratitude was; that part was easy.  The surprise to me was the time I needed to take to sort out the nuances of what it isn’t and will not be.  The time spent there has been invaluable.

Saw, carve, file, sand.  Smooth it over with my fingertips.  Only the very heart of it remains.