In my live seminars, I love drawing upon the work of Jonas Ridderstrale and Kjell Nordstrom and their first Funky Business book .

My favourite quote which provides a platform to build from is this one:

It’s so true. Every word of it.

And if, as they say, normal does equal nothing, then it seems obvious that abnormal equals something.

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At Buy1GIVE1 (or B1G1 as most people know it now) we’ve got a clear mission — to create a world full of giving. And we do that through providing people with the wonderful process of transaction-based giving — increasingly being called, 'Embedded Generosity' or 'Embedded Giving'.

I find that creating a world full of giving is pretty inspiring. Then I got a note taking it all to another level from my friend (and B1G1 Business client) Tom Minter in the UK. Tom co-founded and co-runs the wonderfully zany and magically brilliant ‘Socks for Happy People ’.

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You know how it is when ideas hit you – it’s kind of like a ‘KAPOW!!!’ moment.

I had one yesterday.

It’s been brewing for a while and like all ‘interesting’ ideas, it’s so simple and obvious you wonder why it took you so long to get it. So here it is:

Take for example the oft-heard phrase ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’. It’s used so often we don’t even think of the potential turn-off effect it has.

For example, imagine a conference being held in your city. It has the theme of Corporate Social Responsibility. And imagine too you’re a so-called ‘small-to-medium scale-enterprise’ or SME.

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Disclosure: I’m not what you'd call a keen student of the Bible. But after a recent trip to New Zealand, I believe I can imagine how the man felt who actually did pick up his bed and walk.

That’s because I was ‘operated on’ (as you’ll soon discover, that’s COMPLETELY the wrong term) by new B1G1 Business owner, Master Applied Kinesiologist, Doctor of Chiropractic and author of  ‘Live now - Die later’, Patterson Stark .

I’d met Patterson the night before with my dear friends Martin and Sarah Jimmink. They’d held the equivalent of a B1G1 Seminar in their home in Christchurch, New Zealand.

And after the program, Patterson and his Partner, Gayel Marquet, not only decided to become a B1G1 Business linking their Alkaline Water with giving kids access to water in Africa, they stayed for hours talking about water, about B1G1 and about Patterson’s views on health.

Twenty years ago, Patterson was told he had 2 weeks to live.

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Just a few weeks ago, I had the real pleasure of meeting Professor Nicholas Negroponte. He is, of course, most well known for his breakthrough ‘Being Digital’ book, his work at MIT Media Lab and, most recently, his breakthrough One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative.

Negroponte is a truly warm human being. And he has that special professorial wisdom of asking better questions to get breakthrough answers– it’s that process that led him to create OLPC. And how interesting is it that the largest selling machines right now are NetBooks, muscling in on the market created by OLPC.

And although his questions are searching, his statements carry great power too.

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Over the weekend I had an email conversation with Vicki Slade, the B1G1 Business Ambassador in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Vicki was what I’d call ‘pumped’ – see what you think based on this initial email from Vicki:

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A few nights ago, I dreamt about Obama making a speech – a very special speech. And I remember now what got me into that dream. Before I went to bed I read a piece that made me say, ‘I wish I’d been game enough to say that’.

The piece I’d read was a post on the Huffington Post from Harvard Professor Clayton M. Christensen with additional input from the folks at New Profit Inc

What really got me was this quote from the Christensen article in the Huffington Post article .

‘Hence, rather than capital flowing to social initiatives that are most effective, much of it goes to failing non-profits with suboptimal impact or whose footprint is limited and will not scale. Retailer John Wannamaker once famously quipped that ‘Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is I don't know which half. This is true in spades for philanthropic spending.’

And in a funny kind of a way, that’s what I was trying to get at in my blog post last week .

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Here I am on Flight SQ 245 out of Singapore to Brisbane, Australia.

And in meeting after meeting last week in Singapore I really started toget how wonderfully important this 4-word phrase ‘ Less communication –more connection’ really is.

One is about presence – the other is not.

Right now I’m experiencing the presence piece on the Singapore Airlines flight. Singapore Airlines is absolutely my favourite airline. They get ‘connecting’. From the simple use of my name at every possible point to the simple and gracious way they seem to give. This is not a job – it’s an opportunity

Several times a week it seems we have the question asked, “so when we give, what do we get?’

The question is rarely asked precisely that way. More often than not it comes out like this: ‘so when I give through B1G1 , does it impact my sales; do more people buy from me?’

And perhaps not surprisingly with my marketing background I sometimes want to scream ‘of course!’ I’m eager to tell people about the impact giving has in all sorts of ways. I want to quote the stories of B1G1 businesses. I want to talk about how giving develops much more ‘connection’. And I know the Duke University study backwards (the study that showed as much as a 74% ‘uptick’ in the sales of products directly linked through transaction-based giving).

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Sure we love what we do at Buy1GIVE1 (B1G1).

And when we see the results of what we do we get even more passionate about the journey we're on. Importantly, it's a shared journey too - none of what you're about to read could have happened without the businesses in 14 countries around the world who have so enthusiastically emabraced the magic of B1G1 transaction-based giving.

It's a world where every transaction makes a difference every second, every day and in every way.