The new WWW — 3 keys to a great business AND a great life
by Paul Dunn in People+Organizations | No Comments Yet | Add your comment

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Amazing how the little things suddenly hit you.

And when they do, they change everything.

That happened to me just a few moments ago — and I’m excited. I ‘got’, if that’s the right way of describing it, the new WWW.

For years now, I’ve been talking about all three of them …… individually at first; then two together and until just now, the ‘obvious’ combining of all three just hit me. And they form 3 major keys to building a great business AND a great life. Come explore with me …..

The first W in our sequence is where it all starts — as Simon Sinek puts it: ‘Start with WHY’ Notice that; START with Why. Not figure it out after you’ve put everything in motion — start with it. And if you want to know WHY you start with it just go right here to Simon.

It is, of course, that ‘thing’ that gets you up in the morning — but go watch Simon. It’s got NOTHING to do with complex vision and mission statements and platitudes. It’s a real, honest to Goodness, simple thing — WHY? And ‘why’ in as few words as possible — certainly less than 10. (And if you’re wondering, what gets me up every morning is this — ‘to give you the power to change lives.’

Once you get that, you can jump straight to the third W in our list. But best you get the second in place ahead of it.

The second one is simply WOW — that spark that lights up our eyes when we connect with or see something we think is just great. Something that simply makes us go (for whatever reason) ‘WOW’.

And our responsibility in developing a business is to build in WOWs everywhere — tiny little things (there’s a major clue to WOWs right there) that make others light up and go WOW. You’ve got to have it — GOT TO.

Without it, you’re making it seriously challenging for people to buy what you have. WOWs come instantly. We don’t need to refer to spreadsheets to go WOW — we just get it — we get it in the gut if you like.

And if you don’t have the little things that make people go ‘WOW’ you are making it SO challenging. Little things like, for example, the way you set the alarms on an iPhone, or the flies etched into the toilets that act as ‘aiming devices’ in Terminal 3 at Singapore’s Changi Airport, or the way the new young Baristas at my local McCafe make brilliant designs with a toothpick in seconds on the top of my cappuccino). Simple, simple WOW things.

As I once observed to an MBA class, if you show me your business plan and it takes me more than 45 seconds to ‘get’ it; it’s either the wrong plan or I’m simply not in your target market.

Or, to put it another way, I’ve never seen a multi-page business plane (or indeed an Excel spreadsheet) that changed the world. It’s that initial idea, that ‘thing’ that springs from WHY and forms into a WOW that does it.

And that used to be enough — the WHY and the WOW. But no longer. Now we need that third W.

It’s what I call ‘WOOW’ — go on, say it out loud — you’ll actually hear that ‘WOOW is a much deeper ‘WOW’.

You see, here’s the thing with WOWs. They can be and frequently are, temporary. For example, the first iPhone I used to WOW about is no longer a WOW with the advent of an iPhone 4. So as you develop WOWs, you need to keep on re-inventing them. But WOOWs are much more ‘solid’.

They’re rarely ever about things — they’re about people — they’re about us giving back. And yes, they’re linked directly many, many times with our ‘WHY’

There is now this amazing wave (oh, look at that, another ‘w’) of WOOW — of people and businesses really getting the part we can play in our world. Staggeringly, statistics show that around 4 per cent (only 4%) of the 381 Billion that’s given to charities in the US as just one example, comes from businesses. We think it’s time to impact that number and really get to understand the leverage that those of us who run businesses actually have.

But get this — it’s NOT just about doing good in the accepted sense. Seth Godin expressed it brilliantly in a recent post: “giving a gift for no reason and with no transaction contemplated is actually incredibly powerful. It changes your approach to the market, it changes your relationship with the recipient and yes, it changes you.”

WOW ….. it changes you! Actually, in terms of depth, that’s a WOOW.
Which is why at B1G1 we always say it’s US that are always the true recipient of the giving.

So much so that we think giving has to become not a one-off, ad-hoc event. It’s not about Charity Balls, nice though they are, or Telethons (even though they do sometimes, only sometimes, raise more than they cost to run) or whatever other one-offs you can think of.

It’s about doing it every day, habitually, by doing what we normally do — business!

We buy things. We sell things. The world moves.
So at B1G1, we’re about giving your business the power to change our lives, habitually, effortlessly. It’s pretty simple — imagine it with me.

You’re in business. You own a coffee shop. Your WHY is to somehow make a difference to kids — one of whom dies every 22 seconds because of no access to clean water.

So, you combine your WHY, your WOW into a WOOW. And every time someone grabs a cup of coffee in your shop, a child in Africa gets access to water. You sell plasma TVs; you recognize how blessed you are that you AND your customers have sight. So your WHY becomes to do something about those who don’t.

And so, every time you sell a TV, a cataract-blind person in Bali gets the gift of sight. You sell a book, a tree gets planted. You go out for a meal, 37 children get fed. Someone buys YOUR product or service; something GREAT happens.

You see ….. habitually. Effortlessly. WHY, WOW and WOOW combined. That’s when the magic happens. That’s when it changes everything — us, our businesses and our world. That’s when we create together a happier world. A new WWW!

ABOUT THE COLUMNIST

Paul Dunn is now known worldwide as the ‘Wizard of WOW’. He’s a best-selling author, a creator of successful international businesses and his audio and video programs are now in use by over 156,000 businesses around the world. He is passionate about giving back to Social Causes to increase the level of joy in our world. He serves as Chairman of the revolutionary Buy1GIVE1 (www.b1g1.com). He gets up every morning to, as he puts it, ‘give businesses the power to change our lives.’

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