Purple cows & useful pencils.

Quickly approaching 2025 I have three things on my mind in preparation & focus: clarity, alignment and purple cows.

Let’s begin with purple cows. Let’s say you and I are out on a road trip; let’s pick a long drive in Montana under the big sky and wide-open spaces. As we drive, we pass cows. I’ve always enjoyed a good gander at rolling hills and cows roaming. At first, this might be interesting. We keep driving and the scene becomes less interesting as far as cows go; eventually, maybe even boring. Now, we are many hours into this road trip together, and we come across a purple cow. What would we do? We’d probably pull over, take pictures, post on social media, talk about it, tell the story to others, and be astonished by this extraordinary sight…

Consider joining me in my late December / January book of the month recommendation – yup, you guessed it: Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable, by Seth Godin.

I’m looking for purple cows in our businesses next year. I’m looking to be extraordinary. I’m looking to take risks. I’m thinking both differently and planning for back to basics. A lot has been asked of our industry this year to enhance our abilities towards transparency and leveling up the profession. That has been asked across the industry. Purple cows in 2025 – the extraordinary – these will get noticed. As you refine your planning, your focus, your clarity consider the purple cow story – what will have people pulling over on the side of the road, taking pictures, posting, telling stories…about you?

A few more odds and ends to put a wrap on this week…

Thank you Shavic Jones on sharing a December 10th article, Seattle area leads nation in economic growth.

Can we agree our business and relationship depend on our abilities to be extraordinary (purple cow element!) in having good conversations? If you haven’t seen the Tedx Talk, How to Have a Good Conversation, Celeste Headlee – I highly recommend! Tis’ the season be gather & connect. What a good time of year to up our skill in good conversations. As Celeste remarks, a good conversation is a “balance of talking and listening and somewhere we lost that balance.”

On the CLOZE front, I played around with the “library” and was happy to see and experience how easy it was to take Jeff Tucker’s “Housing Predictions for 2025,” briefly add my voice to it, and send it via email. This is such a good example of templates/campaigns sitting in there waiting for you! I was able to send it via my desktop access and mobile. This makes me happy. With all things launching from Windermere, we are in the learning and optimization stage. Give yourself grace to know there is a lot there and a lot coming, yet it starts with each of us getting inside the tools and playing with them.

And, to round out FWL, a very quick 1 minute and 46 second video that will sharpen all of our useful pencils – 4 Important Lessons For A Successful Life.