Chicago & Yanksgiving – The formula emerged

Over the years I’ve visited Chicago many many times. Its a really beautiful downtown with lots of interesting places to eat, a variety of shops and the architecture always amazes me.

When there in October ‘13 for a work conference, I met up with a great friend, colleague and advisor Alan at a swanky bar in the Hyatt Regency. We talked about what makes people pull others and I brought up my many of my thoughts in that ‘thought document’. We ended up talking for hours on the topic and went back and forth if there could be a set of rules to define it. I remember saying, what if it could be deduced down to a simple formula…but it’s gotta simple…because after these drinks if it’s complicated we won’t remember it tomorrow. Some of the biggest marketing learnings I’ve had while at GE have come from Alan…and a couple transcend well beyond marketing. The ones that come to mind are: 1-Simplify all the way…then pick the step that makes sense to all. and 2. every thought that you think is big — go bigger. From what I can remember, we came up with 20+ elements but it really foiled into a chat that attempted to define success in today’s world. We kept resetting each other for that ‘success’ doesn’t necessarily draw people/mentors to you, but kept coming up with more and more elements. At the end of the chat, we deduced that ‘spark’ had to be one of the most important ones…then they hit us with the bill…150$ doesn’t go very far in downtown Chicago!

I didn’t go back to my thought document and update it…but that chat stuck in my head. Just as I was forgetting about it, we hosted ‘Yanksgiving’ at our house with our long time family friends from Detroit. At our house (in Windsor, ON Canada), we call US thanksgiving ‘Yanksgiving’. Many folks who are not close to the US/Canada border realize that Canada celebrates Thanksgiving in October and the US does it in November — and now you know 🙂 Needless to say, my wife and I have cooked up a turkey every year for the last decade on ‘yanksgiving’, take the day off, watch football and of course give thanks a 2nd time. At any rate, Ryan & Kathy and their kids came over and we had a great dinner. Below is exactly how our turkey looked.

I remember Ryan and I talking about people ‘pulling others’ and we got into a deep philosophical conversation on whether people decide what they do in life or do others do that. It was great and this is when ‘passion’ was narrowed down as the root of the pull. Ryan & I connected the week after over the phone and talked for a hour in attempt to reduce the number of variables that make up what passion is. I had a ton in my head from the chats with Alan and we got it down to 5-6…but still it was overlapping with trying to also define success. I needed to simplify!

I then went back to my ‘thought document’ and jotted down some more notes and changed the document header to: You don’t decide what you do in life — the Passion Formula drives it. Then it went back into the google drive vault and stayed there until early December when I seen a Facebook share from an old friend from high school. The share was calling for speakers for a TEDx event happening in Feb ‘14 in my hometown – Chatham Kent, Ontario Canada. TED is well known in the GE marketing world as a great way to learn new ideas and approaches. Many of my colleagues have shared talks over the years and some stick. We continuously reference the one by Simon Sinek – How great leaders inspire action. It’s amazing and really changed the way our group has marketed.  We’ve even applied to talk on work topics in attempt to push a commercial agenda…and needless to say were never accepted. Kudos to TED for keeping the commercial agendas out and keeping it purely about ideas.

Anyways, it was good timing for that I said to myself, that would be a cool challenge..but what would I talk about??? Could I pull it off? What idea do I have that’s ‘worth’ sharing??

More to come on my TEDx journey…I think I’ve got ~3 more posts to round out the story up to the event. Stay tuned!

BTW — They have posted the video already (ahead of schedule!) so if you want to jump ahead and watch it go ahead! TEDx Youtube Link: The Benefits of Passion – Kyle Reissner.

Be sure to follow the posts on twitter @passion_formula and subscribe to this blog via email to get updates when new posts are up!

With that I’ll leave you hanging until my next blog post. NEXT POST IS UP! READ ON!

— Kyle