Mindsets That Matter: Motivate With Magic Moments

Read time: 3 minutes.

Hi 👋

Welcome to Build Things That Matter, where you will receive weekly tips on developing the mindsets, systems, and skills that matter to create a lasting, positive impact on your impact-driven business.

Today, you’ll learn the #1 way to build motivation for yourself and your team. (It’s how my organization is over a decade into our work and just getting started.)

I've always had really big, bold ambitions for my impact-driven org. If you're reading this, I'm pretty sure you do, too.

For me, it's so every person in Canada can build, not just consume technology.

We're over a decade in, have raised over $50M for our work and have created over 1 million (yup, 1 million!) experiences for people to build with technology.

The path to getting here has been far from easy: many days spent anxiously refreshing our bank account to see if we'd make payroll, days with more funding “no’s” than “yes,” programs we worked so hard on to launch and flop, team setbacks—you name it, I've been there.

So why are we still here? Still building?

There are so many reasons (including so many incredible people who've contributed along the way), but the thing I attribute our success to the most?

It's simple.

We just kept doing it.

Through good days and not-so-good days, we just kept working. We kept building, learning, and iterating.

As a founder and leader, it became my primary job to build the mindset, systems and skills that enabled and inspired us to keep moving.

That’s where “magic moments” come in.

THE MINDSET

You might already collect testimonials from your customers or beneficiaries.

You might already publish these on your website or use them to promote your offerings on sales, discovery or funding calls.

I call these testimonials and success stories magic moments.

Instead of only sharing them externally, which is usually how they’re used, I started sharing them internally.

And as often as I could.

I then started “hunting” for magic moments everywhere. I looked for the magic moment in any scenario - especially challenging ones.

If you’re looking for it, you’ll find it.

I then posted them to our internal Slack channel (called #magicmoments), started meetings with them, and shared them in my weekly updates with my team.

Soon enough, the whole org was posting magic moments of their own regularly, too!

Why Magic Moments Motivate:

If you've ever done any research on motivation, you've probably come across Daniel Pink's work like Drive, or, To Sell is Human.

Daniel Pink suggests three are 3 types of purpose: Personal, social and societal.

Personal purpose: comes from the satisfaction of doing what we love, trying new things, and expressing ourselves.

Social purpose: comes from bringing people together, whether a team on a project or learners at a workshop.

Societal purpose: involves doing something beyond oneself, like working for an impact-driven company that advances education or working towards sustainable development goals.

“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” —Mark Twain

Magic moments tap into all three types of purpose.

They provide personal satisfaction by celebrating individual contributions, reinforcing social bonds by highlighting collaborative achievements, and reminding us of our work's societal impact.

Aligning with our deeper purposes is a powerful motivator, keeping you and your organization taking steps toward your goals.

Over time, these steps compound, and that’s where magic truly happens.

Until next week, let’s keep building together 🫶🚀

Mel

P. S. Building things is hard, and we need more people to do it. If you enjoyed this newsletter, consider forwarding it to a friend. Thanks in advance!

If you’re looking for more bite-sized weekly tips, you can follow me on LinkedIn.

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