"Each and every day, you have the opportunity to live up to your full potential!" - Futurist Jim Carroll
It's book week. Each day this week, Futurist Jim Carroll has been featuring one of his books. He's written 39!
The title of the book Think Big, Start Small, Scale Fast comes straight from my Daily Inspiration series, one of which you are reading right now. By my count, this is post 1,946 in this series which I began writing early in August 2016. Have I ever mentioned that I have not missed one workday post since then? (I have, and I have not!)
How did this book come about? What does it actually cover?
It is a story of inspiration, observation and transformation.
I’ve been speaking to organizations around the world for well over 25 years about the future and the attitudes and actions that can help us to turn it into a world of opportunity.
Somewhere along the way, I came to realize that this unique experience, a life on the stage, had provided me with some very unique insights into how people try to deal with a world of massive change and challenge.
In late July 2016, through a variety of colliding circumstances, the opportunity to focus my thinking into a message of hope and inspiration took on a life of its own. Since that moment in time, I have started each and every workday, without fail, very early in the morning, with my coffee, my laptop, and a moment of quiet reflection. They are a critical part of a very important journey, that of painting a picture of hope and optimism each and every day for what the day might bring. These observations - usually inspirational, sometimes controversial - are layered on top of a photo where I had appeared on stage and then shared with people via my social networks.
How important are they? I have not missed one day since starting this in early August 2016. I mark my personal progress and success one day at a time by my ability to inspire myself and others each and every day through this small personal thought.
This book captures but a small number of those morning reflections. As of this writing, I am approaching close to 1,000. You can find all of them at https://inspiration.jimcarroll.com
I am forever grateful for the opportunity to inspire people worldwide.
Given the subtitle Stories from the Stage on Disruption, Transformation and the Accelerating Future, the book features several of what I considered to be some of my most powerful Daily Inspiration posts, rewritten to emphasize the story behind the stage picture used for the quote.
Originally. each daily post featured a unique and never-used-before photo from a keynote somewhere or other in my life. With that, I became a picture hound - I was, for a time, crowdsourcing photos from audience members in the front row and actively sharing with me what they could. In addition, official event photos became important. Most of my events feature professional photographers hired by the client - and although they are required by contract to send me any photos they take, it often became a fool's errand to get my hands on them. As a result, I took to actively bribing the photographer on-site for a time - and it worked!
Back to the book - published in early 2020 just before the global pandemic hit, it didn't draw a lot of notice, since people were, um, thinking about other things. Since that time, though, it's been a fairly reliable performer, particularly when a client wants to purchase the book in bulk as a giveaway to attendees or for some other purpose.
As with all of my projects, the book was a family affair, with the editing and layout done by my wife Christa, and the cover design and interior undertaken by my creative-genius son Willie. Up until the time of this project, the images used in my Web site featured pretty rudimentary text - I had not yet discovered Canva. My son cleaned up the design with a bolder font and topic emphasis. In addition, he designed the cover for the book!
The most important thing? The content. Here's an example of the approach I took - take this quote, which comes from a keynote I did for Ulker in the UK - it's the umbrella organization that owns Godiva Chocolates, McVities Biscuits in the UK, and Ulker in Turkey.
That became a Daily Inspiration post one day - and then the backstory for that particular image was worked into the book by sharing what I was covering with that organization during my keynote - and hence, the subtitle, Stories from the Stage. Each of the stories in the book covers some important elements of disruption, transformation, the future, and innovation - particularly important leadership guidance.
In this case, I noted:
The picture is from a keynote I did for an organization in London, England - a leading global food company.
The focus of my keynote was on fast-paced consumer trends in the world of retail, the shopping experience, consumer behaviour, how brands interact with consumers in an era of declining attention spans, the impact of intelligent packaging and a wide variety of other trends.
This type of event is typical of many that I do. All kinds of organizations bring me in for up to date insight on the key trends that are or will impact them going forward, in order that they can align their activities to the future. I help them to understand the challenges and opportunities of these trends, and a path forward in terms of innovation around these trends.
I will often wrap up these talks with specific guidance that will help their senior executives do what is necessary for that alignment. The thought process behind this quote is often one that I will use - in that I'll speak about the importance of having a good 'trends radar."
Fast forward - when the global pandemic, I had a bit of a dilemma - not only did my in-person keynote event business evaporate, but so did my source of images for my daily inspiration post! For a brief time - maybe an hour or two - I considered packing it in. I then realized that it was important that I keep going with the series - often, I find, I am writing these posts as much for myself as I do for the few hundred thousand people who receive them through various mailing lists and social networks.
As a result, I quickly learned how to generate images for use in my Daily Inspiration in my rapidly evolving virtual broadcast studio. Of course, some of the early ones were pretty bad in terms of image quality, such as this one from the first Monday after the lockdowns began.
Since then, I've discovered Canva, and continue with my post every day. I'll soon hit 2,000 posts!
Since the Think Big book covered about 40 of these posts, I figure I've got enough material for another 50 books! Every time I mention that idea, my wife rebels!
Oh, and today's Daily Inspiration? "Each and every day, you have the opportunity to live up to your full potential!" That's my Daily Inspiration post from September 3, 2019, in which I noted:
Life is a game of choices – as to what you will believe, what you will try, what you will attempt, and what you will achieve.
You really need to start each day with the right choices – by focusing on the end goals of your overall opportunity!
Choose wisely!
That quote didn't make it into the book, but if you look carefully, it was featured on the back cover.
The phrase Think BIG, Start Small, Scale Fast, has been the closing guidance for most of the keynotes Futurist Jim Carroll has done for the last 20 years. The phrase provides simple, powerful guidance on how to go forward into a fast-paced future.