We recently connected with Graham Williams and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Graham thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What do you think it takes to be successful?

I like to think about factors of success within the context of what we can control. We are all blessed with unique talents and raised in different environments, but success is not always destined or limited by the cards we are dealt. There are other factors that catalyze success. As I have studied the successful people around me and in the public eye, there are two factors that appear to be shared across the board. The first common factor is an optimism and confidence that we as individuals can shape the world we live in. This is a view that the world is not happening to us, that we have agency to create positive change for us, our families, our communities, and future generations. Certainly, there are many things in life that we cannot control, but successful people are able to accept that without ceding agency for their futures. Second, successful people are comfortable in changing environments and are always willing and eager to learn. If change is a constant, than so too must be learning for individuals and communities that want to improve their condition in life. Successful people understand that success is not a milestone, it is an ability to constantly interpret new information to generate positive outcomes.

One of the ways that successful people are able to create improved outcomes is by cataloging and learning from mistakes in the past. Columnist Danial Pink makes a very compelling argument in his recent book, “The Power of Regret,” that mistakes and regret are powerful drivers of progress if harnessed properly. In some ways we do a good job of learning from mistakes. It is fascinating the ponder how much energy and money our society / economy invests in Artificial Intelligence to make human tasks easier. This investment recognizes that learning from a series of results (often efforts) at a very large scale, lessons can be derived by computers to drive better interpretation of new information. What is striking is that our focus on technology generally makes tasks easier, but does not improve the Human Condition. If we took the same concept of systematically sharing and learning from our mistakes and lesson in life, we could create a new feedback loop that would get us off the hamster wheel of individually learning many related lessons from scratch. Freed from the hamster wheel, imagine what new ground people with successful mindset could harvest in the name of advancing the Human Condition.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am a technology and telecommunications executive who has spent the better part of my life building Internet Infrastructure that is now being used for advanced technologies like cloud computing. I have witnessed the power of harnessing big data sets and artificial intelligence to automate tasks that previously were manual and expensive and to generate insights that were previously hidden in the data.

I am proud to have been a small part of this new world of technology, but I also recognize how many people feel more disconnected at the human level now that our world is hyper-connected at the technology level. I start Impart to leverage technology in a way that would 1) reinforce community and 2) share lessons from trusted communities in a way that would provide a roadmap for loved ones approaching key transition moments. Impart is a tool to share advice from friends and family into a beautiful personalized group gift AND a growing library of crowd-sourced lessons from across all Impart projects for the benefit of all. Impart recipients feel supported and get a head start on new chapters in their life, Impart givers get a “helpers high” and the entire community participating get a super simple way to share powerful pages from their own book.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Being new to the direct to consumer space, I was woefully naïve about how challenging and expensive it is to get a brand in front of target customers long enough for them to engage and consider your new product. For Impart this was especially hard but we offer a product that is new – collaborative group gifts. I had to pivot and accelerate a plan to address enterprise accounts (Schools, non-profits, etc.) much sooner than I had planned to in the business case. Alas, business growth is rarely linear and giving up linear thinking was hard to do for my old business-to-business mindset. Making the pivot to direct sales where a school or organization would make a single book with input from their community and then distribute many copies to students, alumni or donors allowed me to change my weighted cost of acquisition to drive topline growth while my organic web-based marketing takes further hold. I didn’t have to reinvent the company or value prop, but I had to change the order of focus along the way to put resources where I could make the biggest impact.

Any fun sales or marketing stories?

My favorite marketing success story was executing an idea that my marketing lead came up with to create buzz around our Graduation Books. Parents, relatives and friends can use Impart to gather lessons from trusted people to share in a book for graduates of high school or college (or kindergarten for that matter). Graduations are such intense transition moments that receiving support from a community AND insights into what is coming next can make a big difference between success and challenge for new graduates. My marketing lead came up with the idea to ask local celebrities to share their advice for Public School graduates as we came out of the pandemic years. She was able to get politicians, entertainers, sports figures and local leaders to share thoughtful and authentic insights to key lessons they had learned on their paths to success. Then we gave the books away to public school graduates and made it available for all to see. Even if we had not received a lot of great press to introduce our brand and product, it would have felt like a great way to contribute our own communities. As it turned out we can always say that we got Tag Team to share their important life lessons and that is just cool.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.giveimpart.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/giveimpart/
• Facebook: https://www.instagram.com/giveimpart/
• Other: https://www.giveimpart.com/milestone/graduation https://www.giveimpart.com/milestone/teacherappreciation