Yellow Goldfish blog series

There should one ultimate driving metric in business (and life) and that’s Happiness. A Yellow Goldfish is anytime a business does a little extra to contribute to the happiness of its customers, employees, or society. Based on nearly 300 case studies, Yellow Goldfish, a book published by Stan Phelps and Rosaria Cirillo in September 2018, covers nine ways increasing happiness in business can drive growth, productivity and prosperity for everyone and it’s available for sales on Amazon & Kindle. Broken into three main sections, Yellow Goldfish will help you and your company understand WHY happiness in business matters, WHAT you can do to contribute to happiness (of customers, employees and society), and HOW to do so.

This post is part of a wider series with key insights from Yellow Goldfish. Find here the complete list of all this series’ posts that will be published every Monday and Wednesday from September 4th to September 18th (which marks Yellow Goldfish 1-year birthday).

Yellow Goldfish book

Summarizing The Previous Posts In This Series

In the first post of this series, we reflected on why companies are in business and we dived into the five schools of thought or different management approaches that companies have adopted over the past few decades: profit, customers, employees or purpose first. We shared why we believe that “Happiness is a new way forward, it should be what comes first and it’s the ultimate business metric.”

Analyzing nearly 300 cases, we have identified nine ways in which business can increase happiness to drive growth, productivity and prosperity for everyone, and we call “Yellow Goldfish” the little extra that a business does to contribute to the happiness of its customers, employees, or society.

In the second post of this series, we shared why a Goldfish and why Yellow.

In the third post, we shared how happiness as a feeling made its way across Rosaria work on customer experience and what influences our perception of reality; we also revealed the nine areas we identified in which business can contribute to happiness for customers, employees and society overall: Health, Autonomy, Purpose, Play, Integrity, Nature, Empathy, Simplicity, Smile.

And we shared the path to Happiness Driven Growth.

 

In the fourth post, we shared: a brief description of each area, the needs it fulfills and the chemicals that it triggers; some of the ways companies can incorporate each of these elements in their practices; the list of companies mentioned as example in Yellow Goldfish, because of the little extra they regularly do in one of the areas; additional brands contributing to each area in ways we collected in our List.ly project and analyzed but didn’t include in the book.

In the fifth post, we looked at how you can drive growth and we shared the process behind creating your Yellow Goldfish for Happiness Driven Growth in six stages: Grounding, Reaching-up, Operationalizing, Wow Blossoming, Taking Time, and Harvesting.

In this post, we share the top five takeaways from Yellow Goldfish book and the choices we have in all the different roles which we live in our daily lives, as leaders, employees, customers and human beings.

Yellow Goldfish Top Five Takeaways

  1. Seek Happiness First and Profit Will Follow – If our ultimate purpose in life is to seek happiness and all we all want is happiness, why are we building or working for companies or business models that maximize profits, loyalty, or word of mouth? Why are we not building companies, business models, schools or universities where the goal is to maximize the happiness of students, teachers, employees, partners, and customers and where profits and loyalty follow as result?
  2. Chemicals Drive Happiness – Happiness comes from special brain chemicals that evolved to do a job, not to flow all the time for no reason. When we understand their respective roles, we can find healthy new ways to stimulate them. By understanding the six brain molecules linked to happiness, we can design experiences that achieve both customer and employee happiness.
  3. Experiences that release the DOSE neurochemicals make us happy – They also make us want more of the same.
    1. Dopamine is your brain’s signal that a reward is at hand. The joyful excited feeling is released when you approach something that meets an unmet need.
    2. Oxytocin is the good feeling of social trust. It’s released when you find the safety of social support, when you hug someone, or where there is a good touch point.
    3. Serotonin is calm confidence in your ability. It’s released when you pursue things that reinforce a sense of purpose, meaning, and accomplishment and when you relax or think of happy memories.
    4. Endorphin is released when you exercise and when you laugh.
  4. Differentiation is Key to Your Growth – It is important to stand out and differentiate. Happiness offers a competitive advantage because we buy, work, and live to pursue and attain happiness; because we buy more, work better and more effectively, and live longer and healthier lives when we are happy. The search for happiness drives the choices we make due to the chemical wiring of the brain.
  5. We Have a Choice – We can choose where to focus in business:
    • As company leaders: how we choose to lead
    • As employees: how we choose to frame our work and how we choose to design and deliver employee and customer experiences that are meaningful and deliver happiness or at least comfort whenever possible
    • As customers: how we reward (buy, advocate, invest) companies that contribute to happiness and to a better world
    • As human beings: how we contribute to each other’s happiness and whole- being.

    For us, it ultimately boils down to the question: “In which world would you rather live? One of pain or one of happiness?” We choose happiness.

Do you choose Happiness too?

Here’s how you can help us create more Yellow Goldfish and spread the message about Happiness Driven Growth:

  • apply what you’ve learned in this blog series to your brand
  • buy the book to learn more
  • share the book with others
  • add the book to your company library
  • give the book as gift to new hires or as Holiday present to your employees (or just buy this book for all your employees, if the next holiday is too far away) or clients
  • share this blog series on social media with #YellowGoldfish and #HappinessDrivenGrowth
  • connect with Rosaria Cirillo and Stan Phelps on LinkedIn
  • bring us in to speak at your conferences or events
  • book us for a workshop or strategy session

This post is part of a wider series with key insights from Yellow Goldfish. Find here the complete list of all this series’ posts that will be published every Monday and Wednesday from September 4th to September 18th (which marks Yellow Goldfish 1-year birthday).

  1. Why Happiness in business? – From Yellow Goldfish Overview Section
  2. Why Yellow Goldfish? – From Yellow Goldfish Overview Section.
  3. Uncovering H.A.P.P.I.N.E.S.S. in business – From Yellow Goldfish What Section – The Types
  4. Brief Overview of companies and examples covered in Yellow Goldfish – From Yellow Goldfish What & How Section
  5. Drive Happiness G.R.O.W.T.H. in Six Stages – From Yellow Goldfish How Section 
  6. Yellow Goldfish Top Five Takeaways

Follow Rosaria Cirillo on Linkedin & wownowexp on Instagram or sign up below to be notified as soon as a new blog post is published.

*** Yellow Goldfish is available for sales on Amazon/Kindle. Rosaria’s royalties for sales are going to #5ForTheFight. Find out why here. Find links to your local Amazon store here.

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* Sharing is happiness. If our message resonates with you, please help us share it and let’s start building together the world we wish to live in. Thank you! #YellowGoldfish #HappinessDrivenGrowth

** If you would like to know more about how to pursue Happiness Driven Growth in your company or would like us to deliver an engaging talk about it at your event, get in touch or simply follow Rosaria Cirillo on LinkedIn & Instagram to receive her inspirational DOSE of Happiness.

*** Did you already enjoy reading Yellow Goldfish and want to help us inspire more persons? Helps us spread the word by sharing the quote that most resonated with you and by posting a picture of you with our book on Twitter, Instagram and/or LinkedIn using hashtags:
#YellowGoldfish
#YGBITW (Yellow Goldfish Book In The World)
#YellowGoldfishBook
#YellowGoldfishQuote

 

Yellow Goldfish book has been published on September 2018 and is the result of collecting and analyzing nearly 300 cases and identifying the common threads. It covers nine ways increasing happiness in business can drive growth, productivity and prosperity for everyone and it’s available for sales on Amazon. We hope it can help more companies understand WHY happiness in business matters, WHAT they can do to contribute to happiness of customers, employees and society, and HOW to do so.

 

Yellow Goldfish cover

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