Jon Hirst | May 31, 2024

Story Samurai

Summary

Jon Hirst discusses his experiences in creating innovative projects and organizations that bring people together and provide solutions to their needs. He shares his work on a website for teenagers in the late 90s, where he helped them find answers to their challenges and provided faith-based support. He also talks about his involvement in setting up local community radio stations in different countries, including one that had an orphanage as part of its content. Jon emphasizes the importance of community and storytelling in driving real change and innovation. He also shares his most challenging experience of closing down a nonprofit organization and the lessons he learned from it.

Keywords

innovation, community, teenagers, website, challenges, faith, internet, radio stations, orphanage, storytelling, nonprofit organization, closing down

Takeaways

• Creating something new and making it accessible to more people is a rewarding experience.
• Bridging the online and offline worlds can have a powerful impact, especially in creating community and providing support.
• Transparency and involving the team in decision-making can help navigate challenging situations.
• The measure of success is not just the outcome, but also how the team responds and the impact they have.
• Identifying one's greatest human contribution and finding ways to bring it to the world is key in a rapidly changing landscape.

Titles

• The Power of Community and Storytelling
• Finding Your Greatest Human Contribution

Sound Bites

• "Being in those cyber cafes and interacting with teenagers was... was I think one of the really impactful things that I enjoyed doing as part of that early project."
• "Creating community is probably one of the most powerful forces for good anywhere."
• "The most difficult thing I've as a CEO to close down an organization."

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