It’s All About the ?

This post could eas­ily be called “how I con­tinue to make my life dif­fi­cult” and is meant to be a fun look on how a sim­ple thing like hav­ing punc­tu­a­tion in a com­pany name can lead to some funny situations.

The ques­tion mark in Where’s Your Heart? is sig­nif­i­cant. It’s meant to cause you to stop (or at least pause!) and ask your­self the ques­tion. To really stop, feel it, drop down into your heart.… that’s our mis­sion. To help peo­ple find their hearts in their daily lives. So, about that ques­tion mark…

I wanted the name “Where’s Your Heart?” to get peo­ple to ask them­selves the ques­tion. The first laugh was when my lawyer called and asked what word I wanted to end the com­pany name with. What? Well, turns out the IRS wants non-profits to be called Foun­da­tion, or Club, or some­thing out of about 10 or so choices. And, by the way, that some­thing doesn’t include “Project” (which I would have liked). So, I picked Foundation.

So, you’ll often see me call­ing the com­pany Where’s Your Heart? or WYH?, and even on twit­ter/face­book wyheart, but the real com­pany name is Where’s Your Heart? Foun­da­tion.

And, please. For the non-Americans out there… we love you, but it’s not “Where is Your Heart?.” I know the con­trac­tion used in Eng­lish is not com­mon in all lan­guages, but it sets the rhythm. Work with me on this, ok? Thanks.

Of course, WYH? is cor­rected by most spell-checkers to WHY?. Why? More like “why me?” But, funny. Until you retrain your spell check­ers. And, while you’re in there fuss­ing with the spell check­ers, unset auto-cap after punc­tu­a­tion, or it’ll cap­i­tal­ize every word after the com­pany name!

And, being a com­mon mis­spelling of a com­mon word, wyh.org wasn’t avail­able as a web site name, so you’ll have to type out the full name until you book­mark it at http://wheresyourheart.org. I love the details like this though, in some weird way it keeps my mind think­ing of the possibilities.

I never expected a URL with a ques­tion mark… but I would have liked an ATM card with one. Nope. As a techie, the bank process of open­ing the account with a com­pany name that con­tained punc­tu­a­tion was fas­ci­nat­ing. Clearly, not a use case they thought about when design­ing the banker’s inter­face. They couldn’t cre­ate the account with punc­tu­a­tion, but… a quick call deter­mined that there was no rea­son the com­pany name couldn’t con­tain the punc­tu­a­tion. So, we entered it wrong, and then opened a work request to change it on the back-end.

Of course, when you setup the account, it must pop­u­late other sys­tems with the com­pany infor­ma­tion… I’ve been chas­ing down sys­tems with the orig­i­nal non-punctuated name since I opened the account (the link goes to a pre­vi­ous blog post about my adven­tures with this from a tech­nol­ogy per­spec­tive which I hope tech­nol­ogy prod­uct man­agers out there can learn from). And, my first batch of checks was wrong, as was the ATM card. Though, the ATM’s a per­ma­nent thing, they don’t like punc­tu­a­tion on plas­tic I guess.

Those of you who know me, know I’m thor­ough. Back last June or so, I con­nected (via LinkedIn — very use­ful to find peo­ple you know who know peo­ple some­where) with Yahoo! to ask how they dealt with the punc­tu­a­tion in their name. I found every time the sen­tence ended with the com­pany name, it read like a ques­tion mark! They said, you have to dou­ble punc­tu­ate. Some­thing like, “I would like to tell you about Where’s Your Heart?.” should have the period fol­low­ing the ques­tion mark.

Though, just because I’m neu­rotic, doesn’t mean those around me are. So, I’ve had to politely remind peo­ple to put the ? in there! Funny, really.

Finally, the ques­tion mark is so impor­tant, it’s become the cen­ter­piece of our logo… along with the heart. I hope over time to drop the let­ters from the logo and only use the graphic (they’re both being trade­marked). For now, I want to build some aware­ness of “the question.”

Well, I think this will be my last post for two weeks. I’m off to the Ama­zon and total dis­con­nect from the mod­ern world. If you’ve stum­bled on this post, find out what I’m talk­ing about at the Where’s Your Heart? Foun­da­tion web site, and become a fan on Face­book if you’re curi­ous about our mis­sion. While I’m away, ask your­self this dif­fer­ent question…

Stop what you’re doing, and ask your­self the ques­tion. Drop into your heart, and feel it. Get present. Then, ask your­self where you were if you weren’t in your heart? What are you doing there?

Peace.

PS I’ve sketched out another post, not sure I’ll have time to write it up. But, our next post will be about the deci­sion to do this as a non-profit and the state­ment I hope I’m mak­ing by doing so. Stay tuned.