Dearly Beloved

The Transition Begins…

• The MI Board of State Canvassers certified the state’s election results yesterday, declaring Biden the winner of the state’s 16 electoral votes by a margin of ~154k votes.
• A majority of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties had certified their election results by yesterday afternoon’s deadline. There are counties that usually lag behind every election cycle in PA, where current tallies show Biden with a more than 81k vote lead.

Across the Country

Image via NYT (free)

• The Trump administration late Monday authorized the GSA (General Services Administration) to begin formal protocols for the transition process, approving more than $6M in government funds meant to assist in a smooth transfer of power and granting Biden’s team access to federal agencies (they will also receive high-level classified briefings). Dig deeper.

🧊 Ice Bucket Challenge Creator Dies

Pat Quinn, co-founder of the 2014 viral ‘Ice Bucket Challenge,’ died on Monday following a seven-year battle with ALS. The Ice Bucket Challenge was responsible for raising $115M for the ALS Association, and over $220M for ALS research since its inception.

More: Quinn, who was co-nominated as Time magazine’s “Person of the Year,” hosted an Ice Bucket Challenge each year in his hometown of Yonkers, NY.

Also… 

🇬🇹 Guatemala’s Speaker of Congress said he would block a controversial budget that triggered protests during which parts of the country’s congress building were set on fire last Saturday.

📱 In the Spotlight

Snapchat officially launched Spotlight, a designated place within its app where users can watch short-form videos in a vertically scrollable, TikTok-esque feed. Spotlight features videos scored with music, along with other Snaps determined by the company’s algorithms using a wide range of personalized factors.

🚀 It’s All Relative

U.S. aerospace manufacturer Relativity Space announced a $500M funding round on Monday valuing the company at $2.3B. With the move, Relativity – which uses 3-D printers to help build rockets – becomes the second most valuable VC-backed space company in the world after SpaceX ($46B).

🚘 Call to Action

General Motors announced a recall of nearly 7M full-size pickup trucks and SUVs yesterday. The move came after a U.S. regulatory agency denied a petition from the company to keep its vehicles featuring potentially faulty Takata airbag inflators in circulation. GM will not fight the decision, which could cost the company an estimated $1.2B (roughly one-third of its net income so far this year).

More: The Takata airbag recall is one of the largest of its kind in U.S. history, affecting 19 automakers and tens of millions of vehicles. Twenty-seven deaths worldwide have been attributed to exploding Takata inflators, including 18 in the U.S.

🛒 No Good Deed Goes Unrewarded

Many of the students at Linda Tutt High School in Sanger, TX, come from low socioeconomic families, according to school principal Anthony Love. With the pandemic exerting additional financial strain on already struggling households, the sympathetic school administrator recently sought to help students’ families by organizing an unconventional addition to his academic institution: a grocery store.

Unlike a traditional supermarket, the school’s store does not take money. It accepts good deeds instead.

The store, located in one of the high school’s spare rooms, operates a system through which young learners can earn points for exemplary behavior, then redeem those points for store items. Operated entirely by students, the chargeless market is funded by the local nonprofit First Refuge Ministries and Albertsons grocery store.

🎻 Of Sound Mind

Ciara Sase, a nurse at Intermountain Healthcare’s McKay-Dee Hospital in Ogden, UT, was perplexed last month when she received an odd note from coronavirus patient Grover Wilhemsen. Grover, a retired music teacher who had been recently intubated due to the virus’s impact on his lungs, used a pen and paper to ask if his wife could bring his violin to the hospital.

Unable to speak because of the intubation, Grover expressed his thanks for the hospital staff’s excellent care by playing his violin for them. As the grateful patient let his instrument do the talking, Ciara burst into tears, so inspired by the performance that she transmitted the music into the outer hallway so that the serenade could reach her coworkers.

“This is something that will follow me for the rest of my career,” Ciara told CBS News.

🔧 Your Biggest Fan

Ever since he was a baby, 4-year-old Jaxon Maples of Springfield, MO, has been captivated by ceiling fans, calmed by their rhythmic movements. For this same reason, Jaxon – who has autism – is equally entranced by washing machines and other home appliances. In fact, the young boy’s favorite place on Earth is his local Lowe’s Home Improvement store.

“Lowe’s has been the center of our world, because our world is Jaxon,” his mom Shauna Rippee told the Springfield News-Leader.

Earlier this month, Shauna reached out to Lowe’s corporate office and asked if the company could send her son one of their signature red staff member vests. In response, the home improvement store sent Jaxon the vest and made the young boy an honorary associate, and gifted him a bucket of merchandise, including a desk fan and a football signed by the Springfield Lowe’s team.

Bringing back memories? You may be thinking of last week’s story about Parker Buchholz, a young boy with autism from Fort Wayne, IN, with a similar love for Best Buy. Y’all liked it so much we just had to tell you about Jaxon when we stumbled on the story.

Calling All Business Owners

Fortunes are made or lost, not by what happens to us, but by how we react.

Bad things happen to good businesses.

Now you have to decide how you will respond.

Some owners will cut expenses to the bone. Others will become paralyzed by fear.

A rare few will use this opportunity to rethink their business from the ground up. Throw out what wasn’t working and re-commit to strategies that impact long term business value.

ProvenGain uses a simple system for boosting the value of the companies called The Value Builder System™. We’ve recently created an eBook called 8 Ways To Re-Invent Yourself In A Crisis, which I thought might be helpful as you contemplate what’s next. Just send me an email at: paulwildrick@provengain.com for your copy or I can help you with some ideas on a quick 30 or 60-minute call.