Dr. Mani is heart surgeon who is using his internet marketing business to fund heart surgery for under-privileged children in India. A DAY FOR HEARTS: Congenital Heart Defects Awareness Day is an effort spearheaded by Dr. Mani to highlight to the public the problems posed by Congenital Heart Disease (CHD). He is seeking to bring about increased awareness and demand for CHD issues such as:

• research funding
• formation and assistance to support groups
• education of the general public
• enhanced standards of care to CHD patients worldwide

According to Dr. Mani’s CHD Info website,

“Congenital Heart Defects are a lethal constellation of birth defects of the heart that affect millions of newborn infants and children worldwide; a killer that claims thousands of lives every year. Eight of every 1000 children born alive (0.8%) will have some form of congenital heart defect.”

Info at his DrMani.name site goes on to say:

“Heart surgery is expensive. Many of his patients, from poor families, cannot afford the cost of treatment. So Dr.Mani decided to try and help sponsor the operations.This was the simple concept behind an online adventure that started in 1996.

Ten years later, Dr.Mani’s team has raised over $100,000 and funded heart surgery in 23 children, with many more to follow. He’s well on his way to achieve an ambitious mission – make high quality heart health care accessible and affordable to every Indian child.

The Dr.Mani Children Heart Foundation is a non-profit entity created to raise awareness about Congenital Heart Defects and to raise funds to sponsor life-saving heart surgery for children from poor families suffering from congenital heart disease.”

If you’d like to give more than just flowers and candy today, you can donate here.

One of the discussion topics that came up a while back was: If you could only give three pointers to someone seeking to become more persuasive, what would they be? There were some interesting answers like, learn and love the art of storytelling, fit your communication to the other persons state, reaction, wants and needs, and create intense curiosity so that they want to know more.

I thought these were pretty good, but it kinda seemed to not get down to the CORE, or the heart of the matter. Here’s what I wrote:

“I’ll share what I’ve written and spoken about elsewhere on this topic. This is what I seek to live by whether at home with my wife and children, at work with co-workers and customers, or in my community or the world at large.

1. Impart Vision – What do you SEE that others need to see? What insight, solution to a problem, or vantage point do you have that others could benefit from? Vision creates unity, unity creates synergy, synergy creates results. If you can’t see, you can’t lead, so why should people follow?
2. Ignite Passion – How do you FEEL about your topic, or subject matter? What is it that really gets you going with contagious
   excitement and enthusiasm? If you’re not passionate, why should anyone
   care?
3. Inspire Strategy – What do you DO that gets massive results? What action have you taken that practically demonstrates your ability to accomplish great things? If what you do doesn’t work, why should anyone listen to you?

The result? Impact Society. Ultimately the altruistic goal of persuasion is to compel people to get engaged in making a positive difference in their lives and the lives of others, not just buy my stuff. If buying my stuff will help them accomplish that, then I haven’t merely sold them a product, I’ve changed their life. And maybe even made a little contribution to changing the world.”

It seems to me that this is not only what persuasion should be about, it is also what business should be all about. It takes persuasive sales, marketing & PR to be successful. But it’s got to go beyond the bottom line. In back of it all, there’s got to be a heart burning with passion for something bigger. What do you think? I’d love to hear from you.