Extraordinary

My friend, Mark Sanborn, has written an extraordinary book about turning the ordinary extraordinary. The book evolved out of a relationship he developed with a singularly extraordinary postman named Fred. Mark has filled this book with stories about the Freds in this world who turn ordinary experiences into something more, something finer that transcends business and reminds us that we're all in this together and that there is no higher calling than to serve others. Mark published The Fred Factor through a small publisher and then something extraordinary happened, in fact, is happening now. The book resonated with his audiences, with business, with the Chinese for gosh sakes (he's sold 250,000 copies there). A major publisher picked it up, Mark expanded it and it will be rereleased this Spring (2004) by not one but 2 publishing houses.

Being a Fred may soon become the catch phrase for any ordinary individual who offers extraordinary service to those whose lives they touch, whether it's a customer service representative in Idaho, a missionary in Bangledesh or an executive on Wall Street.

I think that the web is a Fred. It is an extraordinary tool that, while perverted and subverted by some, in general offers an extraordinary value to the world. And the web itself is made up of Fred's. Google is a great example. Marketing Sherpa is another one. Mapquest a third and there are literally millions more. Sites that amaze and delight and serve you. Sure they make money, or hope to but they do so in a way that enriches all the participants alike. How about your site? Is it a Fred? Are you?

Respectfully submitted,

tom.gray@gemsolv.com

Madness and Folly but No Wisdom

The problem with getting rid of Bush is that Kerry is, I believe, an even worse choice. He's been described as a man who's never met a side of an issue that he didn't like. He'll vote for an act and then denounce it or against it and say he was really for it. Great choice, eh? Wouldn't it be great to have 2 great choices for President and the sense that knowing which ever one won that the country would be in good hands. It's a scary world and it requires greatness and wisdom at the helm to navigate in these troubled times but Kerry would steer the ship while looking rearwards while Bush heads for the reef.

Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind.
Ecclesiastes 1:17 (NIV)

Respectfully submitted,

tom.gray@gemsolv.com

Thanks, Mom, But Maybe I Should Check That First...

Too funny.

Guy called me the other day and asked if I'd be interested in managing his website. I spent some time looking around the site when I was shocked to find several pages with links to a notorious porn site. Of course, being the cynical guy I am, my first thought was, "SABOTAGE!" I immediately took a screen capture and sent him an urgent email pointing out this foul deed.

He bashfully replied saying, no worries, it was just my Mom trying to help out by doing a little site maintenance. Each page contains a section for related links and Mom had misspelled a prominent sports product company's name (no, I won't tell you which one), substituting an 'i' for an 'e', when creating the link. While my prospect had removed the offending link from most of the pages, I just happened to find several that he'd overlooked.

I'm sure his Mom is a great Mom and how many of your Mom's are pitching in on the old website? But, like we used to say when I was a carpenter, "measure twice, cut once." So even if it's your mom it's a good idea to double check her & your and anybody else's work before you release it to the WORLD WIDE WEB.

Respectfully submitted,

tom.gray@gemsolv.com

Profane or Profound

"...it is about as bleak as it has ever been for an environment of being creative." So says Jeff Pollack of the Pollack Media Group when commenting on the FCC's recent crackdown on indecency over the airwaves (Rocky Mountain News, March 27, 2004). I'd like to know when the public display of profanity, vulgarity and pornography became equated with creativity. I feel horrible for missing it but I'm going to make up for lost time and apologize to my brother right away. You see, when I was 11 and he was 9, I beat the snot out of him. Why? Because he'd just learned the f-bomb and decided to display his newly expanded vocabularly to the neighborhood. Little did I know that by pouncing on him as I did that I was stifling his creativity. No wonder he turned out to be a cold hearted capitalist. It was all my fault for beating up his inner muse.

Seriously though, I think that entertainers and the media have confused the profane with the profound. Being profane is easy, it's the low hanging fruit. In fact, it's not even on the tree anymore, it's rotting on the ground where anyone can pick it up. Being profound, in any endeavor, is harder. It's being thoughtful and original in imbuing meaning to any undertaking. Hmmmm, sounds like creativity to me.


Respectfully submitted,

tom.gray@gemsolv.com

The Down Side of Email Marketing

I love email marketing. I am a fully committed fanatic about it. I love the richness of the media, the instant gratification associated with a successful ezine broadcast, my customers saying, "Wow!," that's great!

What I don't love are the dirty little spammers who send their bots across the web harvesting email addresses and sucking bandwidth with solicitations to enlarge this, or enhance that or get rich without effort (buy their new ebook, "SPAMMING for Fun & Profit).

CAN-SPAM's a start but, to be honest, it's going to have more of an impact on the good guys than the bad. In the meantime, the Bad, as the Denver Post pointed out the other day, citing research done by Return Path - an email research firm, are the reason that as much as 37% of legitimate, opt-in e-mails are blocked. Maybe the solution is to return to the days of frontier justice where the rustlers wuz strung up where they wuz caught and left swinging in the wind fer the buzzards to munch and the other outlaws to see. Could be this is a little extreme but the Internet is a good thing - a great thing for smaller business in particular - being ruined by a few bad apples.

Respectfully submitted,

tom.gray@gemsolv.com