I was reading in the St. Pete Times yesterday about Andrew Hall, a teenager who lives here in Safety Harbor, who was hit by a drunk driver while standing outside his apartment.  After several hours of surgery he is stable but had to have a leg amputated.  My heart goes out to Andrew and his family.  It ticks me off and tempted to go off on a rant about drunk driving.  When are we going to get serious about cracking down it?!?

Something else jumped out at me from the article is that Andrew’s sister made public his list of “100 things to do before I die.”  He only has 15 things on the list so far, but I thought it was an interesting list:

1. Tip a waitress $100
2. Scuba dive on the Great Barrier Reef
3. Get my bench press up to 180 lbs
4. Own 3 four wheelers
5. Own a boat
6. Own a house
7. Get married
8. Own a monkey
9. Own a Wave Runner
10. Start a band
11. Have 5 kids
12. Own a Dalmatian
13. Own a truck
14. Rent an apartment
15. Go see a comedian

Take moment to analyze the list.  Of the 15 items on the list 7 (almost 50%) are owning something, 3 are fun experiences, and 5 could be categorized as personal accomplishments.

I’m not knocking Andrew here.  This is the kind of stuff you would probably find on a lot of 19 year olds’ life lists.  It’s probably what I would have had on my life list at 19 if I had made one.

The honest truth is that it’s awfully materialistic and self-centered, isn’t it?

So, what’s on your life list?  And what does it say about you?

For what it’s worth, I’ve never made a life list.  Perhaps that says I’m not living as intentionally as I would like.

Does your list include anything spiritual?  Anything that involves helping others?  Anything resembling making the world a better place?

I don’t know if this video is true or not, but it’s hilarious.

In addition to being funny, there’s an important marketing principle in there. If you want to get people’s attention you’ve got to stand out from the crowd. To often I see people (and organizations) who think they can be successful by mimicking what successful people (and organizations) are already doing.

They want to have a cool website so they look at other cool websites and make theirs like the others. Everyone is is blogging so they blog about the same stuff. Everyone is twittering so they twitter about the same stuff.

And to be honest, all to often I find myself doing the same thing.

When we do something that’s average, mediocre, or like everyone else, it’s probably boring and will be unsuccessful. Either kick it up or kick it out.

So, what makes you remarkable?

What makes you stand out?

It doesn’t necessarily have to be something you do better than everyone else (thought being #1 at something will make you stand out), just something different.

What mediocre things do you need to stop doing?

Thanks to my bro, Kurt, for sending me this hilarious video last night.  (At least I think it’s hilarious, but what do I know.)

YouTube won’t let me embed the video so you’ll have to click to YouTube to watch it.

How are you feeling these days?  Frustrated?  Depressed?

Maybe we just need to take a step back and put things into perspective.

Chances are you  are reading this on some really cool computer that didn’t exist 5 years ago in a comfortable chair in a heated/air conditioned building with plumbing and running water which is not more than 5 minutes away from a grocery store where you can any food you want or more than 20 minutes from a state of the art hospital which can cure a thousand diseases that used to kill people 100 years ago.

So, now how is your life, really?

There’s an old saying that goes, “You don’t know a man unless you’ve walked a mile in his shoes.”  Yesterday I start a new venture that is certain to give me a new perspective – that of my clients.  As the CEO of a website services company, I see things from the perspective of my sales and web design staff.  This week I am starting a new project as the client for my own company.

I am leading the redevelopment effort for my church’s website.  I’ve asked my sales and web design staff to treat me like any other client (just keep in mind I sign your paychecks, just kidding).  What’s cool about it is the way that working on the “other side” will help to build understanding and create synergy in so many ways.

First, I get to put my 11 years as the CEO of a website services company to work for my church.  I would hope that the insight and experience I’ve gained over the years would give me some unique insight into what works and what doesn’t, priories, and so forth.  As a result, I hope my church will end up with a great website and avoid many of the pitfalls that other organizations have fallen into.

Second, I get see my company’s processes from the client’s perspective.  I’ve already found two things in the sales process that I thought were really confusing, spoke to our director of sales about them, and changes are being implemented.

Third, while leading the redevelopment of the church’s website, there are a lot of things that have to happen within the church to make the new website successful.  I need to find out what functionality the site really needs.  I need to get “buy in” from the people who will be updating the site.  I’ll need to train them as well.  I need to get “buy in” from the people who do other forms of communication – verbal announcements, programs, letters, etc – so they will mention the website.  I need to get people in the congregation to use the new website.

Right now our clients are on their own when it comes to these things.  We develop the website, but it’s their job to keep it up to date and get people to use it.  That won’t change because of this project, but we should be able to advise people on those issues.  We want to do everything we can to help our clients more successfully use their websites.  So, I’ll be blogging about the project from start to finish on our our company blog.

So, what can you do to give yourself a new perspective?  What can you do to better understand the people around you – your spouse, kids, neighbors, co-workers, those in need?  The experience and insight gained can be extraordinarily valuable.