When I Saw the “From” Line, I Did Think It Was a Joke

The reason Guy wrote to me was:

  1. Because Leo’s Been So Quiet?

No, this wasn’t anything like that letter I got from Leonardo DiCaprio. I wasn’t expecting this letter, either, but no trees were harmed and I loved getting it.

  1. Because he heard I’m switching from TypePad this week?
  2. Because he knew I hadn’t finished my Thursday post?

This last is because I’m consumed by switching to WordPress, but I’m assuming he didn’t know that. (Nearly ready and making me very happy, thanks for asking.)

  1. Because I’m a Big Boy* on Alltop now?

Yes!

You, of course, are subscribed to Maximum Customer Experience (No? Over there on the left. I’ll wait), so you don’t need another way to find me, but there I am, in the new-ish Customer Service section of Alltop.

Good morning, Alltop!

I have a lot of good things going on with the MCE Blog right now, and this, friends, is the cherry on top.

For those of you who don’t know who on Earth I am talking about, Guy is not just the dude behind this cool new spot called Alltop, which he likens to an “online magazine rack” and I call a place to find only the very best of what’s being written for the web. To quote Wikipedia, Guy was “one of the original Apple employees responsible for marketing the Macintosh in 1984.” This is why his smile is always so incredible.

He’s a venture capitalist now, a very well-known blogger (please read How to Change the World today—his post Hindsights is a must), and the author of a book I loved from the minute I first read it, The Art of the Start.

Many of my own can’t-miss blogs are also featured on Alltop, including Church of the Customer, Customers Are Always, Planning, Startups, Stories, Damn! I Wish I’d Thought of That!, Brand Autopsy, Men With Pens, and IttyBiz. All the biggest Big Boys are there, like Seth Godin, Inc., and Entrepreneur, and a bunch of other faves I’m forgetting to mention. Click around; the categories simplify your search, what’s there is hand-picked, but you’ll still get lost for a while. In a good way.

Guy and I aren’t close buddies, so I won’t quote his email, introducing himself and telling me I’m listed on Alltop, but I will quote what I wrote back to him in part:

I’d like to tell you how very cool it is when as big a “name” as yourself says Hi, and introduces himself as if anyone writing a blog for over three minutes doesn’t already know your name. *big smile*

Well, folks, I gushed a little. Alltop is some very fine company to be in, true, but the gushing was really because of his charming letter.***

I’ve got to work a little Customer Experience lesson in here: Never get too big for your britches, and someday folks may gush about your “Aw, shucks” style.

Does this banner make my butt look big? ‘Cause I was thinking of having it printed on my jeans.

Featured in Alltop

Aw, shucks. Thanks, Guy. :)

We will return to the serious matter of growing your business with Maximum Customer Experience in our next article. In the meantime, consider this fair warning. You’ll need to update your bookmarks and feeds and email subscriptions very, very shortly. I love my readers and you have spoken loudly on this subject, so it’s on its way. Besides, I gotta get better digs if I’m gonna have Guy Kawasaki’s friends coming to visit with all of us.

Thank you, dear reader. Our conversations are what makes the MCE Blog a neat place to hang out.

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

*I know, I know. Not a boy. But if I wrote “big girl,” I couldn’t tie in with one of my favorite posts, on lessons from the Big Boys. (She’s a wily one, that Kelly.)

**I can not tell you how much joy spellcheck brought me on this post. The highlights included offering “winkled” for Wikipedia, “Haydn” for hadn (hadn’t, missing the apostrophe and the “t”), “Iscariot” for DiCaprio, and “gonad” for gonna. Normally I don’t share my Maximum Spellcheck Experience but oh my goodness you had to know, didn’t you?

***The first email he sent was standardized. (Proving that standardized letters can still be perfectly written.) The second email, writing back to me, was personal. Nice Guy.