We’re not as independent as we think!
No time to read? Listen here!
Early in his career, salesman Joe Girard created his “Law of 250” which says that every person knows on average 250 other people. In his world, that meant that a positive sales experience for one customer had the potential to yield 250 more. So he’d gain not only that relationship, but access to every relationship that person had, their entire network of contacts and friends.
And it worked: through positive word of mouth, Girard became the Guinness Book of World Records greatest retail salesperson in the world, a title he held for 12 consecutive years.
Girard’s outstanding achievement was based on something so simple: understanding our connection to each other. Everything we do and say influences lots of people around us, whether we want it to or not. That can be tough to take in, especially for those of us who pride ourselves on our independence and self-sufficiency.
But beautiful someone, these qualities are an illusion.
A single apple
Just think about a bag of apples at the grocery store. The process of planting, growing, harvesting, shipping, and selling a single apple, much less a bag of them, involves a lot of people.
10 to 20 people to farm, irrigate, protect crops from disease, and harvest the apples.
10 to 15 more people to process the apples, including sorting, washing, and packaging.
Another 5 to 10 people to transport the apples, including truck drivers and logistics experts.
10 to 15 more people for distribution including quality control inspectors and warehouse workers.
Not to mention 10 to 20 people at the grocery store itself to receive the apples and stock them, as well as cashiers to process purchases.
There are also indirect contributors including farm equipment manufacturers and researchers who work to improve apple-growing methods.
In total, depending on the scale of the operation, at least 50 to 100 people play a role in delivering a single apple to a grocery store.
Somebody helped
In July 2012, then-President Barack Obama delivered a speech in Roanoke, Virginia in which he said, “Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.” His opponents jumped on this turn of phrase, taking it out of context and meme-ing it into an anti-business idea.
In context, “that” wasn’t referring to any individual business. Instead, Obama meant the infrastructure, funded by taxpayers, through their representatives who voted to support the roads and bridges that enable commerce to function. We are all interconnected — no one succeeds alone.
A positive ripple — or two
And so in February, this month of connection which we celebrate primarily as romance and friendship, maybe we can think bigger. Our daily lives are an intricate web of connections to each other, and everything we do and say: every smile, every “no problem!”, every kindness and act of encouragement affects the people around us, and the people around them, a positive ripple of hope and optimism that reaches far and wide.
Let’s do this, okay? Let’s start a ripple or two.
#humanconnection #humanityofconnection #rippleeffect