Memories, Reflections and Feedback
Every once and a while I like to do a little reminiscing which might include watching videos of old (70’s or 80’s) songs, looking back at old photographs, or pulling up forgotten files on my computer. This morning I was doing the latter and came upon a whole bunch of testimonials of people who read Appreciation Marketing® back when we launched in the spring of 2009.
What a thrill it was to watch our first published book shoot to #1 on Amazon.com’s national best-seller list, supplanting a pretty good author in Malcom Gladwell and his classic, Outliers, (albeit for only three days). 
In retrospect, for those who haven’t yet read Appreciation Marketing® it may have been inappropriately named. We didn’t hire a professional or run any focus groups (I didn’t even know what a focus group was) and we didn’t really ask a whole lot of advice. We wanted a title with the word “appreciation” in it. We thought first about Appreciation Nation, but thought that sounded too much like a political book. So we typed “Appreciation Marketing” into Google and got back zero hits. Seriously. Zero. So we got excited and that became our trademarked brand. Incidentally, I just tried it again and got back < insert smiley-face emoji here > over 50 million!
So we have it – “Appreciation Marketing®; How to Achieve Greatness Through Gratitude.”
The challenge (there are no problems) is that now it sounds like a business and/or marketing book. It’s really not. It’s a personal development book. Yes, it will help you immeasurably in business but it will also enhance your personal life which, in my opinion, is far more important. Our work is really about helping you to “Achieve Greatness Through Gratitude.”
Anyway, back to the whole inspiration for writing this blog post. I was looking through our customer feedback on Amazon.com and, of course, focused on the ONE negative comment. First off, I’m all about constructive criticism and believe in telling somebody if there’s a problem (in a friendly way) if it might help them to improve. I just have a difficult time understanding people who choose to make nasty comments. Especially if you’re leaving a mean-spirited comment about a book on appreciation and gratitude! I just thought that was funny (in a sad way).
This guy suggested that you should save yourself some time and just read the two words on the sticky note on our book cover.Those two words are “Thank You.” I wonder what his objective was. Did it make him happy? Did he hope it would make us happy? Did he think it would make anonymous readers happy? It probably wasn’t intended to make anybody happy at all. What then? Oh well.
My hope is that you will think about that before you comment on somebody’s Facebook post, or especially on somebody’s business page. What is your motive?
It was interesting advice, nonetheless.
All I can think to respond is, “Thank You!” Oh, and that it might help him to go back and read the rest of the book! Remember that old adage about “judging a book by its cover?”
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