True "Word-of-Mouth" - at an individual level

Thousands of people, millions of stories, and when you look at it from this perspective, it doesn’t really mean that much.  But when you look in the eyes of one person, as I did with Loa Griesbach, you see a different story and this one has a face, a beautiful face at that.

I met Loa at the Redmond Rousers Rotary meeting last night when she was telling her story and it hit me.  Not that she was a quadriplegic who had been in a terrible car accident.  Nor was it about how a great organization, Pushing Boundaries, was there to help her along the way with her exercise and health needs.  No, it was something else…

It was Word-of-Mouth.  Here was a beautiful young lady, a ballet dancer as a matter of fact, who had a life changing moment one day when she was in a car accident at age 17 and her spinal cord was injured.  Life was never going to be the same.  But even with being on a ventilator she told her story about hope and accomplishment.  She is confined to a wheel chair but still managed to finish high school – no wait, she finished college at Seattle Pacific University with a degree in history – no wait, she is thinking of applying to medical school – unbelievable!

Then I thought, “What could “I” do for her, after hearing her story?”  I could donate, I could empathize, I could even volunteer – but only as one person.  But wait, what business am I in again?  Oh, yea, social media and creating Word-of-Mouth on Steroids for companies.  So it hit me – why shouldn’t Loa get the same treatment?  What if we could spread the word “virally” to my networks of “followers” and they spread to their network and so on until tens of thousands of people know Loa’s story.  Bingo.

So rather than going out and campaigning and fundraising (although that would probably be appreciated by Pushing Boundaries since they are a non-profit), my goal was to just get people to say HELLO to Loa and give her some words of encouragement – virally and via social media.  Get the Word-of-Mouth working to just let her know someone thought about her today and said HI.  So if you are reading this, simply leave her a comment on this post and “MAKE HER DAY.”  Let’s do it…spend 1 minute and create a smile – that’s word-of-mouth on steroids.