A Bottle of Pellegrino and the One Lesson I’ll Never Forget That Seth Godin Taught Me
8 years ago I made a video. I was young, excited, and starting to share things via video online.
I have no idea why I felt the need to send the video to Seth Godin. But I did. I don’t even remember what I said in the video I sent to him.
He responded. I couldn’t believe it. 8 years later I’ll never forget what he said or how he made me feel. He said,
“Did you know that they ADD the bubbles to San Pellegrino, I was amazed. Nice video shane.”
That’s it. That was the response. I remember it more than almost any email over the last 8 years.
Why?
It’s the most obscure thing in the video. It’s the bottle of water I was drinking. It’s what no one else would ever notice.
Mostly, he was letting me know that he watched the video. I remember the feeling. I smiled. Realized he actually did watch it. Never forgot that email.
Today I received an email intro. T.A. McCann, who today announced he’s joining PSL Labs in Seattle, intro’d me to a developer he respected.
For whatever reason, maybe because I’m always looking for the Pellegrino bottle these days, I noticed the person’s email address was a “.sx” domain. I had never seen that before.
I didn’t even think about my response but once I wrote it I remembered the email from Seth.
I looked up “.sx.” Learned something. Thought I would share that fun fact with him. I do this all the time because I remember how I felt when Seth Godin did it to me. I don’t know if people will feel like I felt. At minimum, it makes the email different. Hopefully shows that I care. I did some research. I didn’t respond blindly. That’s the point. Here’s the email response. I learned about Sint Maarten. 🙂
This is the question on my mind more than anything these days:
When everyone is saying the same shit, how do we start a different discussion? How do we actually be memorable?
Find the Pellegrino bottle. They are sitting everywhere. Here’s the response from Spencer once he saw this post and the email.
Thanks to T.A. for telling me I should write this post after he saw my email. Anyone lucky enough to work with T.A. should. As of today, now you can at PSL Labs in Seattle. If I were to start a company again, I’d 100% think about working with this team.