Sending Fresh Maine Lobsters To Someone? Be Very Careful!

Today I want to share a true story with you.

It’s something that happened to me when I was attempting to market myself to someone who I had and have the upmost respect for.

As my 4 or 5 avid blog readers know, a few of my previous blog posts have contained WhackedOut marketing ideas for a tree service company and even a beef jerky company.  And today I wanted to dive into another direction… marketing yourself.

Especially in these days and times, doing whatever we can do to market ourselves is something we have to be doing constantly as entrepreneurs.  We need to do whatever we can to attract attention to ourselves and/or our businesses.

And as the economy dips and flutters, more and more entrepreneurs are getting a little more creative, or shall I saw WhackedOut with their marketing - and that is a very, very good thing for all of us.

Now there may come a time when you are marketing yourself when you really want to do something special for someone who has helped you, and/or someone that you’d really like to establish a friendship with.

Whatever you do… make sure you do a little home work about that person so that you don’t make the same mistake I did… here’s the true story:

A few years ago I was doing copywriting and putting together product launches for a very well known marketer/author.  I had visited him at his estate a few times where he shared a lot of incredible knowledge with me, and I wanted to send him a nice “thank you” for his time.

When I arrived back home, I searched around the Internet, trying to find something nice to send to him.  Ahhh yes.  Fresh Maine lobsters.  That’s a nice gift… or so I thought.

I ordered two large Maine lobsters and had them shipped to his home.  Two days later I received a very angry email from him about how upset he was to open the box and find two live lobsters.  

NowI won’t share all of the details of that email here, but let’s just say he was very angry with me.  I felt about this ——–> . big.

Come to find out, he didn’t eat meat or seafood and is a huge animal lover.  Seeing the live lobsters in the box nearly gave him a heart attack.  And he also mentioned in his email that he had sent the lobsters back to me.

When I read that email, I just sat there with a very sick feeling in my stomach.  I felt absolutely horrible.  I must have wrote and re-wrote my reply email to him no less than 30 times over the course of two hours.

I just couldn’t find the words to write.  It felt like there was nothing I could say that could repair the damage  I created to our new friendship.  He’ll never work with me again, I thought to myself.

Finally after typing, deleting, and retyping, I settled on something that I had hoped would undo some of the damage I had caused.  It was just a few sentences instead of 10+ paragraphs I had first written, and I said something like: I feel horrible. I am truly, truly sorry. I will make you feel a lot better about this - I will email you in two days… or something like that.

The moment the lobsters arrived, my girlfriend (now wife) and I were all ready to put my “friendship rebuilder plan” into action.

We jumped into my car and drove a couple of hours to the ocean.  At the time we were living in New Hampshire, so I drove up the coast, just a few minutes away from Maine.

It was freezing outside.  I’m talking below zero with the wind chill.  We knew that we had to move fast.

I grabbed the box of lobsters, gave my girlfriend a camera and said follow me!  We ran down the beach to the crashing waves.  I quickly opened the box, cut the rubber bands that were around the lobster claws, and took them out of the box.

“Quick, take the picture!”  I held the lobsters up, my girlfriend snapped the photo and I placed the lobsters back into the Atlantic ocean off the coast of Maine - where they came from in the first place.

(Edit: I searched 3 computers, an external hard drive, and 8 photo albums for the photo to post here.  Sadly, I’m not able to locate it.  When I do, it’ll be posted here.)

We had almost forgotten about our nearly frostbitten hands and faces as we both stood there looking out into the ocean, thinking about the good deed we just did.  Although I was snapped back to reality when I realized that I could no longer feel my feet.  

They had gotten soaked when I went into the water to return the lobsters - and I’m sure I was just a few moments away from having solid blocks of ice for feet!

When we arrived home, I uploaded the photo and sent my friend an email sharing the whole experience with him.  He was thankful.

Although we still do get together every once in awhile now and exchange an email or two now and then, to this day my successful mission to free the lobsters has never been spoken about again.

So again, if you’re planning on doing something special for someone like sending them a basket of fruit, a gift basket, wine, or even lobsters for that matter, do some asking around first!

Rob

P.S… If you are looking for a wonderful “thank you” gift to send someone, a WhackedOut Marketing teddy bear is surely to put a smile on their face.  And by the way, I’m still waiting for the first person to send me a photo of themselves wearing a WhackedOut Marketing tee-shirt!  The FIRST person who does will get a 100% free 10-minute brainstorming & idea session with me on the phone!