Almost 3 years of Smiles
Today is a day that makes me think of love and so it is a day that I have returned to SaGud Things.
My intention, all along, was to try and make the world a better place. I wanted to enable people to share their feelings in a world that tends to shy away from such intimacy. I wanted, from a selfish perspective, to be able to thank an individual beyond just a smile, to give them a token of my appreciation. But I also wanted to see others do the same. And I wanted it to be organic. I didn't want to market this concept. I didn't want to sell it. I wanted it to unfold in a natural way.
An individual would receive a SaGud Thing and be touched by the personal nature of the gift. They would reflect on how it might have made their day. They would go to the site and get their own and the cycle would repeat. This was my model. As crazy at it may sound, it was the only way I wanted to see it happen. I didn't want to be a salesman. I didn't want to buy looks, or advertise, or even try and push it on this site. It was radio silence from me. My last post was almost 3 years ago, days after the site was up. I stayed off, effectively carrying on a social experiment. Would the passing of tokens from one to the other be all that was necessary to grow the concept into a viral phenomenon? The answer is an unequivocal "no".
Over 400 SaGud Things envelopes have dispersed into the world. That's 10,000 SaGud Things. That provided an $800 contribution to the Alzheimer's Association. I can personally attest to having generated a thousand smiles and a thousand better days over the last 3 years. But there hasn't been an order in a long time. Sales have, for all intent and purpose, come to a halt. There seems to be no more interest, no more love out there for saying good things to people. It's a shame because there have been so many stories, so many amazing results, so many accounts of lives actually being changed.
So, in the name of love, I am going to try something that I had not considered in the beginning. I am going to try and market this crazy notion of mine. I am going to try and let the world in on this and I'm going to give it my best. Because I think the world needs love more than ever before. We need to see what makes us all alike and stop looking at the differences. I make this promise today: I am going to give my all to at least insure that more the 400 people know about SaGud Things. And if that can be accomplished, I'll let the world decide.
