Thanks to @davis_danny for passing me this awesome Marvel cartoon.

Coconut water. Crazy awesome.

Yesterday I pointed out a new startup called, Refer.ly, that aims to reward people for referring products and services to their friends.

I just saw a commercial for Directv, which has a referral program that is pretty awesome. If you refer someone to Directv, you get $10 off of your bill…every month. Presumably as long as your friend stays a subscriber to Directv. The commercial shows a dude that gets $30 off a month on his bill because he referred three friends. That’s awesome.

I love this trend. I’ve long thought that this is a far better use of “marketing” dollars than the traditional means. And by traditional means, I mean anything other than word of mouth. Think about it, if you can get people to talk about your product to your friends, could anything be better than that?

Nope.

This is the future. I’ve been waiting for this for five years. We will become the media and Refer.ly is a tiny peek at what that will look like.

Here’s a snippet from an article I was interviewed for back in 2010:

“Advertisers aren’t really giving incentives to Facebook users — and they should,” Hilimire said. “People are writing up movie reviews or posting links to their new Apple computer just for fun, but if companies start building this into their marketing programs by offering credit, discounts or free small gifts for sharing their thoughts, the impact could be huge.”

It’s coming.

Thanks to @angela_ann for alerting me to this. Very funny.

I was really excited to be able to attend Chick-fil-A’s Leadercast event last week. They always get incredible speakers and, while they are all obviously focused on leadership (notes from a past session I took by Seth Godin), they all have a theme and this one was on the power of choices.

A few of my notes:

Angela Ahrendts, CEO of Burberry, said:

“The biggest mistake a leader can make is not listening.”

While I’m not going to argue the importance of listening, I don’t think its the biggest mistake. In my opinion, the biggest mistake a leader can make is NOT ACTING.

Andy Stanley, author and founder of North Point Ministries, said:

“The goal of leadership is not to eradicate uncertainty, but rather to navigate it.”

He spent a lot of time talking about uncertainty and how to deal with it. To me that goes back to the first point I made about taking action as a leader. I’ve seen uncertainty cripple a leader and company. You’ll never have all the information and a true leader knows when to make the call, and when to wait for more certainty.

Marcus Buckingham, author and speaker, said:

“If we have to know without a doubt that the choices we are making are the perfect ones, we risk never making any choices at all.”

Bingo.

He said that every leader should ask themselves three questions:

1. What would my replacement do?

2. What would a great leader do?

3. What story do you want to tell?

I love these questions, particularly the first one. I’m going to try to remember to ask that question. It should make you forget all of the baggage of the company and the heritage and really think about the vision and goals of the organization.

Tebow also spoke and I found him to be an entertaining speaker. Although the format could have been better – he was being asked questions from Soledad O’Brien, I’d have rather seen him speak on his own – he was inspiring and came off completely genuine. I’m neither a Tebow fan nor a Tebow hater, but I admire anyone who has accomplished what he has and can stay humble through the process.

If you happen to get a chance to go to this event next year, I highly recommend it.

I’m giving a presentation tomorrow on “The Connected Consumer”. One of the examples I’m going to be talking about is this incredible Philips Vital Signs Camera App. Check it out:

If you find yourself moderating a panel, and I hope you do because it can be a lot of fun, here are some tips that I’ve found useful along the way.

I had the great fortune this weekend to spend all day Saturday with my college tennis coach and some former teammates in Charlotte. The reason we were all there was to commemorate the new tennis facility – its amazing – and dedicate it to coach.

I was personally there for two reasons. The first is that I look for any and every opportunity to make sure that coach knows how important he was – and is – to my life. I’ve written about this before, like the time he took off his shirt in the freezing cold, but the man has taught me so much and impacted who I am so greatly that I try to go out of my way to make sure he knows that.

The second reason is that when I was in my first year of college I chose to play in a weekend tournament instead of attending a young person’s church confirmation. He had chosen me to be his confirmation sponsor and clearly looked up to me (I was probably four years his elder and we trained at the same tennis academy). And I cared deeply about this friend and was blown away and humbled when he had chosen me. We had what now I clearly see was a meaningless tennis tournament that weekend and I apologized to him that timing didn’t work out for me to come back to Atlanta to attend his confirmation. I’ve regretted that decision ever since and given that I don’t even recall where that tournament was or how I did, it obviously wasn’t very important in the grand scheme of life. I think about that all the time and wish I could go back and make the right decision.

Ever since then I’ve tried like heck to be at events where my friends or family are having a “big moment”. Even when its really difficult or expensive, I do my best to get there because I don’t want to feel that regret. And I want to be there for them.

Case in point, when I got married in June of 2000, my coach had to be in Charlotte the next morning so he drove four hours to my wedding on that Saturday, attended my wedding and stayed until we left, then drove four hours back to Charlotte. It would have been so easy for him to send me a note and I would have completely understood. In fact, many people did. But as usual, he made the right decision and in the process, taught me yet another life lesson.

Several of my teammates were not able to come this weekend, mostly because they live in other countries or had serious commitments that they could not get out of. But they all got together and made a video expressing their appreciation for coach and what he meant to their lives. I have to think his influence made them even think to do such a thing.

I had an incredible time this past weekend reconnecting with coach

The next day we met up with a few of the other players for breakfast before we headed back to Atlanta. I asked what they did that night after we went back to the room around 10:30pm. They said they went downtown for a little while and when I asked how they got there, because I knew their wives were already downtown and they didn’t have a car, plus – cough, cough – its possible they had a little alcohol, they replied with the only logical answer – coach drove us.

Thanks coach, for everything. I can only hope that one day my children are able to have someone like you in their lives.

Incredibly, this was sent to me by @gumboshowjoe, a real Google Fan Boy.