Marketing

Written by RJ on December 18, 2013. Posted in Discovery, Healing

I have attended two functions where I thought it might have been nice to have something like these to hand out. Once I was at a Breast Cancer Survivor Education Day held by the Breast Cancer Network of Western New York. I talked to quite a few people there and I think I would have passed out several cards that day had I owned them. Actually, I think I would have gone through 25 or 30 of them, easy. Everyone I talked to asked me about my reason for attending. I explained that I had recently lost my wife and came to support and for support. I could have told them more about my story with a prop like this business card. And if they took one of those home with them, maybe they would have dialed up the website and found something of interest.

On a different day, I was at a Hospice seminar about grief and the holidays. There were about 50 people in attendance for that event and I probably could have handed a card to each of them, especially the Hospice speakers. It would have been another opportunity to help a very specific and captive audience by getting them to read my website. And then there was that day when I was getting my haircut and told my stylist Amy, about losing Coleen. Her friend and co-worker Heather overheard our conversation and got upset. She had lost her husband several months prior and was dealing with a lot of hurt and grief. It would have been nice to give her one of these cards, too. Maybe she could have called me or checked in on-line. At least she would have had something with some information on it that might have helped her somehow. Or she could have thrown it away, too. At least she would have been faced with a decision.

So, who the hell do I think I am that I need personal business cards to carry around with me? What makes me so important? I don’t know and I don’t know.

But what I do know is that I think I am developing a message. By sitting at this keyboard with my notes, feelings, memories, tears and Kleenex and typing what I feel, I think I am developing a message that just might help others. It might teach people that when a loss happens, it doesn’t have to mean that all is lost. If someone like me can find strength from within and take strength from others and grow in to a new person with a different direction, then why can’t the rest of us? I believe this website is therapeutic. I believe that people can receive strength, inspiration and encouragement from it. I believe that is the message that Coleen wants me to convey. I believe that’s how she wants to keep helping people from the new dimension she now inhabits. And I believe the truths that I write about, the truths I learn more about everyday, are meant to be healing to not just me, but for anybody paying attention. And I want to get more people paying attention. So I guess that’s who I think I am and that’s what makes me so important that I think I need to carry business cards around with me.

I have two dear friends very special to me who read this blog religiously and I have gotten incredible feedback, inspiration and encouragement from them. I know that by reading what I write, they are very inspired by me and that is such an awesome complement to receive. I am an amateur here, a new swimmer in these waters. But I will not drown or struggle for breath. As much as I have no idea what I’m doing, I know exactly what I’m doing. Business cards might not be something that most retired guys carry around, but it feels right to me. It feels a little like marketing. Maybe I’ll have some refrigerator magnets made next.

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