Smell the Roses

You would think people who travel a lot would be curious about the world around them. Maybe if they are on vacation and leave their laptops behind and let their cell phone batteries run down. But business travel is different.

One airport is like another. One cab or shuttle is like the next. Sure there are moments on the road when one suddenly notices something novel – Lucky Lindy’s Spirit of St. Louis hanging from the rafters at Lambert Field in St. Louis, say, or the light show that greets you in the lobby of the W hotel in Atlanta. Those are exceptions, however. For the most part I catch myself walking through baggage claim and asking, “Where am I?” I’ve been known to get into cabs with my head buried in my Blackberry when the cab driver turns and asks, “Where to?” and I respond, “I have no clue.”

Sometimes I’ve rented so many cars in a week I can’t find the car in a parking garage to save my life. I once rented a car in Louisville, parked it at a hotel, got a lift to the airport, and forgot about it. A month later I got a call during a dinner party:

“Mr. Mayer, do you have our car?”

“What car?”

“The car you rented from us five weeks ago at Louisville airport.”

“Louisville, I don’t remember being in Louisville.” A pause. “Uh-oh.”

That one cost a pretty penny. I expensed a day and ate the rest. National was nice to charge me only for a month. After all, I hadn’t put a lot of wear and tear on the car!

Recently I arrived in Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Atlanta. It’s one of those enormous new airports, similar to the ones in Denver or Pittsburgh, where it takes longer to go from Terminal A to D than it does to fly from New York to Rome. You wear out a pair of shoes walking between gates. The one compensation is that these mega-terminals are now like shopping malls. One can actually spend a pleasant couple of hours browsing through the book stores, sipping a cup of coffee, or doing some window shopping. A friend of mine recently asked why somebody doesn’t offer spa services and manicures, for travelers with time on their hands. I forgot to tell her that the last time I flew through Houston I found somebody has done just that.

Back to Atlanta. Another mile-long hike past the national brand name stores. A ride on an escalator past posters of Tiger Woods advertising for Accenture. A ride on the inter-terminal monorail with no conductor and a mellifluous voice repeating over and over: “Approaching Terminal B – B as in ‘Boy’.” Nothing new here.

I arrive at the baggage terminal. I emerge from the homogeneous monorail. I head to the usual escalator. I pass the usual posters.

Then I look up. The escalator is as steep as Mt. Everest, maybe steeper. Fortunately it’s moving. But evidently not fast enough. Somebody brushes alongside me. He’s a young man in a light green camouflage uniform. He is running up the steep stairs. A backpack is bouncing on his back. He holds a small shopping bag in front of him. He’s taking the steps two at a time. Now he takes them three at a time. I get winded just watching him. He climbs and climbs and then he disappears at the top, as if into a cloud.

I start to climb the moving escalator myself. I take the steps slowly at first. Then I quicken my pace. Then I take two at a time. I want to see where the soldier is going. I want to see who he is greeting.

I get to the top of the stairs and emerge into the terminal. In front of me I see the soldier’s back. He is bent over. His backpack is still now. His shopping bag is on the ground. There are two sets of arms around him, holding him. They are frozen. I stand there for a minute, and they stand there, too. There is an older woman and a young woman. And they are holding their soldier and not letting him go.

Behind them is a long sign. It reads: “Welcome to Atlanta.” Five people are holding it up and they wear caps and shirts that read USO. They are smiling. More soldiers in camouflage are coming to the top of the escalator and emerging into the terminal. They are greeted by cheerful cries of “Welcome.” Behind the sign is a long table with volunteers. Atlanta is one of the two major embarkation points for US soldiers returning from the Mideast.

A man in civilian clothes walks past my soldier. As he does so he turns back. “Thank you,” he says, and moves on.

I have been in many airports. After a while I stopped seeing the families saying goodbye. The mothers and fathers flying back after visiting the new grandkids. The college students heading off to a junior year abroad. The husbands and wives going off to take care of the aging parents. At baggage claim I stopped noticing the reunions. The embraces. The tears of happiness.

But I will never forget my soldier. He took the escalator as if it were an enemy bunker on a hilltop. And he won it: for family, for country and for me.

 

Trees for Tots

Nobody likes a braggart. We like our winners to be modest, a little less like Mark Spitz and more like Michael Phelps.

Consider the Academy Awards. It’s not the dreadful clips of movies that I didn’t see and never will but rather the acceptance speeches that get my attention. The recipients walk to the podium, trying to pretend that 30 million people are not watching. Strange that in an industry that is completely scripted, one doesn’t know until the recipients get to the microphone what is going to come out of their mouths. Will it be a modest clogged-throat first timer holding his or her Oscar like a newborn baby? Or a pompous fist-pumping producer that waves the Oscar around like a cell phone. Those last guys really get my goat. I secretly hope they’ll trip over their shoelaces when they leave the podium.

Here at MXenergy we occasionally get an award. But we rarely talk about it. We’ve been on Inc. Magazine’s list of fastest growing companies and somebody sent us a copy of Entrepreneur Magazine’s list. Both of those ended up buried on a shelf of books. Recognition is nice to receive but frankly it scares me. It wasn’t long ago that you could pick up a copy of Forbes or Fortune and pretty well bet the guy on the cover was going to do the perp walk within a year or two. Enron’s Ken Lay, for example, or Tyco’s Dennis Koslowski (he of the $6,000 shower curtain).

No, stay out of the limelight is my philosophy. Keep your head down, do a good job, and people will hear about you by word of mouth. Stick your head up and blow your horn and you may as well have a sign on your back saying “Kick me.”

With that preface, I confess a little pride at a little honor that recently came our way: The Connecticut Quality Improvement Partnership award. Few people know about the award and we didn’t lobby for it. When we received notice it was in an email, but we couldn’t figure out what the email was for because the sender had forgotten the attachment. We received two awards. One was for our “Earth Friendly/Project Green Gift” program. We introduced this last year to help homeowners and businesses offset the harmful effects of carbon dioxide emissions. We’re all responsible for the quality of the air we breathe, but sometimes we wait for the other guy to do something. Something like stop driving, or throwing the computer out the window, or cooking over the fireplace. It sounds good to be green but it’s easier to let others take responsibility.


The other award was for our “Fixed Price Protection” program that enables residents to navigate a complicated energy market and insulate themselves from volatile energy prices.

The two silver-level Innovation Prizes were granted by the Connecticut Quality Improvement Award Partnership, a non-profit partnership among the private sector and The State of Connecticut, which is America’s oldest state-level quality award. For 13 years they have used the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Criteria for Performance Excellence.

According to Sheila Carmine, executive director of Connecticut Quality Improvement Award Partnership, the ingenuity of Connecticut’s innovations is more intense each year. Evidently, Connecticut continues to prove it is an innovative state that not only has entrepreneurs that come up with innovative ideas but who also pursue them until they reach their marketplaces.

MXenergy’s Fixed Price Protection program is pretty conventional; several marketers have offered something similar over the past ten years, although MXenergy is pretty unique in offering terms as long as three years. The Earth Friendly Partner/Project Green Gift is almost unique, however. A CO2 customer-friendly offset program for home and business is MXenergy’s principal answer to global warming. We introduced the first such program in North America to help energy consumers purchase carbon dioxide offsets. Since then we have purchased 100,000 tons of CO2 offsets. Through our traditional marketing programs, as well as Project GreenGift , MXenergy has enrolled some 25,000 customers in the program since November 2006.

MXenergy was recognized among 60 other Connecticut-based companies whose programs were judged on their ability to solve problems through innovation. All CQIA Innovation Prizes were ranked by twelve Baldrige-trained CQIA examiners. The awards were handed out November 7 at Water’s Edge Resort in Westbrook, Connecticut.

I think it was Civil War Union General William Sherman who said of the Presidency, “If nominated I will not run, if elected I will not serve.” We probably would say the same thing about our business. Nevertheless, I’ll admit that – particularly in the midst of the current financial crisis in our country - it is nice to be recognized, especially when we didn’t seek the limelight.