I loved this posting from Bill Sherman. For more examples like this I would recommend that you subscribe to his blog 🙂
Yesterday, I traveled from my home in St. Louis to a client onsite in Vancouver, B.C.
When I fly, I’m typically pretty busy. I’m either reading documents, preparing reports, or catching up on much-needed reading. It’s usually my quiet time.
During yesterday’s flight, I struck up a conversation with a couple from Philadelphia. As a result, I heard a wonderful example of local social capital. The couple was traveling on their way to a two-week Alaskan cruise. The elderly man was a passionate gardener (he reminded me of my own grandfather), and he had several vines full of green tomatoes that would ripen before they return.
He hated to see them spoil, so he began a massive cooking adventure of fried green tomatoes. His wife described a kitchen full of cookware, plates, seasonings and oil.
Then, this weekend, the man went around and handed out plates of fried green tomatoes to his neighbors. According to the man: “they were going to go bad on the vine; I hated to see a summer’s worth of care remain unenjoyed.”
I asked him who he took the tomatoes to, and he described a long list.
There was the person across the street who would be collecting the mail while they’re gone;
The family whose teenage son mows their yard;
The neighbor who will be caring for their cat; and
The elderly lady who hosted them for dinner a few weeks ago, etc.
His list kept going while we flew westward. He and his wife were able to come up with over 12 people with whom they’d shared their green-tomato bounty. Surely, they were well-connected with their community and liked people.
Rather than let the tomatoes go rot on the vine; they turned them into an opportunity to create social capital.
4 comments
Great & inspired reading – Small touches make big impact
Inspired reading – Small touches make big impact
Great article. The elderly gentleman that Bill spoke of sounds like someone we would all like to have in our BNI Chapters! Opportunities surround us every day to help out other Chapter members by passing on referrals, but sometimes we are so engrossed in growing our own business that we allow those moments to pass us by. If we were a little more like the avid gardener, we would harvest opportunities to promote BNI members to our clients, thus sowing the seeds of growth for the organisation.
Like many, my mum grew up in a time when nothing was let go to waste. She’s on her own now but has many fruit trees that seem to grow more fruit each year. She makes loads of different spreads and chutneys and shares them around our family, her nieghbours, her visitors, her clients and through her local church shop. She often gives away her recipes so that others can do the same. Like the couple in the story, Mum is also well connected in the community and well liked. Whenever I drive along the road and see front yards with fruit rotting on the ground under the trees, I feel sad to see such a waste of good fruit and the opportunity to share. If you have ripe fruit you don’t want, pop it in a bag and leave it out by your gate with a small sign ‘ free to a good home’ – someone like my mum could pick it up and drop you back some of the best spreads you’ll ever taste!
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