Faith In Humanity Restored

February 10, 2009

As many know, I’m a proud part of the SEO/SEM industry. While the industry itself certainly has its fair share of assholes, I’ve learned to ignore most of them and go on about my business simply pretending they don’t exist. The support and encouragement I received when I was brand new to the scene FAR outweighed any of the negative.

Recently, though, I was floored by the generosity of one of the awesome members of my Twitterverse. For the past week or so I have been promoting my desire to go to IM Spring Break. Lucky for me, IMBroadcast is sponsoring a contest that covers both the conference registration fee and the hotel. Of course, I had to throw my hat in the ring to win it!

After sending a link to that post out via Twitter hoping to illicit some support from my Tweeps, I received the following e-mail:

I read your blog and heard your story. I’ve had hard times before and, trust me, they get better. Anyway, if you don’t win the contest I’ll be glad to pay your $500 registration. Seriously, no strings. You seem like a really nice person, and I’d just like to see you do well. Not asking for any personal info. Just a genuine offer (that would be fine if it never went further..I’m really not looking for anything). When I had hard times, there were people to help pick me up that I never would have imagined. I wish you all the best going forward and would love to help. I understand it would be natural to be skeptical. As far as mutual people we know, I imagine there could be some that would verify I’m not totally off the wall. I figured you may know some folks from the [removed] that may know a bit of my background. Obviously this is my work email address. So, just to be clear, I’m asking for absolutely nothing and want nothing. Say the word and I’ll register you online with simply the info that’s on your blog. Nothing more to it.

I was flabbergasted…shocked…befuddled…and incredibly touched that someone who doesn’t know me at all would offer to pay for my IM Spring Break registration. I, of course, turned down the offer initially. Despite the undeniable generosity and sincerity of the offer, I just couldn’t accept $500 from anyone with nothing to offer in return, aside from gratitude.

So, we e-mailed back and forth a few times with me sincerely thanking him for the offer, but declining and he insisting that he really wanted to do it. Ultimately we came up with a solution that we could both live with – I’d do some work on his blog in exchange for the money. At least that way I could sleep at night knowing that I hadn’t taken advantage of his generosity by offering absolutely nothing in return, aside from my undying gratitude and whatever good Karma would come his way for being such an awesome guy!

Needless to say, the offer – in and of itself – was enough to restore my faith in humanity. Despite the world we live in and the madness that surrounds us everyday, I have known for some time that good people exist. I’ve been lucky enough to find a lot of them in my industry already. Without them, I don’t know what I would have done after losing my job back in December. They’ve offered me work, encouragement, pep talks, and passed my name along to others looking for bloggers, researchers, etc. This, though…this was just over the top awesome.

Good people do exist. And I am thankful on a daily basis that I’m lucky enough to be able to have met so many of them online. Social Media can be a scary place and there are a lot of weirdos online. Without it, though, I’d have never had the chance to meet some of the nicest and most generous among us. What a world we live in, eh? With my faith in humanity restored, I’m off to get some work done.

This post is dedicated to Matt and to everyone – you know who you are – who has had a hand in reminding me that Karma isn’t just there to take the legs out from under those who deserve it, but to help pick up those who have been knocked down when they didn’t. I can’t thank you guys enough!

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