The movie Jerry Maguire is stocked with quotable lines. One of my favorites was, ‘It’s not “show friends.” It’s show *business*’, from Bob Sugar, the cutthroat protégé of Tom Cruise’s character, played by Jay Mohr.
Photo credit: Drew Bennett
That’s sort of like the “Greed is Good” of the 90’s. Everybody continues to say it, but it’s a jerky sentiment at the core.
Personally, I prefer show friends over show business, and I was reminded of this when I became part of a string of nearly 200 emails, started by Jim Kukral on August 10, 2010, with the subject, “Affiliate Super Friends.”
Jim sent that initial email to ask a couple dozen marketing friends to help spread the word about the launch of his book, “Attention! This Book Will Make You Money.”
Lots of goofy banter followed, and a day after the initial email, Karen Garcia, of Lab6 Media, shared a new site she’d created at AffiliateSuperFriends.com.
The site featured each of the people from the email with their faces and names on super heroes. Karen had stayed up late into the night to put the site together as a fun thing for a bunch of friends.
The emails continued with friendly jabs and setting plans when we’d all be hanging out together in person soon at Affiliate Summit.
Along the way, Jim was cut out of the emails, so a plan could be hatched to surprise him as he delivered his keynote address at Affiliate Summit East 2010.
Again, Karen Garcia stepped up and created colored capes for all of the affiliate super friends. I have no idea how she knocked that out right before flying across the country for the conference, but it was a nice act of a friend to pull it all together.
The doors at the back of the room opened as I introduced Jim for the keynote, and the crowd of super heroes strolled into the room with capes and masks and sat in the front row.
It was a show of support for a big moment in Jim’s career by a bunch of his friends.
At the end of the day, business is a whole lot more fun when you do it with friends.
If you don’t get that, you’re doing it wrong.