Last week, I had interactions with two organizations that did exactly what they said they would do. Thanks to Brad and his team at Catalyst and to Christoper Justice at Sparkskight. Neither asked or expected anything in return, they just did great work.

There are very few endeavors where perfect is possible (bowling is one, of course). It turns out that when you take on a complex task like putting on a conference or shooting a video, you won’t deliver perfect. 300 is a random event, not something achievable.

In those situations (which means most of the time for most of us) the question is, "what do you do when things don’t go exactly the way you planned a month ago?" And it turns out that if your bias is to always make it right, to use grace and flair to overdeliver at every turn, you’ve just discovered the single most important secret of marketing. Because when you amaze and delight, people talk about you.