The Rickey Henderson Effect

Let me tell you a story. I'm going to take you back to 1985 and my first baseball game. My dad, at this point, had been working his ass off becoming the manager of his liquor store, which had allowed him to score some really good seats at the Yankees game from the beer distributors.

So there I am with my mother and my late great uncle Misha/Michael (who I miss very much). It was a normal game, but I was excited and standing the whole time. Baseball was my life at 10 years old. Back then I was a much bigger baseball fan than a football fan, so you can imagine what it was like.

So everything is going great, Rickey Henderson catches a fly ball to end the inning, and as he runs into the dugout, he looks up, he looks me directly in the face, and he winks.

And that's it.

That wink took Rickey, oh, I dunno, a hundredth of a second of effort, but over the next five years of my life, my mom bought me a Rickey Henderson Jersey, my mom bought me tons of Rickey Henderson baseball cards, and the name Rickey Henderson came up hundreds of times. I forced my other friends to become Rickey Henderson fans, thus they bought Rickey Henderson jerseys, they went to the baseball card convention where he was giving autographs, and they paid their $50 to get a signed ball. Rickey got a piece of all that action, guys.

I am honestly sick and tired of people asking what the value of a ';)', or an 'lol' on Twitter is. Taking a moment to acknowledge another human being has dramatically more ROI than all you 'internet experts' understand. Human characteristics matter. When you're in the audience for a presentation and the presenter nods at you as she's about to begin, that matters. You're more inclined to agree with that person and believe what she's saying, and more importantly, you're more likely to buy whatever she's selling.

So please. You wanna know what the ROI of a wink is? Just remember Rickey Henderson. Because that wink made him a solid-to-small amount of money from one little guy and that little guy's friends.

At the end of the day, as our emotions translate themselves into the digital world (and yes, I respect that tone is lost at times), acknowledging the presence of followers that you're lucky to even have in the first place is just the right thing to do. Don't you think it's just smart to say "thank you" to the person who just listened to your song 56 times? It's way more likely that they'll buy your next album if you do.

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Thanks for reading this far! If you agree with what I said, do me a solid and share this with your LinkedIn contacts. If not, leave me a comment and let me know why not!