I generally avoid writing about anything political, but today I feel compelled. I think the story speaks for itself, so please click here for the NPR report.

After reading, if you wish to lend your voice to the situation, check out this site.

I will offer a post soon with a more optimistic look at the opportunities that are being presented to some youths today.

The lobby was spotless. The front desk was standard. New. Clean. Nice. But standard. What’s your name? Who are you here to see? Photo ID please. We were then issued the requisite visitor’s passes. That’s when the normalcy disappeared and my excitement escalated.

The normalcy went away when I realized that the elevator didn’t have any buttons inside. My colleagues had entered our destination on the keypad outside the elevator. After that we had to put our trust in the machine hoping it would deposit us at our desired destination. Fortunately, the elevator performed its job well.

As I walked into the offices on the 37th floor of the new 7 World Trade Center building in downtown Manhattan I felt that I had come full circle. In order to explain that I have to back up two years.

In October 2005 I completed work on the book proposal for You’re Addicted to You. At the time a friend of mine had recently gotten a deal with a big publishing company to publish her book. I thought I was all set. I had an in. Isn’t that what it’s all about? Connections.

I sent my friend’s editor my proposal, and I waited. My polite follow-up emails were responded to with polite still-haven’t-had-time-to-look-at-it emails. Still, I had the connection. Everything would work out. Then I read the November, 2005 issue of my favorite magazine, Fast Company, in which they described Berrett-Koehler, a small publishing company in San Francisco.

The company sounded too good to be true. Book publishing is an industry in which publishers own all the power, current authors are tolerated nuisances, and anyone not yet published (whose name doesn’t happen to be Clinton) is valued about as highly as gum stuck to the bottom of your shoe. Yet, Berrett-Koehler (BK for short) was breaking all of those rules.

They partnered with their authors on decisions that other companies made unilaterally like cover design and title. They offered their authors an unheard of out-clause in the contracts that allowed the authors to take their books to another publisher if they became dissatisfied with BK. Oh, and by the way, their books sold more copies on average than the other companies that treated authors so poorly.

This was a no-brainer. BK was the publisher for me. So before I lost my nerve I printed off a copy of my proposal and mailed it to BK – no cover letter, no introduction, no connections, over the transom. Then I waited. And sweated.

On December 5th, the day before my birthday, I received two phone calls. My friend’s editor phoned to tell me she had finally reviewed my proposal. They were going to pass. Then BK called to tell me my dream had come true. They wanted to publish my book. My euphoria was tempered only by the reality choking deadline that I had to deliver my first draft in four months, but that’s another story.

The story here is that this never would have happened if I hadn’t read that magazine article. So when I walked off the elevator into the new corporate headquarters for Fast Company magazine, I had come full circle.

I was there to take a tour of their new offices, which feature wonderful open architecture, all glass walls to allow natural light throughout, and meeting nooks in prime window-front real estate. The building is also gold-level green-certified which is fitting for a magazine which trumpets social and environmental consciousness in business.

Towards the end of the tour the guide showed me and my colleagues their library, and there on the shelf was a gleaming copy of You’re Addicted to You. A second dream was fulfilled for me that day. I saw my book inside Fast Company. Of course, it wasn’t in an article in the actual magazine yet. But it was over the transom, and that’s a start.

Not everyone is a born salesperson. This doesn’t surprise me. However, when you are selling the most valuable asset you will ever own, I would think you would put at least 12 seconds of thought into it. I honestly believe that is all it would take to realize that you shouldn’t leave a pile of dirty dishes in the sink when you are taking pictures of your kitchen for display on the internet. My wife and I are looking at houses and we have been astounded by how little people do to prepare their homes for sale.

Before you think this post is all about home sales, allow me to make this point. We all sell. We sell products, services or ideas at work. We sell suggestions to our significant others and our kids. We are always selling.

All I’m suggesting is that before you take a picture of your home or start explaining a request to your kid, you should take 12 seconds to think about the sale. I encountered five pictures in particular that could not possibly have been considered for 12 seconds.

1. I already told you about the sink piled high with dishes.
2. A picture so blurry I couldn’t tell if it was a living room or a water buffalo.
3. A closeup of a toilet. No kidding. Nothing else in the picture but the inside of the bowl.
4. A close up of a flower. Now I’m not an expert on these things, but what exactly is supposed to happen when I see a picture of a flower? Should I forget that the owner neglected to include pictures of the kitchen?
5. And this one is truly remarkable. A photo of water damage.

I’m just asking for 12 seconds. Is that so much to ask?