Remarkable is something that causes a remark. It's a resume where you list you used to hunt unicorns in Cambodia, it's a website that ranks the fastest lawnmowers in the world, it's an airline that doesn't nickle and dime. Remarkable means something worth talking about.

Being good at something isn't a good thing anymore. Nether is being very good. I mean, let's be honest, Comcast is good at delivering cable internet to my home. But what makes me want to tell people "use Comcast"? They don't have remarkably low prices, or remarkable fast speed, they just work. Nothing to talk about; unless they are bad at it. 

Remarkable can backfire. If something is remarkably bad, then it's still remarkable, but not in a good way. Sure, it gets people talking, but so would Oprah taking a dump in the middle of Michigan Avenue. It's not good for anyone.

In our modern society, you have to remarkable. If you're not, you're worthless. A great modern example is Google. They entered the market in the middle of the .com bust. The market was bad and search engines were a dime a dozen. So what did Google do? They were remarkable. They said screw the search portal, lets just search. They returned relevant results and they did it fast. They made it less graphics intensive and more to the point. IT was remarkable because it worked and worked fast.

Then, they kept being remarkable. They increased their advertising options, opened email, earth, maps, literally hundreds of products, all free. They have spent billions to make no direct money and what's even more remarkable is it worked.

In business, people are hung up on direct sales increase made by purchasing decisions. That is no longer successful. Google has become bigger than major all the major airlines combined and they did it offering free things and spending billions to get there. What does having a chef and 3 meals a day free for it's employees do? What about on-site daycare, dry cleaning, oil changes, and doctors offices do? How does spending all that money affect the bottom line? Because people are happy, people work harder and brighter people want to work for you. It' just remarkable.

Google make no money on Google Earth, or Maps, or anything else. They are free services and they just throw their ads on some of those things. But it's remarkable. You want to use Google products. Google comes out with a browser, for free, with no ads on it. Why? It makes then no money. It generates no research. It does nothing but build their brand. I guarantee you if Microsoft made everything free and made their money from ads on live.com, we would love Vista more than we loved our pets.

So are you remarkable? Does this business decision make you remarkable, or does it move the needle? Remember, moving the needle isn't remarkable, and more importantly, it makes you a hell of a lot less money than being remarkable.

-Walhalla