Serve to Be Great: Leadership Lessons from a Prison, a Monastery, and a Boardroom

Chapter 6Why Serving Others Is a Highly Effective Marketing Tactic

October 29, 2012, was not a typical Monday on the east coast of the United States by any stretch of the imagination. By 9:00 that morning, Hurricane Sandy made landfall just north of Atlantic City, New Jersey. The storm had enough power to wash away a 50-foot section of the Atlantic City boardwalk, and it devastated most of the New Jersey coastline. But the impact of the storm extended well beyond New Jersey.

Sandy was the largest Atlantic hurricane on record, with winds spanning roughly 1,100 miles and affecting states as far inland as Wisconsin. The storm resulted in almost $70 billion in damage, making it the second most costly storm in U.S. history, surpassed only by Hurricane Katrina. Sandy also resulted in the deaths of nearly 300 people in seven different countries.

The headquarters office for Next Jump is only 130 miles away from where Sandy made landfall in New Jersey. Although the Next Jump offices are located numerous floors up in the building, they were nevertheless rendered useless by the storm. New York governor Andrew Cuomo had declared a state of emergency three days earlier. All the major airports in the city shut down. The subways were sealed off to prevent them from being flooded and submerged as they had been during Hurricane Irene in 2011. By mid-morning that Monday, much of Manhattan had lost power, including the Flatiron district, where the Next Jump headquarters is located.

Although the ...