My favorite tree is the one I’m lucky enough to look at almost every day, pictured above.  It sits just outside my office window.  I’ve been told that this tree is a ponderosa pine and is over 100 years old. 

100!  That’s amazing to me.  Think of the vast changes that have happened in our world since that tree began to grow, just a few feet from where I work each day.  Just to give you a sense of how different things are from 100 years ago (from Infoplease), in 1907:

• Oklahoma became the 46th state
• Stamps cost 2 cents
• The President was Teddy Roosevelt
• Yale was the national champion in football
• And, the most shocking thing of all: the Cubs won the World Series!

Things have changed since that tree began it’s life. 

Today, more than 100 years later, it’s “Blog Action Day,” where thousands of people have written about one topic, the environment.  Ours isn’t a political blog, so I’m not going to write a treatise about what you or the government should do about a given environmental problem.  Instead, I’m going to write about trees.

Why trees?

Selling financial services online (which happens to be our business) saves a lot of them.  By my best estimate, consumers have generated about 1 million insurance and loan quotes on our ad network.  Yes, 1 million.  Can you imagine how many trees would have died if those quotes were filled out on paper forms?  I’ve done a quick calculation. Here it is:

• We have generated about 1 million quotes
• Let’s assume 5 pieces of paper saved per quote or lead
• Each tree yields an aveage of 8,333.3 sheets of paper

That works out to 600 trees (1MM * 5 / 8,333.3). 

It’s not an entire rainforest, I know.  But the point is this:  not just in our industry, but in every industry, the net has moved a tremendous amount of commerce from paper to silicon.  That makes me feel good about what we’ve all collectively done with the web in reducing our environmental footprint.  And there is so much more to do to move our industry fully online, both in sales and account service.

Let the Environment Inspire You 

I don’t want my Blog Action Day post to be solely about patting ourselves on the back as internet marketers with all the trees we are saving.  I would also like to talk a little bit about inspiration.  We often look at successful people or companies to get inspired, but I just as often get inspired by things I’ve noticed in the environment.

When I was in Yellowstone national park earlier this year, we visited another tree.  It was a few years older than the one outside my office (and technically, dead).  The petrified tree in Yellowstone (pictured below) has been standing in the same spot for over 50 million years! 

I won’t go into how different the earth was back then, but suffice it to say, the Cubs had not yet garnered their first and only Series win.  Thinking about that old survivor and the 100 year old tree in my back yard helps inspire me to take the long view.  It helps me to consider the implications my choices will have not just for tomorrow but for years or even decades to come.  It also makes me think a bit about survivorship bias. But, that’s another post.

The question I’ll leave you with on this “blog action day” is this.  Are you building something to last?  Something that will be around in a year, 10 years, or even possibly 100?  Or are you just getting through from day to day? 

Photo credits: 1) ponderosa pine photo by Karla Kelly, 2) Yellowstone tree photo by Kevin Keller