My wife and I will be leaving North Carolina in about seven hours to visit my son in New Jersey. I would rather stay home and work on the computer, but I know my son is looking forward to our visit. Not only is my son excited about our visit my wife is excited also.

You may be wondering what this has to do with marketing, I'm getting to that. My son and my wife aren't the only people excited about the trip. You see I thought I would make someone else happy so I decided to take my grand daughter with us to see her cousins.

I need to tell you about the relationship my grand daughter and I have. When she comes to visit me she tells me she doesn't love me, when she leaves she refuses to say bye to me. Now I know she is just playing, but guess what she said when I called her and asked if she wanted to go to New Jersey with me and see her cousin. She said yes, but just before giving the phone back to her mother she said grand daddy I love you.

Can you see the marketing lesson here? Give someone what they want and they in return are happy to give you what you want in the case of my grand daughter I didn't even have to ask. Of course I didn't decide to take her with us to get anything I just wanted to make her happy, but just seeing her happy is getting something because it makes me feel good.

That is just a small marketing lesson, but since Thanksgiving and Christmas are near wouldn't it be nice if we all tried to just make each other happy, it takes so little and pays back so much. I will be making seven people happy this Thanksgiving and by making them happy they may go out and make another seven people happy.

You know we don't live forever and when the time comes for me to go I think I will be able to go with peace knowing I left some happiness in the world.