Triple Bottom Line of Soul? > Trust + Empathy = Business + Friendship

This piece is an unabashed Valentine (yes, in September) to a friend who happens to do great work, selflessly helps his pals, does it all with a wonderfully ingratiating manner, and deserves the spotlight he’d never seek for himself. Now I have never sent a Valentine to a man, so bear with me. All this is new.

For you who are so self important to absorb the takeaways for this piece, read the bolds.

· · ·Or maybe there is a reason you don’t,,hmm.· · ·

I’m writing about him not just because I admire him as a person but also because the way he runs his business is a perfect example for anyone who wants to provide real value to his customers, er, friends so they’ll keep coming back.

“We are the fight, we are the fury of our will

We are the sound of the marauders

Breaking down walls, as we search for the proof of…

Our true selves” Gregory Markel

I’ve lived my life as a nails-tough negotiator of everything, specializing at RampRate in contracts and service-level agreements and deals. But when it comes to “want-tos” instead of “have-tos,” spending time with Gregory Markel is always a (too-rare) want-to.

I first met Gregory when he was performing on stage at the now-closed Knitting Factory nightclub in Hollywood. In between effortlessly spinning out melodies, he quipped important notions. On another occasion he gifted four people gifts of professional massages, simply because he was grateful for his membership in a business networking group, METal.

I remember so many times him raising awareness for efforts such as the World Wildlife Fund, Stand Up 2 Cancer, the National AIDS Training Marathon and SEM Cares.

He once gave a group of us unknowns the dual great gifts of his presence and a gallon bottle of Gran Marnier liqueur. How sweet. Such a curious gift. He left an impression, like an adwords that had 100%  conversion.

It turned out Gregory also has a day job, one even more confounding and mysterious than enchanting strangers with a musical performance. Gregory also runs Infuse Creative, a company that specializes in the black art and white science of search-engine optimization, branding, media planning and buying.

I say black art because the SEO/SEM industry, as it’s known, has plenty of charlatans and scam artists, fast-talkers who claim they can move your website’s rankings onto the first page of search results (i.e., the only ones anyone ever looks at) so you can make big money.

“Automobiles are free of egotism, passion, prejudice and stupid ideas about where to have dinner. They are, literally, selfless. A world designed for automobiles instead of people would have wider streets, larger dining rooms, fewer stairs to climb and no smell, dangerous subway stations.” – P.J. O’Rourke

Gregory by contrast, is the real deal, his company handling the SEO/SEM needs of lots of big-name brands, celebrities and behemoth corporations so they keep coming back for more. But what helps make him special is how he treated a not-very-big-at-all client, me. As you all know, I think I know everything, but for me, Gregory is the go-to guy for any issue in this industry. The clients I  have spoken to rave about his  firms insight, performance, and integrity. And trust me those are tough clients.

Recently, I had been grappling for ways to improve my blog , er manifesto site, so that more people might find and think about all these rants that I put out. Yes I  have a purpose. My goal isn’t traffic, its the measurement of intent. More later.

As I like to do, I reached out to some of my smart friends, including Gregory, for guidance on a topic where I didn’t know enough. “Don’t worry,” he said, “We’ll figure it out.” Always gracious, always concise and just full of wonderful. Why me?

And he did figure it out for me, putting his people to work making my site laser focused on findable, more searchable and more accessible against my golas. He went about cleaning up my messes, then charged me a gargantuan sum, which is to say, “Nothing. Zero. No charge.” He did the work and then said, “Here’s your gift.” “ I am happy to help you with your brand”. It needed to be done. Whew. The chasm of Tony and SuperTony getting closed. He may not even know his insight drove my writing style, again focused on my goals.

“Selfless service alone gives the needed strength and courage to awaken the sleeping humanity on one’s heart.” – Sri Sathya Sai Baba

I couldn’t even think how to repay him. What do you get for a guy who already has just about everything: a great demeanor, smart and humble, an excellent public speaker, calm, good-hearted, good-natured, empathetic and successful? Yes, I’ve made him sound like Mother Teresa with different body parts, but suffice it to say I’m a huge, and hugely grateful, fan. Not for the help on this blog, but as a great role model.

If Google were to transform its search engine into one that ranked people based on the so-called “Triple Bottom Line,” Gregory would be the top link. That new Google one-key search for “G” would pop up with his name, not Google’s.

I searched in vain for some appropriate way to thank Gregory for all he does. Then it occurred to me the best thing I could do is talk about Gregory using the same megaphone he so wonderfully shined up for me.

Gregory believes, like I do, that a win-WIN in business is one where the customers feel like they got 90 percent of the transaction’s total value. His approaches to business and to life are an ongoing lesson in trust: doing the right thing by others is the right way to live your life, allowing you to realize more benefits than you may ever even know.

Gregory is one of those pay-it-forward guys. As you walk through life, how many people stick out in your experience for operating that way? Do you remember them like I do? Here in the week of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, it’s a time of reflection and consideration of the time past and the year ahead. I want to be more like Gregory, putting more in than I take out, adding to the sum total of truth, beauty and thankfulness in the world.

In honor of the New Year, I’ll be sending a pressure cooker to my friend. It’s something he probably doesn’t have, will keep him healthier and most importantly keep him on the planet longer, making it better for me and everyone else.

Here’s to you, buddy, and thanks.

“We are formed and molded by our thoughts. Those whose minds are shaped by selfless thoughts give joy when they speak or act. Joy follows them like a shadow that never leaves them.” – Buddha

The Unseen Ledger: In an Age of Algorithms, Can We Still Trade in Trust?

We are living between worlds, caught in the slipstream of collapsing narratives. The old maps of meaning are burning, and the digital cartographers are busy drawing new ones, optimized for engagement but barren of soul. In this landscape of algorithmic determinism and transactional relationships, the very concept of unwavering trust feels like a forgotten currency, a relic from a less efficient age. We are told to scale, to automate, to optimize the human element out of the equation. But what if the most powerful code is not written in Python, but in the quiet, repeated acts of human integrity? What if the ultimate competitive advantage is not a better algorithm, but a deeper soul?

I remember the first time I saw Gregory Markel hold a room. It wasn’t a boardroom, but the sticky-floored, low-lit cavern of the old Knitting Factory in Hollywood. He was on stage, pulling melodies from the air, but it was the spaces between the notes that held the power. Later, in a sterile networking event, he gifted four of us professional massages, a gesture of gratitude so unexpected it felt like a glitch in the social matrix. And I remember him arriving once to a gathering of strangers, not with a business card, but with a gallon bottle of Gran Marnier, its amber liquid catching the light, a silent offering that spoke more than any pitch deck. The weight of that bottle, its absurd generosity, left an impression that no ad campaign could ever purchase.

Gregory’s day job is in the digital trenches, running an SEO and branding firm, an industry rife with charlatans selling the snake oil of first-page rankings. It is a world of shadows and mirrors, a system designed to manipulate the digital ghosts that dictate our reality. Yet, he operates on a different protocol. While the industry chases fleeting metrics, he builds on a foundation of trust so solid it feels like bedrock. He understands that the digital economy, for all its complexity, is still downstream from the economy of human relationship. His work is not about gaming the system, but about revealing the inherent value within it, a kind of structural integrity that cannot be faked or bought. He’s not just optimizing websites; he’s re-calibrating the very meaning of value.

For years, I have prided myself on being the nails-tough negotiator, the one who lives in the fine print of contracts and service-level agreements. My world is one of have-tos, of leverage and calculated exchange. To receive a gift like the one Gregory gave me—a complete, no-strings-attached overhaul of my website's architecture—was profoundly unsettling. It exposed the poverty of a purely transactional existence. He saw the gap between the man I was and the man I was trying to become, and instead of exploiting it, he simply built a bridge. In his quiet, selfless act, he revealed my own guardedness, my own fear of receiving something I hadn’t explicitly earned. It was an initiation, a reminder that the strongest walls we build are the ones around our own hearts.

True wealth is not what you can buy; it is what you can give away without diminishing your own light.