So, follow this with me, if you will:

1.  I recently reached out to a very cool blogger named Willie Jackson, just to say hey.  (took me 90 seconds)

2. Because Willie is a self pronounced Seth Godin fan (as am I), I made reference in the email to an interview I recently conducted with Seth. (5 seconds)

3.  Willie decided watched the interview and, about three minutes in (from what I can tell), he tweeted about it.  (3 minutes)

4.  Because of the new “Real Time” feature on Google Analytics (which is almost always running on my computer), I happened to see this happen immediately after Willie’s tweet:

So, less than five minute of activity (3 of which was Willie’s) and I’ve suddenly got people watching the interview from 4 continents.  I think it’s safe to say we live in an instantaneous society.

And now I’m blogging about it (10 minutes), meaning many of you who have never seen Willie’s stuff will be exposed to it for the first time… all because I decided to send him an email.

Another takeaway here though is that this spawned from genuine, caring interactions based on mutual interests.  I didn’t reach out to Willie with some ulterior motive, nor did he retweet thinking “now he owes me!” (I don’t think, anyway.  He seems like a pretty cool guy).  The people that then immediately watched the interview did so simply because they enjoy Seth Godin and/or trust/respect Willie.

I love it.