The 100 Guy

My first consideration following my PR firm’s acquisition was which firm should sponsor The Atlanta 100 next.

With The 100 Companies, I fly to other cities, meet PR firm owners and discuss membership in our 16-market publishing network. Lately, most begin with a question for me: “How did you sell your PR firm … how can I sell mine?”

My Westminster classmates marvel at my detailed recall of high school memories. Though I never tested well and can’t recall much about a movie I saw last month, I remember life’s episodes in near-HD video.

To celebrate The Charlotte Observer’s 100th anniversary, I was charged with assembling and hosting a series of Carolina-born speakers. Rev. Billy Graham was a natural honoree.

Although it’s easy to be concerned by how polarized America appears to be today, perhaps now is the perfect time for counterbalancing compromises in Congress.

When a trainer at The Charlotte Observer posted the words “Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing,” asking where my team was in its development, it changed our perspective entirely. I’ve since posted these four words many times with teams I’ve led – again this week with The 100 Companies.

Immediately after the Great Recession, commercial real estate investors focused on New York and a few other major markets. Things were quiet in Atlanta for years. Not anymore.

With a daily subscription to The Washington Post, I was an outlier in my first-year college dorm. I found its content more interesting than textbooks on which I perhaps should have focused. Then, I didn’t appreciate the courage of owner Katharine Graham, perfectly profiled by Meryl Streep in “The Post.”

I was the closest human to The Temple on Peachtree Street when it was bombed in October 1958 – but I had nothing to do with it. My family had just moved into a first-floor apartment immediately south of Atlanta’s oldest synagogue when the explosion occurred in the middle of the night. I was an infant, asleep on the back porch.

My Great Uncle Hughes Spalding, managing partner at King & Spalding, had just hired a bright attorney, Furman Smith, but he needed to find legal work for him.

As a youngster, I enjoyed starting each day with coffee and catching up on the latest opinions of AJC’s local columnists.

My children and I submitted DNA to 23andme. Results were not surprising: I’m a mix of many races and cultures: northern European, Native American, Ashkenazi Jewish – even West African.

This year, you indulged me. Thousands of readers clicked through to two much longer stories I wrote – one on being an entrepreneur in a family that didn’t always honor that pursuit (on what would have been my dad’s 100th birthday) and a coming-of-age story about summer camp, the Allman Brothers and one unforgettable counselor.

When it came to naming buildings, parks and highways, my dad would quote his grandfather. He gave away most of what he earned, saying, “Fool’s names, like fool’s faces, are often seen in public places.”

Growing up, Thanksgiving meant food, family and attending the Tech-Georgia freshman football game. Now Thanksgiving occurs daily.

Hi, my name is Chris. It’s been a year since I watched.

Today is my daughter Sally‘s birthday.

Our country veers deeper each day into a chasm of divisiveness. We don’t need to assess blame here (Gingrich, Clinton, Trump, media, etc.), because we are evenly divided on the origins of our disorder.

For three centuries, journalists and advertisers decided what you’d read in the media. The explosion of cable, satellite radio, websites, blogs, podcasts and social media ended that duopoly.

Atlanta has joined dozens of other U.S. cities dreamily competing for Amazon’s second headquarters. If Atlanta is selected, the impact will prove as historically significant as the growth of Coca-Cola, Delta’s 1941 headquarters relocation here or the unfolding development of the BeltLine.

It’s gratifying to follow employees as they go on to bigger and better things. Sunday, I toured the latest project of my best buddy Mike Egan, the first employee of our 1970s partnership, Buckhead Bricklayers.

It’s painful to watch venerable Atlanta financial firm Equifax stumble down an all-too-familiar and faulty PR path: not coming clean with its many errors immediately. Instead, Equifax will learn the simplest PR lesson few ever seem to heed: It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up.

I don’t sweat small stuff. With my granddaughter joining our planet, I worry about long-term issues – climate change and nuclear war.

Four years ago next month, when we first emailed The Atlanta 100 as a surprise new eNewsletter to 18,000 readers, we had no idea we’d soon be part of a growing PR publishing network stretching from Denali to Dubai.

Americans cheered in 1776 when Manhattan crowds destroyed a statue of King George III – and later when statues of Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler and Saddam Hussein fell. We grimaced when the Taliban dynamited 1,700-year-old Buddhas.

Our thoughts and prayers have been with our member The Houston 100 this week as the nation’s fourth largest city battles catastrophic floods. My wife and I were there just the weekend before the storm visiting her daughter and husband and enjoying the beautiful parks, diverse restaurants and vibrant life of the city.

In SPR Atlanta’s crisis management training, we’ve introduced a musical segment that helps clients remember the importance of a “bridge” statement.

I was to fly into Charlottesville this week to repair a brick walkway I built 40 years ago at my alma mater and to call on potential clients, but after this past weekend’s tragedy, I canceled.

My siblings all get along and share a love for teasing my brother-in-law, Joe Cronk.

In my first reporting job, each morning I’d stop by the office of Greenville, Mississippi Police Chief Robert Skinner, who’d read me details of felony crimes I’d dutifully publish in that afternoon’s Delta Democrat-Times.