A LinkedIn obituary
We're gathered here today...
Today, we remember Casper ‘The Networking Ninja’ Ford, Senior Sales Manager with a passion for empowering businesses to maximize their potential. Born a digital native and with an inherent understanding of consumer behavior, on August 1, 1985.
While we’re yet to know whether the cause of death was the unending stress of having too many browser tabs open, or the blunt force trauma when his head hit the desk after being asked if he could see the zoom host’s screen-share for the 16th time that morning, we do know he was a loyal and passionate sales leader with extensive experience helping clients achieve their goals.
Ask any of Casper’s close friends and family and they’ll say what they remember most fondly is his proven track record. What a fine record it was, proven, of course, not with any hard evidence per se, but he told us he had one and so he did.
His extensive experience as a full-stack, T-shaped, KPI-driven sales and revenue guru shone through at the many roles he held over the course of his multi-half-decades long career.
Early in his career, as a recent college graduate, no less, he thrived as a seasoned startup executive. Seasoned, of course, in the culinary sense, as he would lather himself in olive oil, salt, pepper, and sometimes rosemary should the occasion call for it, because he took his manager’s advice about handling the heat in the kitchen a little too literally.
Once the hubris of youth had melted away, Casper really blossomed into his own man. Confident, whimsical, loving, and deeply passionate. Passionate for family, yes, but what really endured was the deep, palpable passion for customer experiences, and ensuring said experiences were personalized and meaningful (granted, we now know that Casper may have overestimated just how personalized and ‘meaningful’ those experiences should be).
He was so passionate about creating personalized, 1:1 customer experiences that he was actually driven by it.
He was also driven by results.
Casper was a self-starter who could effortlessly wake each morning and get out of bed, tie his shoes, and his tie, and even brush his teeth, all on his own volition. This mentality was often on full display alongside his entrepreneurial spirit, which he would summon each morning in the gray-walled break room before thriving in the fast-paced environment in which he worked.
Coworkers were awed by Casper’s immense ability to operate not just Microsoft Powerpoint but also Excel. The long decks and complicated spreadsheets he produced moved the needle on many occasions. Sometimes in meetings, rarely on wall clocks.
Many of us remember the day Casper announced, via a hashtagged post, that he had maxed out his connections, and could therefore only accept ‘followers’. We laughed, we cried, and collectively embraced as he reached network nirvana.
It was this network of more than 30,000 connections—a number which he would graciously remind us of in his profile, bio, and via his weekly Monday Morning Motivation posts—that helped him become the respected thought leader we all knew and loved. He happily led everyone’s thoughts but none more so than the tight-knit network of influencers who he tagged in his double-spaced posts. They revered him graciously, tagging him in their posts to give thanks.
A self-, and loudly-proclaimed workaholic, Casper didn’t just settle for the corporate life, he had side hustles. And his side hustles usually had side hustles, too. On one occasion, he actually had a front hustle, which he hustled so effectively that it turned on its side.
Casper will be remembered as being many things:
A creative thinker, problem solver, storyteller, paradigm shifter, strategic visionary, disruptor, customer-centric, client-centric, self-centric, trailblazer, pioneer.
But, most of all, we’ll remember him for being dynamic.
Casper Ford, your legacy and your posts will live on as long as the algorithm remains unchanged (so, effectively next Tuesday). May you rest in peace.
We thank you, and we endorse you.
For social media.
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*chef’s kiss*
Allan