Trees for Tots

Nobody likes a braggart. We like our winners to be modest, a little less like Mark Spitz and more like Michael Phelps.

Consider the Academy Awards. It’s not the dreadful clips of movies that I didn’t see and never will but rather the acceptance speeches that get my attention. The recipients walk to the podium, trying to pretend that 30 million people are not watching. Strange that in an industry that is completely scripted, one doesn’t know until the recipients get to the microphone what is going to come out of their mouths. Will it be a modest clogged-throat first timer holding his or her Oscar like a newborn baby? Or a pompous fist-pumping producer that waves the Oscar around like a cell phone. Those last guys really get my goat. I secretly hope they’ll trip over their shoelaces when they leave the podium.

Here at MXenergy we occasionally get an award. But we rarely talk about it. We’ve been on Inc. Magazine’s list of fastest growing companies and somebody sent us a copy of Entrepreneur Magazine’s list. Both of those ended up buried on a shelf of books. Recognition is nice to receive but frankly it scares me. It wasn’t long ago that you could pick up a copy of Forbes or Fortune and pretty well bet the guy on the cover was going to do the perp walk within a year or two. Enron’s Ken Lay, for example, or Tyco’s Dennis Koslowski (he of the $6,000 shower curtain).

No, stay out of the limelight is my philosophy. Keep your head down, do a good job, and people will hear about you by word of mouth. Stick your head up and blow your horn and you may as well have a sign on your back saying “Kick me.”

With that preface, I confess a little pride at a little honor that recently came our way: The Connecticut Quality Improvement Partnership award. Few people know about the award and we didn’t lobby for it. When we received notice it was in an email, but we couldn’t figure out what the email was for because the sender had forgotten the attachment. We received two awards. One was for our “Earth Friendly/Project Green Gift” program. We introduced this last year to help homeowners and businesses offset the harmful effects of carbon dioxide emissions. We’re all responsible for the quality of the air we breathe, but sometimes we wait for the other guy to do something. Something like stop driving, or throwing the computer out the window, or cooking over the fireplace. It sounds good to be green but it’s easier to let others take responsibility.


The other award was for our “Fixed Price Protection” program that enables residents to navigate a complicated energy market and insulate themselves from volatile energy prices.

The two silver-level Innovation Prizes were granted by the Connecticut Quality Improvement Award Partnership, a non-profit partnership among the private sector and The State of Connecticut, which is America’s oldest state-level quality award. For 13 years they have used the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Criteria for Performance Excellence.

According to Sheila Carmine, executive director of Connecticut Quality Improvement Award Partnership, the ingenuity of Connecticut’s innovations is more intense each year. Evidently, Connecticut continues to prove it is an innovative state that not only has entrepreneurs that come up with innovative ideas but who also pursue them until they reach their marketplaces.

MXenergy’s Fixed Price Protection program is pretty conventional; several marketers have offered something similar over the past ten years, although MXenergy is pretty unique in offering terms as long as three years. The Earth Friendly Partner/Project Green Gift is almost unique, however. A CO2 customer-friendly offset program for home and business is MXenergy’s principal answer to global warming. We introduced the first such program in North America to help energy consumers purchase carbon dioxide offsets. Since then we have purchased 100,000 tons of CO2 offsets. Through our traditional marketing programs, as well as Project GreenGift , MXenergy has enrolled some 25,000 customers in the program since November 2006.

MXenergy was recognized among 60 other Connecticut-based companies whose programs were judged on their ability to solve problems through innovation. All CQIA Innovation Prizes were ranked by twelve Baldrige-trained CQIA examiners. The awards were handed out November 7 at Water’s Edge Resort in Westbrook, Connecticut.

I think it was Civil War Union General William Sherman who said of the Presidency, “If nominated I will not run, if elected I will not serve.” We probably would say the same thing about our business. Nevertheless, I’ll admit that – particularly in the midst of the current financial crisis in our country - it is nice to be recognized, especially when we didn’t seek the limelight.