The Guinness Book of World Records is just a tad bit weird, right?  I mean, is anyone with me on this one?  From the depressing to the disgusting to the downright macabre and/or pointless, it is chock full of records that someone has broken either intentionally or unintentionally.  From how many people are wearing a pair of antlers on their head at the same time, to how many soda cans someone can stick onto their body, to the longest tongue, to the oldest person to ever get a tattoo, the list is absolutely endless.  If you have a notion that you can set a record, all you have to do is visit the Guinness World Records website and hit the “set a record” button.  The rest is history.  Or is it?

Some things may be hard to believe, like the fact that the oldest Holocaust survivor is one hundred and twenty-two years old (what?!?), but would you believe me if I told you that packaging boxes are the face of your business?  If you deal primarily with shipping items, than it’s safe to say that your website is someone’s first impression.  If it looks like it took two minutes and basically no skill to set up your online domain, more than likely a peruser will just click off and search for someone else.

Brown cardboard box

If you use second hand packaging boxes to send your wares, your customer will probably assume you are cheap and that surely whatever you have to offer will be cheap.  If you are willing to cut corners on first impressions than you will more than likely cut corners on what you are trying to provide.  Surely it makes sense that when face-to-face interaction is not part of a shopping experience (i.e. online and in a box), the parts that someone does come into contact with should be taken seriously.  Don’t ever assume that someone will consider you to be a savvy businessperson simply because you had the “foresight” to reuse packaging boxes.  My dad always said that you could paint a piece of you-know-what gold, but that doesn’t change what it really is or where it came from.  So take that to heart when considering all of the little ins and outs to your company.

Would you believe that someone just came across the oldest message in a bottle ever to be found?  Sent out in 1906 as an experiment, it didn’t make it to shore or the hands of another human being until 2015.  Now that is the kind of World Record I’m interested in.  You can keep your most-grapes-eaten-in-one-minute…