So, I've been doing some more thinking about that Shoe Guy, Blake Mycoskie.

He's the founder of TOMs shoes, where for every pair they sell, they give a pair away to children in need. (I seriously never get tired of seeing his AT&T commercial.) I've been thinking a lot about how I could put into practice this 1-to-1 ratio of giving.

And I ran into something pretty simple just the other day. I had gone shopping with a friend, and I came home with two pairs of shoes, a sweater, and two pairs of pants (we had gone to the big city of Portland to shop, so it was shopping with a purpose!). When I got home and started putting the items away, Blake the Shoe Guy popped into my mind.

And I knew what I could do.

As I put a new pair of shoes into my closet, I found a pair to give away to my local Goodwill store. I did the same with the pants, the sweater, and the other pair of shoes.

Have you seen the AT&T commercial with the world-traveling Shoe Guy?

He uses his phone (and the killer AT&T worldwide connection) to do business, which for him is selling shoes and giving shoes away. For every pair of shoes his company sells, his company donates a pair to children in need.

Call me a cynic (I'm in marketing--being suspicious of advertising comes with the territory), but I thought AT&T made up this guy and his shoe company. I did give them props for tapping into the zeitgeist with their good-hearted, world-traveling Shoe Guy.

Turns out, though, the scruffy, good-looking Shoe Guy is for real.

His name is Blake Mycoskie and his shoe company is called TOMS (which, I learned, stands for "Tomorrow"). Blake is a world traveler (he had been a contestant on The Amazing Race at one point) who, on his journeys, discovered kids need shoes. So he founded his shoe company on the principle that for every pair they sell, they give a pair away to kids in need.