Author: Garth Beyer

Offering price ranges for your service gives viewers a reason to engage.

A great opening sentence to a book might end with a period, but what it really does is create a gap in knowledge that the reader will want to fill (by continuing to read, of course).

Using flashy tactics gets attention, but it doesn’t always give them a reason to engage. Very few will look at your banner ad and wonder deeply about what’s between your copy and the website the button leads to, unless you’ve designed it that way (most don’t).

This is really a post about giving options.

The coffee house that only sells one size doesn’t give a person a reason to engage in a new narrative about their day. Am I a person who needs 12 ounces or am I one that needs 16 ounces?

The designer that only shares one idea in a room of 8 execs doesn’t set herself up for any form of success. Had she brought two or three, now that team is engaged.

Eliminating options might help us; might simplify things for us; we may even tell ourselves it simplifies things for others, too. Technically, it does. But consider this: would you rather have something simplified or would you rather have a story?

(See what I did there?)

Imagine a “would you rather” statement with nothing to compare it to… no gap… no option…

Stay Positive & This Isn’t Much Without That Nearby

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That’s how meaningful work goes.

It’s harder than anticipated.

It’s slower than expected.

It’s less instantly gratifying.

There are more speed humps than we thought there would be.

Even with this knowledge, we’ll still dive into the next project with hope that it’ll be different.

But it won’t, because we’re not doing the work that makes work easier, faster, more instantly gratifying and without adversity; we’re doing work that’s different, impactful and beneficial to others more than it will ever be to ourselves.

Stay Positive & It’s The Work Worth Doing

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You could buy an ad in your neighborhood’s newsletter and tout your business.

You could also run your business in a way that your neighborhood’s newsletter writes about you.

Which is advertising? Which is marketing?

More importantly: which one are you doing more of?

Stay Positive & Imagine What Those Ad Dollars Could Do In Marketing…

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Chances are pretty good that someone has cold called that person before you dialed their number.

It’s likely someone has knocked on that house’s door before you knocked.

I’d bet that person has dealt with some really bad customer service before they reached out to you to solve a problem they have.

I write this because it’s worth remembering that we’re not the first in line in anything that we’re trying to do when it comes to selling, marketing, connecting, trusting.

Those we’re interacting with have had this experience before, and it probably went poorly, which means a couple of things.

1. You have to set the bar high for yourself. You’re not just trying to delight in this moment; the hill you’re climbing is the one that’s been built with too many low bar experiences and you need to make up for those
2. People respond better to empathy than anything else. That requires us to put the ego to the side before we dial, knock or answer that email.

Stay Positive & Knock Knock

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The beauty of the fact that there is no tape measure for the impact work has or the size of life occurrences is that we can choose to use that to our favor.

We can choose to see the project in front of us as huge… or we can see it as such a small spec in the timeline of our lives.

We can choose to fall in the downward spiral of a bad experience because we feel it’s the end of our world… or we can imagine a vast future of us acting differently based on the lesson learned.

Perspective is everything. And we choose it.

Stay Positive & If The Size Doesn’t Make You Feel Good, Grab A Different Measurement Tool

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When you know you’re playing the long game, you’re more generous and empathetic.

When you know you’re playing the long game, you’re less stress and frustrated.

When you know you’re playing the long game, you’re going to experience more granular, but consistent satisfaction.

Can you imagine how stressful it would be to be a realtor trying to just sell a multi-million dollar house? Or how about leading a nonprofit to get a billion dollar donor?

Reality is that it’s likely easy for you to imagine because we treat so many projects in our life as if they are short term, make or break, has to happen now kind of work.

Worth noticing when we feel that way and to ask if we’re still playing the long game?

Stay Positive & Play The Game Worth Playing

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Here’s a promise worth making to yourself.

If you ever say “I’ll see what I can do” your goal should be speed.

These are words only ever uttered when we’re fulfilling someone else’s agenda. We never say it to ourselves regarding our own ambitions.

Which means that going slow is just a way to delay either the work that we should be doing or to put off the reality that we might figure out a path forward and then we’re on the hook for making sure it’s done well.

Both scary, but both will see better results if we get through that initial hump faster.

Stay Positive & Enter The Speeding Zone

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