Life Lesson

Unless someone is trying to prank you or you’re selecting a haunted house to visit, usually good things come from sharing your authentic thoughts with others.

By sharing your reservations about an idea or event or tactic, you open yourself up to a real connection with the one you’re opening up to. And in a world where we are all human, you’ll be surprised to find just how often others share similar reservations.

By sharing your concerns, you not only create an opportunity for others to help you in addressing it, but in doing so, you work to prevent others from feeling the same concern you are. Someone has to go first, but damn is there a ripple effect.

By sharing your fears, you can then begin to move forward, dance with them, acknowledge them and do the work anyway versus letting them force you to stand still. (No decent work gets done that way.)

Share them with your clients. With your significant other. With your family. With your coworkers.

And if they discard them, ignore them or all the sudden invite you to stay at a haunted house with them, find better ones.

Stay Positive & Proactively Communicate

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What you do matters, no doubt. But how you do it, makes all the difference.

What you say matters, no doubt. But how you say it can be the game changer.

Say, for example, you’re interviewing someone for a project management role. They can list all their skills and historical experience, but if they don’t do it with an undertone of confidence, they’re likely to be scored lower than someone with a similar interview experience, but exudes confidence throughout it.

Of course, the how is that stuff that’s tough to measure and observe (especially if you’re trying to self-observe).

But that’s the stuff we need to focus on if we’re going to elevate our ideas, build a tribe and do work that has an impact on our culture.

Stay Positive & Let The Characteristics Shine

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It’s about the money when the price helps us tell a story to ourselves. Maybe we feel our status is increased if we buy a higher priced wine.

It’s not about the money when we feel like what we’re buying comes at a bargain. Maybe we value the story we get to share about the sustainable product we bought means so much to us and those we will share the story with.

Imagine three people with the same income. One might buy a more expensive service. The other might buy a cheaper service. The third might not buy the service at all.

What they buy – or don’t – doesn’t have anything to do with whether they can afford it; it has everything to do with the story they tell themselves about it.

The best way to nail pricing is to ensure it aligns with the story people are telling about their purchase (after you know you’ll turn profit, of course).

Stay Positive & It’s The Stories That Matter Most

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Often times, the thing customers come back for isn’t the thing they purchased.

You can get coffee from any coffee shop, but the shop down the street talks to us about their Bernese Mountain Dogs and ours – and they give us a pup cup each time.

You can get a beer from any bar, but the knowledge you get from the beertenders talking to you about what they have makes you feel smarter and smarter each time you walk out the door with a six pack in your hand.

People are buying more than a commodity or service from you; can you put your finger on what it is?

Stay Positive & Add Value

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There’s a narrative that each of us is walking around with. The narrative about the shop we just passed up, why we haven’t responded to that one text yet and why we’re heading to the destination we’re heading to.

But within it, it’s multiple stories.

And once we realize the complexity that everyone is walking around with, it gets easier to connect. To appeal in various ways to the multiple stories. To listen more deeply and respond appropriately, more often.

To change culture, entice someone to make a specific decision or to spread an idea, we have to do more than hit the mark on one story. We have to keep swinging and swinging differently to hit on all the mini stories.

Stay Positive & Keep Swinging

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The best action you can take is to simply do it.

The worst action you can take is to not do it.

The worst of the worst action you can take is to try to wiggle your way out of it, shortcut it, pass it off or downplay it.

Here’s to those who take the best action.

Stay Positive & Get it Done And Get It On

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On a scale of 1 to 10, how important is it to you? The higher opinion takes priority in a disagreement.

If you were a battery, what charge are you at right now? If the charge is low, it’s time to do something about it.

On a ranked scale of grasshopper to master, how much of the reading in your industry have you done?

You gotta know where you are to know where to go – and to prioritize how to get there.

Stay Positive & Perfect Ten? Then What?

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