It’s definitely worth the investment of time and energy to make sure what you offer is real, quality and worth the money.
But the trinket their buying, the charity efforts, the meal they’ve ordered is not what they really get.
What they get is a story.
A story they get to tell themselves. And if you’re lucky, a story they tell others, too.
The good aspect is that you get to influence that story; build it, refine it, set the stage for it. Sure, it involves the product or purchase their investing in, but it also involves everything else around it, too.
Stay Positive & Design (Of Everything Around Your Product Or Service) Matters
One of the great disappointments I continue to hear about mask mandates being lifted is that now people will see their real facial expressions.
No more hiding the smirk or hiding the frustration. (Aside, no more hiding oregano from that taco you ate that’s now stuck in your teeth either.)
Of course, what you were hiding wasn’t really hidden. Maybe from another person’s direct visual sense, but not the energy or the attitude or the pitch of your voice or even the indirect visual sense – the crinkle of your eyebrows or how your ears pull down a bit when you smile.
People have been looking and listening to other people for years; a mask isn’t enough to prevent them from reading you.
“It” can be a lot of different things, but here are a few examples that will help you get the idea of mastery.
Mastery of meditation isn’t being able to quiet the mind, it’s being at ease with whatever might go through it.
Mastery of public speaking isn’t being able to execute the perfect speech, it’s being at ease with the discomfort of being on stage and whatever might happen while you’re up there.
Mastery of advertising isn’t being able to create something flawlessly persuasive, it’s being at ease with whatever may arise in those who experience your campaigns.
The audience isn’t interested in you. Nothing personal, but they aren’t.
They might, however, be interested the value you share that they can use, the stories you tell that they can see themselves in, the lessons you share that can improve their lives or status or business or whatever it is they might want to be improving.
Lest we forget the audience is most interested in themselves. They are no critic of you.
Now that we can put any criticism you may receive to the side, are you ready to share with an audience?
There’s a defect in the implementation of good habits. Two, actually.
The first is that we think that a good habit is good, so we do more of it. And if we know anything, it’s that too much of a good thing is a bad thing. Yet without acknowledging where the optimal rhythm is with a habit, we default to too much.
The second is that we think that a good habit is always good, so we never stop it. It’s a misstep in our thinking, a hiccup in our rationale. Running 8 miles a day might be a wonderful habit, but 8 miles might not be the right distance three years from now. Writing a book a year might be a wonderful habit, but it might do more harm than good once you’ve also started a family.
This doesn’t mean to quit the healthy habit; it merely means that we need to refine them.
Stay Positive & How Are Your Habits Really Treating You?
The more in maximum isn’t actually more; it’s moderation, optimization, the peak of an upside-down-U-curve – not the tail of it.
With anything, more quickly stops scaling. More can actually start to harm the idea, the business, the culture, etc.
I’d also argue that the optimal can often feel really small…even though it isn’t.
A turnout of thirty at trivia has a slew of strong benefits even if it doesn’t feel like a lot filled the space. A teacher working with six students can have an immense impact on their lives – far more than if she were to be teaching twelve and definitely more than if she were teaching twenty.
But we either get held up on it feeling like too few (the space could hold more, the time could be divided out more, our resources can be allocated further, and so on) or we get excited by how well things are going (this is working so well that we should do more!).
It’s those attitudes that burn us and why it’s better to focus on the minimum viable product, which contrary to the name doesn’t mean the least of what we can do, the smallest or the fewest.
It means the strongest impact we can make on someone – which just happens to coincide with what we feel is a small amount
The ripple effect of a meaningful impact on a few far outweighs that of a tiny impact across the masses.
More isn’t better. Better is better.
Stay Positive & Rather Than Go For More, Create Another MVP
There’s a lot that doesn’t make sense in the writing you read. A lot that doesn’t make sense in the shops you frequent. A lot that doesn’t make sense in the ideas that are pitched in the room.
But somehow they make sense. Not because it’s logical. Not because it’s guaranteed to work.
It makes sense because it took guts to do.
And leaping always, always makes sense.
Read a Tom Robbins book. Participate in an agency’s concepting phase. Visit Dick’s Last Resort for a meal.
