GarthBox

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

Photo credit

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

Photo credit

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

Photo credit

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

Photo credit

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?

Photo credit

Right about now is the time of year that folks start to feel more frustrated with the habits they’ve formed (or didn’t form) with the new year.

For whatever reason, we feel more exposed to external reasons to start a new, healthy habit of some sort.

Places are beginning to open up again. The weather is turning. School is in full swing. A new relationship has started or we’re gung-ho on starting one soon. We have an upcoming trip planned. We just feel the need to change something up and have some control in our lives.

The list can go on.

Personally, I don’t like to think of new habits as life changes, I think of them as 30 days of discomfort because it takes that long for a new habit to be formed.

And just like there is an endless list of stories we can tell about why we want to incorporate the new habit into our lives, we sure come up with a lot of stories about why it’s hard during those first 30 days.

But after the 30?

It’s not discomfort anymore. It’s normal.

Stay Positive & 30 Days To A Better You

Photo credit

A challenge: For the rest of the year, write down one new habit per month that you want to develop. Nine 30-day stretches to absolutely shape your life in new was.

First, there’s no reason not to reach out to every relevant podcast and pitch yourself. Reach out to blogs and influencers and brands and pitch yourself.

By all means, give getting picked a chance.

Best case scenario you get selected and you refine the story you’re telling through all of your pitching.

Worst case scenario is you get to choose yourself and you already have your story refined from telling it through all of your pitching.

When the podcasts don’t pick you up. Start one.

When the blogs, influencers and brands don’t choose you. Choose yourself by creating one, becoming one, building one.

Stay Positive & Choose Yourself

Photo credit