GarthBox

Sure, very few read the instructions to begin with. So why bother?

Mainly so that the second time around, they can get it right.

Even if it cuts the number of calls to your customer service team (or you!) in half. It’s still worth the investment for others, and, you’ll learn quickly, for you, too. It’s incredible what you learn about your product or service when you write the instructions.

 

Stay Positive & Step One: Write The Instructions

[I bought a humidifier. Never read the instructions. And a year later it was calcified and gross. I found the care instructions online. No need to call, complain or let the brand know I never read the instructions that came with the humidifier. Second time around, I’ll care for it the right way. Oh, and I’ll be purchasing from the same brand, too. Why not?]

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The math that adds up to success takes years.

Months of additions, moments of subtractions, years of showing up, of multiplying impact.

One might say that the equation is never truly finished.

You don’t need to be good at math, to know and leverage the long equation of success.

 

Stay Positive & What Have You Added Today?

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Surprising and delighting works, but only when it’s done randomly.

The moment you attempt to exceed every expectation, that’s when you enter a spiral toward disappointment.

At some point, you won’t be able to blow someone away with your not-so-random acts of kindness.

The beauty of it all is that keeping your promise, that’s usually enough. No need to focus on exceeding every expectation.

 

Stay Positive & A Special HT To Seth Godin For This Realization

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Facebook has a few ad objectives marketers can choose from.

There’s engagement – get people interacting with and reacting to your post.

There’s awareness – get as many people to see your post as possible.

There’s conversion – get people to buy what you’re selling in your post.

Whether you believe Facebook is the social messiah of the digital world or not, it’s worth noting that even the media giant sets advertisers up to have three separate conversations about success.

Contrary to what you may have been told (or told yourself), every post, word, image, share, statement you put out in the world is not just to sell, to make money, to get people to buy.

Too often conversations swing that way (and the worldview that most people have ulterior motives when they perform an act of kindness doesn’t help either). The truth is that sometimes all we want is to engage with someone, to connect with them, to feel something.

The truth is that sometimes we just want to share that there’s a sale or that there’s a special release happening Tuesday because we would have wanted someone else to share it with us. The motivation is to contribute, not to collect.

When we try to talk about engagement and awareness with how many conversions we collected; that’s when trouble arises, expectations go unmet, and future marketing messages lose their meaning and become a blur.

 

Stay Positive & So Tell Me Again, What’s Your Objective

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What the world needs is more fools.

More people who push a project so close to the edge that they’re guaranteed to make a mistake somehow.

More people who subject themselves to the long haul, that don’t expect instant gratification, that do what looks stupid now for the greater good of later.

More people who dance at the edge, who play both roles of insider and outsider.

More people who label things as they are, who call it as they see it, who are purveyors of truth.

More people who find courage in discomfort.

Like I said, more fools.

 

Stay Positive & More People Like You?

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Thoroughly consider if you’re making a mistake by going to the head-honcho to learn how to make an impact.

Head-honchos, prom queens, recent Amazon best-seller authors are all in positions where they have a lot to lose. So they button up. They hold their tongue. They work to keep things in check and insanely measurable.

While you can still learn a thing or two from them, the grand insights are more easily found around those who have less to lose and more to gain: Those willing to try something different, who are talking about what’s wrong with a system and how they plan to solve it, who don’t hold their tongue (or their imagination) back from saying (or thinking) the ridiculous.

If you think about it most ideas that we take for granted now were once thought of as being ridiculous.

 

Stay Positive & Make Sure You’re Hanging Around The Edges

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“Just as I expected.”

That’s the goal for a response when a customer is asked how the interaction went.

Get there first. Then you can work on the surprising and delighting.

 

Stay Positive & Run Before You Leap

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