GarthBox

Medicine isn’t the only thing that has this impact on our lives: that of feeling like we’ll be better.

The best marketing does it, too.

When we see a product or service and we have that feeling that it can make us better…that’s magic.

And maybe it’s not exactly about us. Maybe it’s about our culture. Or a person living in a country on the other side of the world.

Let us not confuse this feeling with that of hope. Hope is active energy. The feeling I’m writing about is an emotional response to something we see, read or otherwise interact with (i.e., marketing, if you believe marketing to be anything that creates an emotional impact).

It’s worth taking a step back at the work you’re making and ask the question: will this make someone feel like we’ll be better?

(In case it needs stating: ambiguity here is purposeful. Thinking about it is the point.)

Stay Positive & Think On

Photo credit

Can you do X for me?

Can you teach me how to do X?

Which way are you asking it more often?

Stay Positive & One Leads To More Growth Than The Other

Photo credit

I love the idea that laminators may be going extinct.

I love it because folks are realizing two things:

1. What works today may not work tomorrow. No point in investing the time in laminating a sign that won’t likely be used five years, one year, five weeks or even a day from now.
2. We know variety is key; and not only does that include the variety of messages, but the means of communicating them too.

There’s a better way to communicate to the neighborhood about a yard sale. There’s more certificates of achievement to get than the one we used to laminate. That family member isn’t going to believe we care if we don’t send them an annual card, handwritten card. Inventory is purposefully changed on the regular in the shop down the street.

If you’re using a laminator, it’s worth pausing to consider what impact it really has on your business or project or guest experience.

Stay Positive & New Is Always Better Anyway

Photo credit

The first way is to get involved, work your way through and up until you can make better decisions for an organization that has otherwise made poor ones until you made it to a position of power. This is starting with grassroots until you have the authority to make grassroots the point.

This is tough work to do. It requires you to knowingly start with a struggle. You know you’ll be short staffed, under waged; you’ll have to work harder and smarter because you’ll have access to fewer resources. It’s doable and it feels damn good when you get there.

The second way is to create your own organization or business that offers a better way to solve a problem. Perhaps it’s the same kind of organization as the one in the first example above, but you fill it with better leaders. Perhaps it’s designing the organization in a completely different way that inevitably either raises the bar of others trying to solve the problem or it forces them to convert to your more impactful model.

Both can be fortuitous and both are tough to do.

Stay Positive & What’s Important Is Knowing (And Sticking) To One Of The Two

Photo credit

There’s not enough time to get together for a brainstorm.

No time to train a person beyond the few hours that got scheduled.

No time to write 1,000 words every day.

Probably don’t have time to sit down for a full meal with the entire family and be 100% present.

Definitely don’t have time to collab with yet another regional organization.

When you actually write down and acknowledge the things you’ve said you don’t have time for, it’s pretty damn clear that it’s the things that are worth making the time for.

Stay Positive & Prioritize

Photo credit

The best things often are.

Hours of investment, care and maybe even a little stress in the details for something that gets gobbled up in 1/10th of the time it took to make.

Of course, bellies were full and people were happy with it. They may even tell their friends.

The work worth doing is often like cheesecake.

We can either be upset that one second the cheesecake was there and then it was gone… or we can head back to the kitchen.

Stay Positive & We Know Where The Best Chefs Go… How About You?

Photo credit

Here’s a plea. Let’s save auto pilot for planes only.

And maybe a few factories, too.

Otherwise, if you’re a human interacting with a human, turn the auto pilot off.

It doesn’t matter if you give the same spiel multiple times a day or if you have similar minded people walking through your store’s doors; make it at least feel personal.

Just because it might be easier to rip from a script or repeat a service flow, there are very few people who enjoy working with or being served by robots.

Stay Positive & /End Rant

Photo credit