Scapegoat

“I Won’t Be To Blame.”

Garth Beyer

I Won't Be To BlameEarlier this week I went out to lunch with my PR team. A couple of us began talking about where we would live if we had to pick one place for the rest of our lives. One asked if money mattered, if it had to be “a realistic place.” I hadn’t even considered that…

I responded, “Well, I’m not going to say you won’t end up being a billionaire. So I guess any place is realistic.”

It’s difficult to acknowledge our own moments of blame, when we seek a scapegoat, when we pin the responsibility on someone else. It’s even more difficult to stop others from blaming us.

If she doesn’t become a billionaire or even a millionaire, at least I know I won’t be to blame. I didn’t add to her tank of self-doubt. I didn’t tell her it was impossible. I didn’t let her off easy.

I’m not one for “realistic.” I know something is up when I hear it.

If we could just retain some spirit of possibility with one another, we may have a new world opened to us. Maybe not a millionaire world, but certainly something special.

 

Stay Positive & Lift, Don’t Level With People

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The Death Of Fine Print

Garth Beyer

Let me correct myself real quick: Fine print isn’t dying, but companies, businesses, non-profits who use it are. Death by Fine Print.

Fine print is like the Overly Attached Girlfriend meme, except, it’s not funny.

Fine print is a safety net, a terrible but acceptable excuse, a scapegoat to those who are building an emailing list of people whose expectations they know they cannot fill.

Fine print is like making a promise with your fingers crossed. Void, but only you know it.

If there’s fine print to any contract, any agreement, any deal, then there is a clear case of soon-to-be trust issues on the consumers end. Likely showcasing that the business is built on profiting from one-time consumers instead of repetitive investing tribe members.

Through the industrial revolution fine print was acceptable, in some cases, honestly necessary due to the risk of using machines rather than people to create what the economy and America needed. Businesses were not built on connections other than the ones you had to your right and left on the assembly line.

That has changed, yet, somehow, fine print is being used (poorly used) in the post-materialistic, post-industrialistic, economy that was built on peer-to-peer connections, not commercialism. And here is where the problem lies. Not really the problem for you or I (unless you’re still using fine print), but for businesses who think they can save their integrity with a tiny clause.

They can’t. Not when trust, connection, and interaction is what makes them money.

 

Stay Positive & I’m A Millennial And Still See The Value Of A Handshake

Garth E. Beyer