Reading Time: < 1 minThere are many ways to be generous with your clients, and lowering your price can perhaps be a way to do that. In many cases, though, that’s not really what being generous is all about. In a recent episode of the “Finding Mastery” podcast, Seth Godin shared some thoughts on this: “Generosity is not about […]
Empathy
Don’t steal the revelation
Reading Time: < 1 minThere are times when getting to the right answer quickly is important, and everyone should be pushing for the answer. Other times, though, it can be more beneficial to wait and let people figure things out for themselves. In a recent episode of The Long and The Short of It podcast, Pete shared this idea: […]
Looping for understanding
Reading Time: 2 minCharles Duhigg’s book “Supercommunicators” had a ton of great insights in it, and I encourage you to pick up a copy. I have a handful of thoughts that I’ll be sharing over the coming weeks, but this was one of the most interesting to me. So much of communication revolves around simply understanding what the […]
Stay focused or stay available?
Reading Time: 2 minI’ve noticed that when I meet someone for coffee or lunch, they behave in one of two ways: I also see some of this from the other side: It’s a matter of deciding what’s important. I certainly hate to not respond to people while I’m in the middle of a meeting, but it’s almost always […]
Discover why they’re amazing
Reading Time: < 1 minWhen you meet someone new, there is undoubtedly part of their personality or their life or their knowledge that is amazing. It might be something you discover right away, but often it’s not and you need to find out what it is. In his book “Excellent Advice for Living“, author Kevin Kelly says it roughly […]
Nuance is almost always correct
Reading Time: < 1 minAs we head into this election season in the U.S., political nuance is likely to continue to be absent. As I shared a few years ago, moderate viewpoints tend to squashed, as it’s much easier to pick an “us” and a “them” and just fight. That also leads to very few people that are willing […]
4: If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it, what would you say?
Reading Time: 2 minToday I’m on to the fourth question (see all of the question here) that Tim Ferriss asked people in “Tribe of Mentors”, which was: If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it—metaphorically speaking, getting a message out to millions or billions—what would it say and why? It could be a few […]
Those other people believe in superstitions
Reading Time: < 1 minSo many of the issues in the world today come from people isolating themselves into groups and then always assuming the worst of the other side. I’ve shared this idea quite a lot over the years, talking about how “those other people will do lasting harm to our country“, “the other guy isn’t pure evil“, […]
Fundamental attribution
Reading Time: 2 minThe “fundamental attribution error” is one of those phrases that I’ve heard a few times, but I never really knew what it meant. It came up on a recent episode of The Long and The Short Of It podcast and they shared some great examples. Harvard Business School defines it like this: “The fundamental attribution […]
You can’t hope for consumer reality
Reading Time: < 1 minA few times on Gary Vaynerchuk’s podcast I’ve heard Gary repeat a very simple phrase: “you can’t hope for consumer reality.“ His push is related to marketing, and particularly to social media. You may be comfortable using Facebook, but if your audience is teens, then Facebook promotions would almost certainly fall flat. You might love […]