Everyone’s Amazing, Sticker Shock, and Expectations

📈 Beware of False Positive(ity)

We’ve all been there.

It’s a beautiful Sunday afternoon, and we’re on our 9th LinkedIn or Instagram scroll of the day.

It’s not long before we encounter the ‘humble brags’.

• “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but we just sold our 1 millionth mustard cap. Thanks to everyone for supporting our journey!”
• “Is this real life? I’m thrilled to announce that a I was just named Top 40 under 40, for the 40th year in a row.”
• “I did a thing. Introducing a new app that has already been named ‘Best New App’ by the App Store.”

These posts are really annoying an inevitable reality of social media. But for company owners, business leaders or self employed individuals, they can be triggering, whether you want to admit it or not. They can trigger feelings of jealousy, or anger, or even a wave of self-prejudicial thoughts (“why isn’t my business doing what theirs is?”)

When a business owner shares with us a very positive highlight, we fixate easily on it, and only it. This is the problem. We fail to imagine, or consider, all of the other facets of their business. The bad stuff. The average stuff.

Writers of these posts are cutting a very narrow slice of their multi-faceted pie, and then showing you only that piece. Don’t forget, there’s more to the pie. Some of it doesn’t taste great.

Beware of this ‘false positivity’, for it can cause you to question your own success (“where’s my award?”), and harshly judge your own failures (“I have them, but this person doesn’t.”)

While it’s nice to be proud of our fellow business owners for their successes, it’s critical to realize that they, just like you, have a lot of issues to deal with.

🤑 Raising Your Prices Without Raising Your Blood Pressure

Pricing is a complicated subject. You don’t need a high-priced pricing consultant to tell you that.

The decision to raise (or lower!) prices is complex, and can provoke feelings of guilt or fear. With that said, it can be simplified by walking yourself through the following questions:

• Is the demand for me/my product elastic, or inelastic?
• If I raise my price, will the same amount of people buy it? Even if some don’t (which is normal with price hikes), will the % drop in the quantity purchased be outweighed by the % increase in price? This is inelastic demand, and good if you’re raising prices.
• Should I feel guilty about asking for more money?
• Sometimes, it’s actually necessary to raise your prices to match the upgraded value you’re offering. But sometimes, it’s the wrong time, if everything else is unchanged. Unpack what value your customers are/will be getting.
• Can I easily get a sense of what others might think?
• Those favourite customers of yours that you’ve become close with? Ask them bluntly how they might feel about a price change. The good eggs will give you honest perspectives, both for better and for worse.

Finally, you can think about a quote that business legend Jeffrey Fenton Warren Buffett shared:

“The single most important decision in evaluating a business is pricing power… If you’ve got the power to raise prices without losing business to a competitor, you’ve got a very good business. And if you have to have a prayer session before raising the price by 10 percent, then you’ve got a terrible business.”

😩 The Rough Reality of Expectations

The mere difference between expectations and reality is often the main source of our pleasure or our pain.

And so in dealing with others, it’s important to remember that the expectations we harbour can cause us tremendous stress later down the line.

As author Neil Strauss shares:

“Unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments”

To eliminate or fully communicate our expectations is to do the impossible. But with our employees, or partners, or customers, can we try just a little bit harder to communicate our expectations, and in turn, avoid some inevitable resentments?

👋 for now, and keep an eye out for an email next week!

Best,

Jeffrey