You know that frustrated feeling where something is “just” beyond your reach, on the tip of your tongue, or in the front of your brain, yet it refuses to be verbalized? You know you know it and yet. . .nothing. A complete blank.
Over the past 5 weeks, I’ve attended 5 different events in 3 different parts of the country and there was a behavior which I saw repeatedly yet couldn’t put my finger on. . .until this morning while swimming:
We often go out of our way to avoid the simple and low cost and replace it with the complex and more expensive.
A few examples:
- Cars were waiting to “get a good spot” at the gym rather than park 50 feet away. They’re paying $X for a gym membership to come and exercise their hearts out, but won’t walk 50 feet. (Gotta love us humans!)
- At a recent event, someone offered a package for $197. It appeared to be a strong offer and a great value – I heard several people discount it immediately as “not worth my time if it’s less than $1000”. Many of these same individuals later commented that they were in a state of information overload. (Nothing more need be said here…)
- As smart and savvy business owners, we want to have passive revenue (read “make money while we sleep”) and yet focus on creating a big system which always takes 2-3 times longer than we think it would when we could quickly create some high value, lower cost products as ways to get paid while building trust and credibility (Yep, “ka-ching” would be heard more often.)
We crave the simple and create the complex.
Whether it comes from our long history of believing we need to work hard to succeed, our marvelous ability to self-sabotage, or something else, I’m giving you permission to make everything as easy as you can.
Do you have any examples of people replacing the simple and low cost with the complex and more expensive? Please share below. . .