What are you really buying?

People aren’t actually buying the physical thing or service (I’m just going to use the shorthand of “product”) that we are selling. They’re buying the benefits and emotional impact that the product delivers.

We don’t hire an illustrator for an amazing image. We hire an illustrator to create an image that embodies what we’re selling. We’re buying status – “Check out this amazing cover of my new book! This famous illustrator I was able to pay with a good deal of money shows you how rich, connected, and amazing I am”  We’re buying time – “That would have taken me years to draw!” We’re buying the feeling of being able to co-create or art direct something without having to build up the skills to do it yourself.

We don’t buy a Civic Hybrid because we need a car.  We’re buying the idea of sustainability, ownership, and private transportation. We’re buying safety, reliability, and the time saved of not having to take a bus.  We’re buying personal space and agency.

We don’t buy lingerie because we need underwear.  We’re buying the feeling of being desired, of being sexy, of being wanted.  We’re buying the look of lust and desire in our partner’s eyes when we undress.  In a way, we’re buying love.

When we’re creating our product offering, remember what you’re really selling – it’s all emotional, and this is what is really creating the value.

Barriers to Empathy, pt. 3

So I talked about the need to be right and expecting empathy back earlier.

The 3rd Barrier to Empathy is:

3. Expecting Change Right Away (Or At All)

Like I said earlier, the toughest part about trying to become more empathetic (especially when trying to become more empathetic to drive change) is that you have to let go of the outcome of changing people.

Tricky, right? You’re practicing something to become better, but in order to practice properly you need to let go of trying to become better.

LOL, life is frickin’ ridiculous, am I right?

Seriously, it seems like a massive cosmic joke, but we really do need to release ourselves from the need to make change in other people and enroll them in our ideas.

Should we still try? Absolutely. That’s the only way the world is going to get the gift you have to offer. BUT, we have to keep in mind that the world is a huge place, and whatever change we’re trying to make has to start off small.

If you look at the concept of Diffusion of Innovation, it makes sense that we have to focus on making change on a small group of early adopters. By nature, our ideas or products or services are not going to be for everyone. Most people, actually, are going to not buy into them.

That said, we don’t naturally know who our allies are – we can make better bets by doing research and finding people who will likely already be bought in to our ideas, but we can never be 100% sure until we ask. So, we’re going to fail.

Expecting some people to not get enrolled, even when we do our best to research them, reach out with true empathy, and get them enrolled in our ideas, is what we need to accept.

Change doesn’t happen right away, or at all. If we give up that expectation and simply work towards enrolling who we can, seeing others and trying our best to align our mission with their needs, we can start tipping the needle in our favor.

We have to think of empathy as a tool for a farmer, not a carpenter.

Farmers invest. They plant seeds, and do their best to control what they can (soil pH, nutrients, water, temperature to a point), but at the end, a bunch of random things could ruin a crop. Plagues of locusts, heat waves, not enough rain, immigration policies, etc.

Carpenters take things they have and make things out of it. Everything is within their control – their tools, the wood they’ve sourced, and the output. Carpenters have control step by step by step.

Empathy is planting seeds. You’re seeing people, hearing them out, and understanding where they’re coming from, even if you disagree. It’s fostering a relationship, putting in emotional investment, and at the end, they still might not buy into the change you’re selling, or they might have a change of heart, but you’ve already moved past this relationship.

Emotional seeds sprout immediately sometimes, and never sprout in others, and sometimes will sprout at random times due to circumstances you absolutely cannot control.

This is why empathy is hard. You have to give up your ego. You have to do it just to do it, and you have to let go of the outcome.

However, empathy is a muscle, and with more and more practice, you can get better and better at it. The world needs more empathy, so why not get some practice in?

Barriers to Empathy, pt. 2

The second barrier to empathy (see the 1st here) is:

2.Expecting Empathy Back

If you’re of the mindset that you can use empathy to drive change, you’re already looking at this as a tactic in order to get something you want.

Whether it’s enrolling a team in your leadership or vision, raising money for a good cause, or getting more sales for your new product/service/book, you’re looking for something – and there’s nothing wrong with that.

However, when trying to have empathy for others in order to get something back, often we also want empathy back as well.

“Why do I have to be the empathetic one? Why can’t they acknowledge me too?”

“I get that part of their argument is correct, why can’t they see the part where I’m correct?”

If these feelings sounds as familiar to you as they sound to me, then you’re struggling with the notion that this is some sort of exchange that has gone poorly. This is the feeling like you’ve been conned out of something; that you’ve been sucked into falling for a ploy that doesn’t benefit you.

But that’s the thing – the toughest part about trying to be empathetic so you can benefit is that notion in the first place. You have to want to be empathetic to understand others, even knowing that a lot of the time they might not have empathy for you.

The analogy I have for this is that empathy is like a job where you walk around letting people take a dollar from your wallet or purse, and then maybe they’ll decide to put money back in, but most will just take your money.

Sounds crazy, but being willing to give up that money in the hope that you’re doing good for other people, and that you’re building up a reputation as someone who helps others without needing anything back is actually the best way to get people to put money back in. BUT, you have to allow for heavy losses in the short term.

Some people will try to take advantage of you, true. But you also have to understand that having empathy is not letting people walk over you. Having empathy is understanding that given everything that’s happened to someone, they’re right.

Empathy for a remorseless killer does not mean I should let them kill me or anyone else. Empathy for that killer means I understand that given their background, biology, and life, if I went through exactly what they did, I’d probably be that killer too. It also means that if I see this killer trying to attack me, I won’t hesitate to hit them with a bat until the police arrive.

So I’d say this is the biggest barrier – reframing the idea of having empathy from sacrificing yourself to the idea of helping others. It’s reframing from being a victim who is exploited to someone who has enough to give that they can be that helpful, generous person. It’s reframing from being shit on to being someone who has boundaries and can also protect themselves when other people seem to be trying to take advantage of you.

Empathy is really hard in that you’ll see people, and they won’t see you back. But it’s just like that quote from Cool Runnings about success – if you’re not enough without it, you never be enough with it.

Barriers to empathy, pt. 1

If you’re looking to have more empathy, but you’re struggling with it, I believe there are three barriers you need to overcome.

Barrier 1: The Need to Be Right

You’ve figured out that by having empathy, you can learn what other people’s needs are, and you realize that by understanding other people’s needs, you can start figuring out how to enroll them in your ideas.

However, there lies difficulty in understanding that the other party is correct (given their own worldview) AND being able to give up the need to be right.

We talk about “losing” and “winning” arguments. We only can actually succeed at enrollment if we get over this binary idea of who is right and wrong. We need to embrace the understanding that getting what we want relies on being able to judo-flip the idea of being right.

Often, we need to show (vs. just saying) we understand the other person by acknowledging their truth. As painful at it may be, to succeed at actually getting someone to listen to you, you’re going to have to affirm (at the very least) their feelings are valid and correct without making judgments about them.

Then, we can start to dissolve the feeling of needing to be right, and we can really start getting to work.

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