Googliness

This post is an example of the content I share every Friday in my Living by Experience Magazine. If you’d like your free copy, just click here.

So I had to go see one of those geniuses the other day. My beloved Macbook was running a little slow. Something I wasn’t used to anymore since abandoning Windows, so I needed help. Some elaborate scans later a few apparent problems with my drive and permissions were resolved. Fingers crossed it’ll make a difference as neither me nor my bank account are ready yet to say goodbye to my Macinvestment Pro. While I understand that “performance issues” are about as vague of a description I can give to a genius, he did offer some very insightful tips. Upgrading the hard drive, adding some fresh memory. Since I’m pretty tech-savvy he even explained where I could buy the parts needed for cheap(er) and install them myself. Neither himself or the store he works for would make any money off that deal, and I was certainly impressed with the fact he was more interested in helping his customers than making (more) money off them. Well done.

Knowledge is power. Information is everything. It enables us to make informed decisions instead of estimated guesses. Right now is a perfect time to be alive. We have all the knowledge known to mankind right at our fingertips, and often in our pocket. On a handheld device that has more processing power and storage capacity than my first ever computer. It’s a true miracle of technology. It does make me afraid sometimes to ask a potentially stupid question though, but thankfully some sales people have a service mindset and are willing to help me out anyway. All that knowledge has also led to a sense of entitlement in the consumer market: people tend to treat sales staff as inferior beings since they think they know everything already. We tell artists at art events “I can just get that at Costco”, and we raise a patronizing “stay away” finger to a salesman who only wanted to help us out. True stories. Did you forget Costco doesn’t sell one-of-a-kind pieces of art, and you’re a guest in my store so who do you think you are raising your little finger at me? Google that.

Next time you talk with a sales person, be nice to them. They work hard to make a living – and they usually have some control over how much you’ll eventually pay for their product or service, if they’re still willing to sell to you at all. Think about the example I started this post with. It’s always about helping each other out in the first place, making money comes second. It’s the relationships you build that matter and that will make people come back and do business with you over and over again. We’re all equal in the end. Be nice to each other. It might just make planet earth a bit nicer to live on.

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