Hi everybody, Cheryl Knowlton coming at you with your Dynamite tip of the day. This is kind of an embarrassing and funny story that has a point, but I’m not going to tell you the point until I’ve told you the story. So hang in there with me for a minute. Brief but meaningful.
So, I rented a car at the Philadelphia airport with a colleague of mine as we were preparing to drive from Philadelphia to New Jersey for Session Three of Our Heroic Public Speaking Adventure. She is a former navy fighter pilot. No-nonsense kind of girl has obviously operated vehicles much more complex than a BMW X5 SUV, which is what I’m currently driving.
Everything was great until…
Everything was great until we made it to Lambertville and we’re trying to find a place to park for dinner. It was a very, very busy late Saturday afternoon and the town is more packed than either of us have ever seen it. We thought that it was the sleepy little dead town because we went there for the first time in February. By April, it was a zoo and we could not find anywhere to park.
Finally, found an amazing place to park and guess what? I could not put the vehicle in reverse to save my life. There it was very different from my Lexus and there are not one but two buttons, one on the side and one on the top and it’s telling me to press the button. Which one? So there are people lining up behind me, I start to feel stressed. So what do I do? I zoom past the spot. It took us 20 minutes to find because I couldn’t put the stupid car in reverse.
So, Tammy being brilliant and amazing, and she would do this probably even though she were not previously a navy fighter pilot. She grabs her phone, jumps onto YouTube, and pulls up how to put a BMW X5 in reverse and proceeds to play the video so that I can see it while I’m driving very safely, of course, because I’m not going very fast because we’re trying to go around and around every block so that we can find another place to park.
Just when I think I’ve figured it out, I find a spot and I didn’t even have to go into reverse to get it and I was so relieved because ultimately, it took me a couple of days before I could get this stupid vehicle in reverse without difficulty.
Moral of the story…
Moral of the story is not that YouTube can teach you how to do everything, although I know that’s what you’re thinking. Theoretically, it’s just the opposite. You need to be the kind of professional that will answer the questions that Google cannot.
Today’s consumer has access to more information than they ever have in the history of ever, but not all of that information is accurate as we well know. Being in a nondisclosure state in the state of Utah, the purchase price of every piece of real estate that is purchased in the state of Utah is not a matter of public record, which is that’s what being a nondisclosure state actually means.
So, when consumers go onto their favorite site, Zillow, and try to look up property values or even the availability of property, you know as well as I do, those two things are the most common that are not accurate. You need to be the source of information that people know that they can look to for accurate answers.
It doesn’t matter what your anthem is if you have done any personality testing with me before, and I’ve helped you to craft your anthem. You need to be the person that delivers accurate answers to the public and help them to know that they can always count on you, always depend on you, to answer the questions that Google can’t. That is your Dynamite tip of the day.