Skip to main content

The Loneliest Yard Sale

yard sale

Do you like yard sales? I know that some people do. The few times that I've participated in yard sales there were always eager shoppers there BEFORE the announced opening time. I've even seen a man (who was extremely well-dressed for yard sale shopping) carrying a map with all of the local yard sales marked, numbered in the order of starting time and access. He was looking for extreme bargains, with some very specific items in mind (he had to have boundaries, he was making the circuit on his bicycle.)

Some people love yard sales. The bargains, the sudden finds, the thrill of the hunt. I do not enjoy them as much, because some have an air of desperation: please buy this crap that I don't want anymore.

It's not all crap. But, some is.

One particular yard sale that wore me out and sucked the joy out of them for me was set up by my significant other at the time. It's the yard sale in the picture above. That's it, just about -- the whole yard sale. Do you see anything that you'd brake a car to get out and look out? Me, either. It was what was left after many previous yard sales.

To be fair she also had a garage full of merchandise. You can't see that in the picture, and you couldn't see it from the street.

After setting it up, she went back to work. Since she owned her own business, she was of course multitasking, leaving me the lonely job of sitting and hoping that people would show up. Or hoping that they wouldn't, so that I could read a book. But, they showed up just often enough that I couldn't really read. Just wait.

And of course they would bargain over prices that were already rock bottom. If you don't want to pay 25 cents for something, why not spare the indignity of bargaining a lower price. Move along. Does that sound cynical or jaded? If you try to sell enough 25 cent items on a hot and dry Saturday I think you'll get the picture.

Products have value. Customers will buy just about anything if it is priced correctly. But, they also won't respect anything priced far below its value -- or anything that clearly HAS no value. Customers will tell you what they think, even if it hurts your feelings.

High performance leaders coach their teams to offer products and services of value. If they do not substantiate more than a drive-by look, something is missing and that missing something will suck the very life out of your team. Yes, you must build your team -- AND you must make absolutely certain that they are offering something of very high quality in return for  someone else's business.

Because when you do, and when customers can't wait until their next encounter with your team, you can stop working the loneliest yard sale. We're all better than that.

-- doug smith

Labels

key words:

Comments

  1. David SpiegelJune 2, 2019 at 1:30 PM

    Hence ...I call Goodwill,Amvets or some other charitable organization!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

At the Root

Why would a happy person ever harm anyone? I don't think that they would. When we are happy, content, and at peace any effort to disturb or harm anyone else will just disturb or harm ourselves as well.  When we experience someone trying to disturb or harm us we can be sure that they are already in pain. Fighting back might seem valid, but will it help? What if we helped heal the pain at the root?  Difficult people did not become difficult randomly. Something, in need of healing, caused it. -- doug smith
Post a Comment
Read more

Learn Beyond The Point Of Discomfort

Do you always learn things the first time you try them? If you do, please teach me how you do that! Learning takes the right attitude, the right tools, and the right repetition of trials. We fall off that bike the first time we get on it. We hit a sour note the first time we pick up a horn. We learn by degrees, even when we earn a degree. We seldom learn anything perfectly the first time we try it. Or the second, or the third... Yet we so often stop at the point of competency. That's when the learning has just begun! There is a huge range of learning ahead of and beyond competency. It's the road to mastery. We do not need to master everything. But imagine the joy of mastering what matters to you most. Wouldn't that be great? Wouldn't that be life-enhancing? And (most important) won't that take more learning than you've already done? -- Doug Smith
Post a Comment
Read more

Thriving Teams

  Thriving leaders thrive as their teams thrive. It's a partnership. It's a deal. It takes constant support and service to sustain a high performance team. Thriving leaders recruit with the enthusiasm they show for their team. People can tell when your team is cohesive, cooperative, and collaborative and people crave that for themselves. Create and support a team that supports each other and others will rally to the cause. You have no weak links. You have no poor performers. You have no superstars. You do have team members who need your guidance and support. That's the role of a leader. -- doug smith
Post a Comment
Read more

Enjoy AND Improve

Do you enjoy success? If that seems like a silly question (Of COURSE I enjoy success!) think about it from another perspective.  Sometimes we can taper down our enjoyment and appreciation of something because we know it's not perfect yet, and how can we be happy if it's not perfect? I do that somethings. It's not helpful. OF COURSE  it's not perfect: nothing else and nothing ever will be. There are no perfect people, processes, performances, or plan. If we wait for perfection, we'll just keep waiting (and probably without gaining ground...) Let's do both. Let's enjoy our current level of success and achievement while also working to improve it. Performance must constantly improve, AND we can enjoy our exiting improvements. -- doug smith  
Post a Comment
Read more

Of Course It's Not Easy

It's not the problem that upsets you, it's not getting what you want. Get clarity about what you REALLY want, and then work relentlessly to get it. If it was easy, how much fun would it REALLY be? -- doug smith  
Post a Comment
Read more

Money Isn't Everything

The profit motive is a poor substitute for genuine value. Money isn't everything. It's not even the most important thing. Oh, sure it's incredibly important. As a person who has many times wondered if there would be enough cash to pay the bills, I have come to respect mightily the value of money. But money is transactional. People are more than transactions. What we value most is more than money can buy, is more than a transaction, is a character of depth and peacefulness, and yes, love that is earned, not bought. Think about that for a minute.  -- doug smith  
Post a Comment
Read more

Love Leadership

Can you be a high performance leader without loving your gig? I've know some great leaders in my life. Some were happy. Some were not. The ones who seemed to live the happiest of lives not only worked harder than anyone else around them (the price of leadership) they also loved what they did. They loved their field of play, their work, their calling, with  an unrelenting passion. When a leader can give all there is to give out of love, it makes the hard work and service of leadership more than worth it -- it makes it a joy. Leaders do need more than love. They do need ambition, hard work, discipline, education, and sometimes a little luck comes in hand. But they do need love. Love isn't always enough, but it always belongs in the mix. -- doug smith
Post a Comment
Read more