Caveat Emptor
It feels like there's even more "noise" than usual vying for our attention and wallets.
The phrase "caveat emptor" has been on my mind a lot lately. I can't put my finger on exactly why. Maybe it's because of the upcoming elections, or perhaps it's the recent turn of the markets. It feels like there's even more "noise" than usual vying for our attention and wallets. It makes sense, right? Businesses, and politicians, are feeling the pressure.
Businesses, especially public ones, have metrics they need to meet. If they have shareholders they need to make sure their numbers keep going up, or the C-Suite could find themselves looking for a new job. And politicians want to get elected. In both cases, it feels like some will do anything to get you to buy their product or buy into their message.
They use all kinds of tools to get our own psychology to work against us. For example, making you think you need to act now or miss out (scarcity marketing). You may not really even want whatever it is being sold, but you may "need" it later, so you get it. Or maybe something someone said gets taken out of context and played as a sound bite, painting the worst possible picture (straw man argument).
I don't have any science to back this up, but I feel we - parents of children with special needs - fall for these and other tricks because we're looking for ANYTHING that will help us. Or we swing too far in the other direction and don't trust what anyone says. Speaking for myself, I've done both.
It's not like there is a switch we can flip to remove all the stressors from our lives. Lately, it feels like I have to scroll halfway down the page to find a search result that's not an ad. And it's not getting any easier to figure out what's fake on the internet. It can take time, and that's not necessarily something we have a lot of. So what can we do about it?
We need to build a team. Not just caregivers, but also people we can trust - who we know will have our back. In my case, many of these people also happen to be professionals I work with. I've come to trust their judgment, and I rely on them to bring me back down to Earth if I get too excited about something. By the same token, they will challenge me if I'm being too harsh or haven't really considered everything I should have before making a decision. And (I hope) I'm doing the same for them.
It's a tough time to be a consumer, and (speaking for myself) it's not much easier to be a business owner. How do you prove you're one of the "good guys"? There aren't any "blue checks" that you can display like you would with your IG account. I used to think reviews on platforms like Google, Yelp, etc could help; but now I'm not so sure. It feels like everything gets spoofed.
So I guess it all comes back to word of mouth. Does someone you know and trust vouch for whatever good or service you are looking to get/use? Podcasts have become a resource for me because I feel like I can get a pretty good sense of what someone is like (depending on the format). So I try to do the same with my podcast, bringing on guests who I've vetted and doing my best to get past sound bites or scripted answers.
Be careful, it's a jungle out there
.