It used to be that we turned up for things that we said we were turning up for job interviews, restaurant reservations, and consultations at the dentist.
And then the culture changed, and it was OK not to bother.
If you hadn't invested in it financially or emotionally, it didn't matter if you didn't want to go; you just didn't turn up.
And so, in the race to the bottom, where everyone offered everything for free to get as many people through the door as they could when the culture changed, they realised they had 'white space' all over their diaries.
Nobody turning up for their job interviews, nobody turning up to their restaurant reservations (or not very many), nobody turning up to their consultations.
If you don't value something, you assume that the other person doesn't value it.
To be honest, it's probably better to take the money upfront, and then if the person doesn't want to come, that's on them.
When I bought the last Seth Godin purpose-produced book (the one that had my name in it), the one that would kill you if it landed on your head from 5 feet, you had to buy it in advance before it was produced.
It was a limited edition, meaning it already had value before you paid for it.
I think that creating a limited edition and creating value that people pay for upfront is a far better long-term game to play than scrabbling about as much as you can, chucking your time, intellectual property and expertise away for nothing.
Just a thought.
Blog Post Number - 3641
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