The Humanness of Asking
Navigating communication as a business owner trying to treat y’all as humans is complicated, and I need your help.
Broadly, if we’re going to interact with each other as human beings (even if we happen to be human beings where there is or may be a monetary transaction), I need you to act like I’m human, too.
When we communicate directly with humans, we navigate a complex social dance of asking and receiving. There’s unspoken norms about when you ask for something and when you don’t - and the unspoken norms aren’t even consistent and predictable. Much has been written about ask vs. guess cultures - where some people think that it’s preferable to ask for anything, with the understanding the answer might be no, and others hold to etiquette that prefers not to ask unless there’s some certainty the answer will be yes.
In business, there’s this wild mix of the two cultures. I’m supposed to make direct, clear, easy calls to action so that you know exactly how to buy from me - and not be attached to whether or not you actually do buy! I’m supposed to guess a bunch of things about what you want and think and feel and are motivated by, and I’m supposed to guess what it makes sense for you to spend to get those things that you want. I’m supposed to do all of this without ever having met the actual, real, unique individual that is you.
And I get it. I understand that it’s a kindness (whether I’m a business owner or not) to decrease the mental load for others and take on work that they’d otherwise have to do themselves. It’s (often) a service to do the research about what restaurant we could go to on a date, or to plan the activities for a weekend out so that all the other person has to do is show up and enjoy. And I really do want to make things as easy as possible for you.
But to do that, I need to trust that you’ll show up to advocate for yourself, too. Because as much as I’m expected to go all in on ask culture when I’m talking about my offers, it seems like the norms are on the other side of guess culture for you to advocate for yourself.
I’m much more likely to hear “I can make that price work” and later find out that it’s wreaking havoc on someone’s finances than I am to hear “Hey, I can make that price work but it’s a stretch. $X feels much more within reach - would that be available?”
I’m much more likely to sit with someone, both staring into our cameras, even if they’re antsy about it and struggle to focus in that setting, than for them to say “Hey, I’ve gotta be doing something with my hands, so I’m folding my laundry while we talk.”
I want to be able to have conversations to accommodate those requests. I want to customize our working relationship to make sure it really does genuinely work for both of us. Giving me information about how to more effectively do that by asking what you need is kind.
Our society has conditioned us all to expect to be treated as interchangeable “customer” cogs in the capitalist machine when we’re buying products. The thing is on the shelf, as is, at the price it is. You take it or you leave it, and you adapt to what’s there. There’s really very little space, in most of our experience, to engage with the process of buying as a human being with unique needs and desires. And so often, the examples we see of people trying to negotiate as a buyer are dehumanizing and disrespectful in the other direction - acting like prices are unreasonable and dismissing the skill and work that goes into creating the product.
I was in a conversation the other day about how I center humans in my business, and I said something about having flexible prices. The other business owners in the room explained to me that I could be human-centric and still know my worth, and that people who really understood the value of what I was offering would find a way to make the money work.
And of course you will. The people I work with are resourceful and value what I do. Of course the work I do is worthy of the prices I charge for it. But there’s more to worth than dollar amounts. And to me, being a human-centric business requires me to acknowledge that. It requires me to understand that while I am worthy of the prices I charge - I am also worthy of being approached as a compassionate human being when that price is going to be a struggle. I am worthy of being trusted to say no if it won’t work, and worthy of being believed when I say I want to work with you at a price point where you’re more focused on the work than the money.
And you’re worthy of advocating for what will work best for you - you have to be, if we’re going to do great work together. You’re just as capable of approaching me with respect and honoring the value of my work and the humanity behind what I provide, and sharing what you need (financially or otherwise) as you are of scraping together the dollars to avoid having that conversation.
So, please. I want a world where we engage with one another as humans - but in order to run a business where I treat everyone involved as lovely, worthy, valued human beings, I need you to show up without preemptively stripping away and hiding what makes you…you.
—
And maybe a more immediate favor? Tell a small business owner you know about the self-promotion gift exchange I’m running, because I want to know about the awesome things they’re doing and they deserve to have a new person discover how great they are, even if they’re not always sure themselves.
