When you play truth or dare, which one do you pick?
TRUTH duh because dares always lead to recklessness and embarrassment. Ok, that is unsubstantiated. Truth can lead to those things too, but, in general, I am anti-dares because they terrify me.
So when my friend Sarah “dared” me to get to my CTA in 400 words or less today I was likewise terrified, but unlike “dare” scenarios from adolescence, this one sounded fun.
Within that fun there were alarm bells ringing in my head tho: WARNING WARNING THIS COULD END POORLY FOR YOU. I believe the technical term for that is a “red flag,” a sign that something is about to go wrong (or could).
We talk about red flags frequently in the context of clients or customers (or even new friends). We assess their behavior and make predictions about what might happen in the future based on what we witnessed.
You get really good at spotting red flags when you’ve been in the game for a while because it’s all about spotting patterns. Humans are pattern recognizing machines, but we often ignore the data coming in, in order to fit what we want to believe is true.
It’s sorta like dating. You go on enough dates, you start to notice what sorts of things lead to terrible boyfriends (and worse husbands). Extending this metaphor because we’re still within word count: We tend to ignore obvious red flags if the person is really good-looking or seems to fit other boxes nicely (Income? Job title? Impressive degree? Your mom likes him? You’re at the “right age” to get married (whatever that means)?).
Each of us has different red flag indicators when it comes to clients. For me, it’s “blowing up my phone before we’ve started working together” or other blatant boundary violations.
But what about those almost-indistinguishable-
Pink Flags are the subject of nearly every conversation I have with colleagues behind the scenes (some might call this “lead qualifying,” but that’s boring), which is why Hill and I wanted to dish on some common Pink Flags to look out for in our latest episode of #HAMYAW:
BOOM 398 WORDS!!
Hillary and Margo Yell At Websites: Should You Work With This Client? (AKA The Pink Flags Episode).
We talk:
- How to know whether you should work with someone
- What’s the difference between a red flag and a pink flag?
- What do you do when you aren’t sure about someone?
- What are clear indicators that this isn’t going to work?
- Why you’re probably ignoring the red flags?
- How a pink flag can turn green
- AND MORE
Check out this week’s episode here.
Sarah, I win the dare.
ish?
(We’re at 490 words now but I got to the CTA in the right amount of time IT TOTALLY COUNTS)
As always, if you liked the episode, please like it, share it, and subscribe to our channel.
That’s the last dare I do for a while…sheesh.
Margo
PS: This episode has been brought to you by Startup Parent’s creativity challenge. Do it AFTER you watch this week’s #HAMYAW.
PPS: Snowmen have nothing to do with this email I just can’t get that song out of my head and I didn’t want to suffer alone. But I hear watching #HAMYAW can help…
