3 Things

My pricing has gone up alongside the value of the products and services I offer. It also has gone up alongside my mindset around money and specifically how much I feel something is worth or "should" cost. That's right, I said feeling.

What something costs affects how we feel about it. If I want quality and something is cheap but looks good, I still likely won't buy it. Especially online, where appearances can be deceiving, not to mention in a world where I question the authenticity of everything.

Sometimes, we know we should charge more but we're stuck in feeling like it should be less money. We're prejudging what others will think of the cost based on our own feelings. Classic projection.

Sometimes our feelings need to catch up to the actual value of what we're selling. Sometimes, imposter syndrome makes it hard, and sometimes it's conditioning.

QR codes were a dying trend — until a global pandemic essentially forced everyone to learn how to use them. Now they're everywhere: restaurant menus, business cards, event flyers, product packaging, real estate signs.

And yet... most people are still using them wrong.

I'm not talking about the technical side (though please, for the love of all things holy, test your QR code before you print 500 flyers). I'm talking about the strategy — or lack thereof — behind where the code actually takes people.

Here's the thing: a QR code is just a bridge. It gets someone from the physical world to the digital one. But if that bridge leads to your homepage? Or worse, a broken link? You've wasted their time and yours.

There is probably something on your website you keep finding reasons not to remove.

Maybe it was the first page you wrote yourself. Maybe it took weeks of back and forth to finally feel right. It gets almost no traffic. It has never produced a lead. And every time you review the site, you scroll past it and keep moving.

That is a darling. And most business websites are keeping several of them.

"Kill your darlings" is a phrase from writing and filmmaking. When MGM edited The Wizard of Oz, they cut the Jitterbug, a fully choreographed musical number, because the movie was running too long. The work mattered. The effort was real. But the finished product was better without it.