Getting what you want - Nice Man Edition

As a general rule in life, you should provide more value to society than you consume. This should be, at the very least, your goal. Let me elaborate.

If, for example, you are a writer / blogger and are making a cold outreach to your fellow blogger for a guest post or a mention, you are consuming. Well, in that scenario, you should never ask for something in the first communication with that person. You should at least start with an introduction or letting them know what you did for them (mentioned them in your post, for example). I hear this recommendation from Nat Eliason first from his post “How Nat Eliason Grew A Website To 10K Visitors In A Month”.

The goal here is to introduce yourself and potentially make friends. If you are a good person and stick to this workflow, you will eventually achieve your goal, more often than not. If you are not a good person and are simply using the intro message as an excuse to ask for something, then at some point, there will be a negative view of your ways, and this won’t work for you.

Another great example is for business owners. I have had many interactions with Customer Service. Whenever I had a good experience, I have then “marked” the company as “Great” in my head. This made it more likely for me to do business with them in the future and recommending someone else does too. This is because that company didn’t want to take anything from me (more money, for example). Rather, they were looking to provide me with help and relief. For that reason, I was more likely to buy more and recommend my friends more, also. This is what the goal of the business, get more sales. This “Be awesome to your customers and good things follow.” thought comes from the book Traction by Gabriel Weinberg.

You can get the things you want, as a person, or business, while staying nice. The mindset one needs to keep is to produce more than consume.