A couple of weeks ago I made a LinkedIn connection with a guy called Bernie.
He seemed like a nice chap, but I haven’t actually used his marketing/website/SEO services.
He has a company called Honeybee.
We exchanged a couple of messages along the lines of “Great to connect” etc, but then I received one from him saying, “I’m guessing the Website SEO audit was of no interest to you, Vicki. No problem, it’s there if you change your mind”.
Huh?
I didn’t remember him sending me a website SEO audit.
I scrolled back up through the messages and spotted the source of the problem: a big, fat full-colour, high-magnification image of a bee face.
Now, Bernie is not just a marketer, but a bee-keeper and to him, that’s probably one of the most fascinating and lovely images in his collection.
But to someone who runs away from bees and wasps like me, it’s my worst nightmare.
I remember seeing it pop up in my messages and quickly scrolling past it with my eyes closed.
Yuck!
A massive bee-face is the last thing that’ll convince me to work with someone. In fact, it’ll have the opposite effect.
My reply to him was, “Sorry, Bernie - I have a bit of a bee phobia and I scrolled past that bee face as fast as I could!🤣 However, I totally appreciate how wonderful and important bees are, so well done in your beekeeping work - fascinating stuff. I’ll check out the link for SEO audit shortly”
And I meant to - but I didn’t, because every time I saw the bee face on the link I was a little bit sick in my mouth and threw down my phone.
(I even thought about putting the image in this email, but it still fecking terrifies me and I wouldn’t want to traumatise any other bee-phobic person, which I didn’t know until today is called melissophobia.)
It’s worth remembering that we’re all different. What we love might be somebody else’s worst nightmare.
Differences can happen on much subtler levels than the contrast between a love and a phobia, though.
Maybe it’s communication - some people hate using the phone and love sending emails, and vice versa.
Some people's idea of relaxation is being around lots of people, and some people need solitude.
Some people like to be told things in bullet points, and some in extensive detail.
One of the most important parts of building relationships is understanding the world from the other person's point of view.
If you’re a small business owner and you’d like to explore the possibility of working with me, then drop me a line and we’ll see if we’re a good fit to work together.
I promise not to send you bee pictures.
In fact, here is a terrifying close-up image of my dog, Eddie. (If you don’t like dogs you’re a loser and I won’t work with you.)