Keep it simple.

The right answer and the best solution aren’t often the most complicated or complex, and there isn’t much value in something nobody understands.

I’ve spent a number of years working in paid digital advertising where I would do things like write proposals, monitor and manage campaigns, and discuss performance to stakeholders, usually with some kind of goal to increase my budget or expand services.

For anyone NOT in digital advertising, there’s a lot of vocabulary, the technology is always changes, and everything seems to be connected to everything. It’s easy to get confused, overwhelmed, and even frustrated.

For anyone IN digital advertising, it’s a deep dark rabbit hole of “what about this” and “ohh that might work” because the depth and detail to which you can integrate your marketing strategy and data for a more targeted approach is always deepening.

One of the things I learned quickly: if you’re trying to tell a CEO or a small business owner their investment is worth it, you have to tell them just that. You’re not going to get them to care about the details like you do, and they’re never going to learn the depth of the information like you have.

No, they’re not dumb.

I learned to keep it simple and speak plainly.

I’d say the same rings true when I hear about my husband’s work as a middle school special ed teacher.

I trust you’re now thinking of some times in the workplace where things might have been a bit more positive or effective had things been a bit simpler.

So why aren’t we applying that same principle to our relationships? The way we communicate with one another?

I was having a conversation with a mentor the other day and she was pressing me hard about why I felt a certain way about a situation. I finally said, “And, I don’t want them to think I’m a flake if I can’t follow through on this.”

“There it is.” she said so light heartedly as she gently touched my shoulders in endearment. “This isn’t about them, it’s about you. And nobody is going to think that about you because you’re not.”

That’s it. That was the end of that. She didn’t follow it up with “plain and simple” or “that’s that”, but her tone and the conviction in which she delivered her statement let me know it really was that simple.

Maybe it’s easier to stay stuck when we convince ourselves the solution is more complicated. Could it be that we seek complexity for the obscurity of it?

Maybe it’s not (yet) in the way you speak with others, but in the way you speak to yourself that you first learn to lean on simplicity…

What solutions are you avoiding?

What opportunities are you missing?

What growth are your abandoning?