"Listen To Learn, Not To Respond”

This weekend, I was locked in battle with a social media giant.

Facebook and I were exchanging blows.

Actually… not really.

But the experience made me stop and think about how our minds work , in general.

I am hosting a class this Thursday for Real Estate agents, to teach them how to start their own podcast for no cost.

In order to get the word out to more agents I decided to run a Facebook ad that targeted… you guessed it, Real Estate Agents. The very people this class is for.

About an hour after I set up the ad I received a notification that my ad was rejected because I wasn’t following their rules for “housing opportunities”.

But…

This wasn’t a “housing opportunity”. This was an ad inviting real estate agents to a class I was offering for free.

No housing involved.

If you are familiar with Facebook ads for real estate, then you will know that they are very strict on how you choose your target audience to advertise to. The lines can sometimes be a bit blurred and they don’t want to take a chance that something can be considered discrimination.

Which I totally understand, but had their algorithm made a decision based on something other than a few keywords, they could have understood what the ad was actually about.

After being rejected, they gave me the opportunity to “request a review”. So I did.

I explained to them in 1 sentence that the ad was for an invite to a class, not for housing. Giving them the FULL story of what it was about.

Guess What?

YEP! It was approved this morning.

This isn’t just a Facebook thing though, this is how many of our minds work.

We tend to listen just long enough to find the keywords that we want to respond to, and make our case. Usually glossing over the rest of the information.

I hear it everyday when I’m talking with people about the company I’m associated with.

People say, “You guys do this”, “you guys do that”, “I know what you are about”, “What I don’t like about your company is...”, etc.

They hear one or 2 things that they remember and make up their mind based on those “facts".

And 9 out of 10 times, those “facts” were given as misinformation. Either by accident due to lack of information on the subject or given intentionally.

Again, not their fault. We are conditioned that to not know something, or to not have a response in a conversation, somehow makes us dumb or stupid. So our automatic response is, “I know”. Constructing a response, regardless of how much information we actually have.

But just like Facebook in this scenario, they were looking for their “keywords” to respond to, and made their initial decision based on just those.

But when presented the facts, they were able to learn what the entire picture was, allowing them to make a different decision. A decision that factored in everything, not just what they wanted to respond to.

This is an example of what happens when you…

Listen To Learn, Not To Respond.