Old Fashioned Alarm ClockWe live in the Age of Impatience – where everything must be produced, delivered and consumed not just yesterday but the day before yesterday.

We expect one click to enroll or submit or download products into our daily lives and we barely tolerate the time it takes for that one click. Groceries delivered right to our front door from our laptops. An entire television series delivered and consumed in a single day. Downloadable books written in present-tense with plot lines moving so fast you consume them in hours not days.

And the book? It’s riddled with grammatical errors and plot inconsistencies. But it’s Number One on Amazon so you keep reading – because you paid for it. And that grocery order? It’s missing two important items and you were overcharged for a third. But you try not to mind the time it takes for you to get these issues resolved because of the speed of delivery and the convenience of not going to the store. And that television series? It was great – but you have to wait an entire year for the next season – possibly a year and a half – and you convince yourself that you don’t mind, you know, waiting.

Oh. The. Irony.

When did we lose sight of quality in our haste to have immediacy? The quality of our time not being wasted. The quality of products and services made well and delivered as promised.

Somewhere along the road to making deliverability faster – quality took a hit.

This doesn’t meant that time is not important. Some products have a specific window of opportunity – and speed is of the essence. But not in all cases.

How then can a small business owner balance deliverability and quality in an age of impatience?

One of the most effective (and human) ways possible is through storytelling. It allows both you and the consumer to take a breath and connect. No one tells a good story fast – they tell it with feeling. They want the other person to enjoy it – to have the shared experience of it.

The next time you think you need to slap a blog post together in 15 minutes and call it “content” you might want to just let yourself off the hook. There are companies that understand that time is their greatest asset when putting together quality content.

The teams who produce the stories for Marriott took the time up front to put the tools and people in place that make their content relevant to their followers. Even experienced copywriters like the team at Copyhackers, can take anywhere from 20-40 hours to produce a single blog post – because they know that offering quality in their area of expertise is not only what keeps their followers coming back for more – it’s part of their business story – it’s what they do.

Small business owners have stories happening to them every single day – some of those stories might be time-sensitive – you find that you have to push “Publish” quickly or else you lose the momentum and relevance of the story itself.

But you don’t need to rush every story. You don’t need to panic because you aren’t publishing a blog post every day like your competitors. Maybe it took time for them to work up to that. Maybe they have a staff of writers. And maybe not all of their posts are that great.

Storytelling doesn’t come with a set formula in the one-size-fits-all category. What works for a large corporation may not work for a small business owner even when the process is scaled down.

When you are just starting out with storytelling you are going to find that it might take a couple of tries before you find your voice and your point of view. Once you have those figured out take some time to plan what you want to say, the format you want to present it in and where to share it. Paying attention to the important details of your storytelling, and giving yourself time to get good at those details, is how you can deliver quality that keeps people engaged.

Will you have those moments where you stumble into a story that needs to be shared immediately? Of course.

But don’t feel like you have to approach all of your content with that same “hurry up and publish” mindset.

Great stories are an experience for the consumer, so it’s worth putting in the effort to edit for clarity – be certain your series of photos on Instagram tells a story in a way that keeps your audience enthralled. Craft blog posts with a clear narrative so readers have something to think about or do by the end of each one. Share videos where the story is the star of the show – not the bad lighting.

Quality is a precious commodity. People never forget where it comes from. So in an age when everyone is being pushed to consume information at a dizzying pace – give them a reason to stop rushing, take a breath, and connect with something that matters: your story.