The Quiet Entrepreneur
I’m a quiet entrepreneur - I’d rather read a book then meet people. My marketing style is to invite trust and loyalty rather than coerce and manipulate in search of a sale.
I just read a blog post that PERFECTLY encapsulated my feelings about growing a business and remaining true to one’s own values. (Read it here.) Like Kerstin, I have always felt uncomfortable with the hard sell, FOMO, and hustle techniques commonly touted as essential to growing a readership/audience/email list/customer base. It takes virtually no intelligence at all to see straight through the hype and realise I am being manipulated into doing something, and no matter how much I might actually want or need to do that thing, I innately resent being pushed in that direction. In fact I’m highly likely to click away from sites with countdown timers. I was the child who would deliberately head the opposite direction when the cry “Fight! Fight!” rose up in the school playground and everyone else ran to see the fun. I’m the one who’ll delete the emails shouting “Hurry, last chance - offer ends at midnight!”. I resent being made to feel like I’m missing out on some special offer that I might genuinely want to grab but simply cannot afford it.
I’ve listened to the marketing gurus: “it’s our duty to our customers to help them make that final decision that will change their lives”; “our customers will thank us later because the value they gained was way more than the cost”; “we have to make people afraid of missing out so they’ll pay up now and not miss out and regret it later”. These teachers really do almost convince me that I am doing my customers a service by coercively moving them towards the act of purchasing. But am I really? What if the value was great enough that a simple offer resulted in a sale? What if the product was really exactly what the customer needed and could afford - wouldn’t they buy it anyway? Who are we kidding when we say we are helping our customers by prodding them into a commitment? If they needed it/wanted it/could afford it, they’d buy it. If they don’t/shouldn’t/can’t, then we’ve just conned someone into buying something they actually shouldn’t have.
So I agree with Kerstin (and she said it all so much better than I can - seriously, go read her post), and you won’t find any hustle here. If you’re interested in my services, contact me. If you want to take the resources I’ve offered and DIY, go for it! I’ll be your biggest supporter ☺
