Unless your own personal moral code is faulty or permanently stuck on zero - then along the journey of building your online business - you'll hit barriers.
Barriers come up when you're faced with a strategy that makes you think "ugh" - and is DEFINITELY not what we'd call "ethical marketing".
But... when you're faced with a barrage of people who tell you that you MUST do things a certain way to succeed... because your personal barometer is screaming FUCK NO - then you put up a barrier on your growth.
NOT because you don't want to grow... but because you get temporarily stuck.
You refused to do the "ick" thing - but aren't quite ready to break away and employ a method which when filtered by you gets the "hell yeh" nod!
The barriers go up and instead of thinking "right, I need to find a way around this" you fall into thinking "fuck, I don't wanna do that, I don't know what to do - imma just sit here and wait for inspiration" - and seriously, nothing beats taking action to FIND inspiration, motivation and momentum!
Here's what I mean. A few years ago I jumped on a "new strategy" along the lines of how to call in 100 perfect people in a week or so. These 100 people were going to be DESPERATE to work with you, DESPERATE to buy your thing and some of them might even set up a new country and call you its leader! 😉
Basically, you went around Facebook groups, spammed the shit out of them - anyone who replied to you got a friend request.
Then, you segmented your FB "friends" and put out a bunch of spammy, salesy crap on your FB personal page, but filtered only to this new group of suckers friends.
Oh yeh, you were supposed to be "all up in their DMs" too.
None of that sat right with me at all. My FB has and always will be (until I delete the damned thing for good!) - a tool I use to keep in touch with friends, family and people I've met FOR REAL over the years.
My "personal profile" had never been a client-getting strategy.
Anyway, I always figured you needed a brass-neck to employ such tactics, a shaky moral code or just a huge streak of desperation.
But... back then I didn't have the confidence to speak up - and didn't even ask for my lousy $10 back! 😂 Which I definitely should've done because I could see within the first 30 seconds of the first paragraph that this strategy was not for me!
So I put up a barrier. I eschewed all such shady tactics, but I didn't know how to move forward because that was what "everyone else was doing" and they were waxing lyrical about how great it was which made me think I was wrong!
But I knew that chasing people (harassing people??) through their DMs was something that I was NOT prepared to do because I felt it sleazy and intrusive. I mean seriously, to this day - hit me up with a friend request and a DM and I smite you by hitting the "Block as Spam" button!
Although I knew this strategy wasn't for me because I was the barometer, I didn't know the answer - and so I stalled. I thought I had to do the whole Facebook thing because "everyone else" was - and when there's a whole movement like that, it is hard to stand up and say "hang on a minute, this is shady as fuck".
Then there are the hard sales strategies - the "what will your business look like in 12 months if you don't take this opportunity 🙄 today?", "you can put this on a creditcard" - etc., etc.
I am 100% against such sleazy tactics - and hand on heart - how could I look my clients in the face if I KNOW I'd pushed them in to buying? Yuck!
There's also a very famous internet marketer who recommends you basically rip off other people's course/funnel designs - he's got a nice catchy name for this - but is it just me or is that fucking dishonest?
Ethical marketing likely means you'll move slower than those "hacking results" - but, you get to remove the barriers because your barometer isn't hitting either extremes... it's also a whole lot easier to type when your keyboard isn't covered in vomit... 😁 AND you get to sleep at night!
Push come to shove, you need to take ALL advice and pass it through your OWN filter to decide what works for you - and what doesn't.
I have an American friend who calls cold-calling "dialling for dollars" and is absolutely A-OK with doing this. In her defence, her calls are VERY targeted and she sells an extremely valuable and professional service.
And whilst I feel I do have a fantastic copywriting service - cold-calling is just not something I can do. It would drain my mental energy in about 37 seconds and I'd need to go and lie down for the rest of the day. 😂
So sure, some people might tell you that you absolutely MUST spam the shit out of everyone on Social Media/make cold-calls/attend breakfast networking meetings/never take no for an answer/"borrow" someone else's funnel... but what's YOUR BAROMETER telling you?
