the big mistake that will send potential clients running

Last week, an Instagram ad got me. DAMMIT. It was for a webinar about something I’ve been really interested in lately and the timing was absolutely perfect. (Almost like Instagram tracks my Google searches and my phone listens to me when I talk – how bizarre!).

I would also love to tell you what it was an ad for because it’s actually a really exciting thing in the asia dore world – but it feels too early to start blabbing about it, so instead I’ll just be cryptic and annoying and like “omg this exciting secret is so exciting please be excited with me!” and you can be like “wish I could girl but I have no idea wtf you’re talking about and you won’t tell me so no thanks I literally have 12,689 more important things to do” and we will continue this annoying dynamic until THE BIG OFFICIAL REVEAL. So fun!!

So anyway there I am, another poor sucker who fell for an Instagram ad, impatiently refreshing my inbox as I wait for the webinar sign-up confirmation email.

And how convenient (yet suspicious) that it started exactly 15 minutes after I signed up because there was bold text everywhere that warned me THERE WOULD ABSOLUTELY UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES BE A REPLAY.

And yet as soon as I entered the webinar room, I could tell something was off. The chat wasn’t lining up with the “live” video. The start time was too perfect. My bullshit radar was beeping.

So obviously, as any busy entrepreneur with better things to do would, I signed up for the same webinar with a different email address in order to investigate. And just as we all suspected, it was the exact same video. As in, the entire webinar WAS the replay that I was warned didn’t exist. As in they lied straight to my face

And while the webinar was actually pretty informative, I unsubscribed from everything and swore on my 13 houseplants that I will never ever buy a damn thing from that particular person. All it took was one tiny lie to squash any hope of them gaining my new-customer trust. And it might seem like such a small thing to make a big deal about, but that’s kind of the point. If they’re dishonest about such a small thing, what else are they being dishonest about?

We get all this weird peer pressure as entrepreneurs (probably from social media, yeah?) to be busy, successful, perfectly caffeinated 6-figure bosses.

To put up a facade that we have all our shit together all the time out of fear that being ourselves means we won’t be taken seriously. To copy what everyone else is doing and saying instead of speaking our minds because fitting in seems “more professional” than standing out.

We pretend to show up like we own these huge, busy, established, international corporations instead of just being honest about the fact that most days we work from our messy kitchen tables… and it doesn’t make us any less qualified to sell our high-quality shit and charge top dollar for it.

There are a ton of benefits to being a small business owner with a personal brand – and the best one is the direct human-to-human interaction we get with our potential clients. Our communities naturally look for ways to connect with us, but that doesn’t make them stupid. They see right through the bullshit.

So let’s lean into building honest, open relationships instead of fucking up a good thing by lighting our pants on fire!

Pssst… wanna know the secret to getting potential clients running to you instead of away from you?

It’s building a strong brand.