How do they look in the mirror?
Trust is how they fool us
Happy Friday
We like to think fairy tales help children understand how the world works. Like when Pinocchio tells a lie and his nose grows, and he doesn’t get to be a real boy until he learns to be honest and tell the truth.
Children are are supposed to learn the value of honesty from the story.
Except that’s not the world we live in.
Yesterday, I saw an ad on Facebook for an ecommerce course. Normally, I ignore ads on FB. I just mute them. I don’t like FB, because I don’t like anything Zuckerberg stands for, but sometimes I have to use it for work. So there I was.
Getting my buttons pushed.
The person running the course had won an ecommerce award for making seven figures their first year. Most ecommerce companies give out annual awards. Big Commerce, Shopify, even Aweber. They all do.
“Look, this person made six figures (or seven) using our platform!”
It’s good press and good for their sales. When the awards come up, they always get a whack of new signups. More hopefuls.
So I grabbed the name of the person running the course and went digging. If you’re trying to do the homework on someone or something, you have to really dig because search engines favor recency. I didn’t want recency, I wanted history.
Several pages in, I hit pay dirt.
When Instagram was new, this person built a massive following by creating hundreds of IG accounts and using “pods” to grow. Then funneled them into email.
Nine years ago. Using methods that would not work today because pods are as dead as any “cheat” that worked nine years ago. Duh. But it’s okay, because all the course really teaches, in a nutshell, is that you need to build an audience.
It costs over a grand.
People are buying it, because the ecommerce win is real. That’s all they care about. They see the magazine articles and press releases. Omg, she really did win the award. She really did make that much money. They won’t look when. Or how.
That “social proof” will be enough for them to cough up a cool grand.
Some of us view trust as a precious thing that must be earned.
Others use it to fool us. Here’s what I want to know…
How do they look in the mirror?
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. " —Joseph Goebbels
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If you enjoyed this issue, click the heart to let me know and thanks for reading.
Have a great weekend.
xo,
Linda
I'm a Connecticut Yankee and too cheap to pay for that stuff. 🤣🤣 Look around, there's a lot of good stuff free online.
The answer to your question is easy: such people have no moral center. They worship at the altar of money.