Yesterday I finally had a chance to tune into my dear friend’s new Podcast “The Kitchen Table Activist”. Her mission is to inform people about some of the hard stuff going on in our world and to offer up some things people can do to change these situations. This episode I tuned into happened to be about child sex trafficking.
This was not an easy listen, of course, it required a deep presence to let it all in. And shortly into the details of how this all goes down, a dam broke inside and I had a deep cry before I could even go on.
And as I continued listening she launched into the explicit strategies used to get these young girls hooked into child prostitution rings. And here it came… the tactic of using the online space to manipulate these girls to come to them. The process of slowly grooming them. They present an image of themselves as something appealing to a younger girl (a slightly older boy). Pretty easy to do via a computer screen. Then they slowly court them, working to gain their trust so they can learn their weaknesses. And then bam, they use this knowledge to manipulate them into behaving how they want (getting the girls to come to them physically) and they threaten them with the information they have on them if they don’t.
I sat there raw, tears having recently cleansed my landscape, and I literally stopped the podcast and rewound to the beginning of this stretch again. Here it was, plain as day. The exact same strategy I see taught in online business trainings to instruct entrepreneurs, including ones labeled “heart centered”, on how to sell their products and services.
So here’s the teaching’s I have encountered and see widely utilized:
As the entrepreneur, we’re taught to position ourselves as an “expert” in an area others would find value in learning about. Often this means jumping through a list of tasks, strategies that will present an image that we know the most about a certain topic, something that if another knew could help transform their life. We then draw in an audience touting our expertise using a drip system to share valuable knowledge. This is called “nurturing” (ahem grooming them to buy from us) our audience, our fans. We share how we relate, were just like them once, before we found the way that set us free. We’re taught to find out how they think, what makes them hurt, what are their biggest pain points. To then press into this pain and make it feel so bad that they are ready to act, to change… and lucky them, we are right there with a solution. And it just costs this much. And whether “this much” is affordable to them or not, they are so ready to get out of that pain they grab our hand and say yes. Heck, it’s an “investment” signifying there will be larger returns.
Upfront it appears like quite a difference in the severity of consequence as these young girls lured into child prostitution end up with very little means of escape. But it’s important to connect the threads of the many ways we manipulate other’s vulnerabilities for our own surface level gains and the real and dire results of that.
What’s truly dangerous to me is how this type of marketing is being sold (and bought) as a strategy to help change the world. A strategy to be utilized by healers, coaches, thought and spiritual leaders, therapists, artists and more to help spread/sell their messages and work.
We must ask, what is the change we wish to see in the world? If I dig into the work of many of these healers, artists, thought leaders, etc… the message of much of this work is a call to a world of more compassion. A call to honest self-expression, to living truthfully. To cooperation, connection with our environment, a reunion with living aligned with spirit, source, universal truth… whatever you want to call it. It’s a calling to re-access all we’ve been taught and to learn to listen and live from our hearts.
If we seek to sell this, we cannot be duped by utilizing any mentality or strategies that doesn’t embody the life affirming world we are working to move into.
These strategies are presented as ok to employ because we are trying to help. The assumption is that we are doing this for the good of another so it’s justified. Hey, we’re here to serve! The truth is it’s all about the bottom line. What is the number one thing we are serving, what is the order of our priorities? Is it our bank account or is it truly helping others? Because if it’s the latter we wouldn’t follow these tactics so blindly. And yes, we may end up “leaving some money on the table”. We may never get famous. Live on a yacht. Or a myriad of other things. But those things will never fill the gaping hole of meaning, connection and belonging we desire. They will never bring peace to a conscience that sacrificed itself and others.
We’re on a sinking ship, if we want to get off we’re going to have to rebuild a new one to hop onto… not just stuff the hole of the current one and continue eating at the buffet like nothing is wrong. We’ve been doing this far too long already while there are blaring messages letting us know the boat is currently capsizing.
SO much of the marketing teachings out there touts this… “don’t sell a product, sell the transformation”.
This is simply turning “transformation” into a product.
It’s getting suckered by a few cheap psychological tricks to convince ourselves and others that we have the right and power to sell something we don’t own and have no domain over.
We’re taught to dangle a glamorous future in front of our prospective buyer promising if “THEY DO THE WORK”, if they follow what we say, utilize this product… this better life will be theirs. Who are we to promise this? And the threat is the certainty of the delivery… you can have this great future if you do “THIS”. We’re telling another exactly what they need to do and blaming them when/if it doesn’t work. Our pitches become just another shyster move… no different then a car company alluding to the fact that you will attract a hot partner if you drive that car. They too are selling “transformation”. It’s an old and tired game.
And what I want to shout is, don’t sell the “transformation”… BE THE TRANSFORMATION.
We sell it by BEING IT!!! If we don’t model the world we’d like to live in during our selling invitations we’re deluding ourselves that we are offering anything different.
Selling is fundamentally about connection. It’s an invitation into a relationship with another. But the question is how do we want to connect? Relate? Through our fears? Through scaring each other over what might happen if we don’t act the way we think someone should? And all behind a cowardice veil of claiming we are the authority! Listen to us because we are the gods of this topic! We are the expert! We know what you need!
When we pull back the curtain, it’s all so very weak. Who are we behind the brand? The polished picture we present to the world? Are we not still hurting just the same? What is it that we really want to sell? What kind of world do we really want to live in? Do we really want to keep on pretending?
If we truly want to do work to help transform our world into one that is life-affirming, then we are going to have to embody what is life-affirming while we sell.
And this is not preying on peoples vulnerabilities, quite the contrary.
It’s holding a space that says I see you. I really SEE YOU. I see a person who is ingenious, strong and resilient. I see a person who responds to the sound of truth. I see a person who wants love, clean air to breathe, their kids to be safe and happy, to feel needed and useful… I see a person hurting from the many ways we are isolated and cut off from our own true nature. I see a person just like me in every way, who longs for ‘a more beautiful world and in their heart know it’s possible’. *
I show up holding this space… my work, product, service, contribution, offering… simply a vehicle to invite another in with me.
A vehicle to give away what I long to contribute, and a vehicle to ask for support so that I may nurture myself and remain alive to what is true and holy in us all.
Every selling interaction can be this exact invitation. It’s an invitation to ourselves first, once we accept we can invite another in with us.
This is how we will transform our world. Moment by moment, invitation by invitation.
*modified quote by Charles Eisenstein- title of his book “The Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible”
Recent Comments