Are you a people pleaser? Are you one of those people who puts on a facade in public, but behind closed doors you’re losing your mind? Let me give you a simple piece of advice:
STOP TRYING TO PLEASE EVERYONE!!!
First off, you CAN’T (don’t take it as a challenge either) please everyone. Scientists haven’t completely mapped out the human genome, what makes you think you’ve unlocked the code to human utopia? While I can appreciate you having big ass goals, that’s just stupid.
Second, most people don’t want to be happy. Even more over, most people don’t believe they deserve to be happy. They carry around all sorts of BS guilt and are only truly happy when their lives are in chaos.
From just the above two points, you should already statistically be convinced to stop trying to make everyone happy, including customers and prospects. Yet, I know how it is. You’re going to need more than just two paragraphs of logic bombs to get you to stop being Sally Save-A-Ho.
Just yesterday I was on the phone with someone I have a massive amount of respect for. One of the questions I asked my friend was if I should change up my brand and try to go after more people with a slightly more PC message. My friend flipped out and gave me some of the best advice ever.
He said that people who aren’t true to themselves are getting eat up alive on the inside. They want to be one way but can’t due to public pressure. Most of that pressure is self inflicted too. The only way to find happiness is to be comfortable with who you are and embracing it. Solid advice to say the least.
It got me to thinking about the journey I’ve been on. I’m happier now than I’ve ever been in my life. At the same time I could give two sh!ts about how most people feel about me. I’ve decided that I’m ok with not everyone liking me. Matter of fact, I’m ok with MOST people hating me.
Now look, I’m not out here trying to make enemies or anything like that. What I’m doing is attempting to keep from wasting my time with people who aren’t like minded. When I say like minded I mean excuse free, action takers who don’t judge on language or other ‘judgey’ behavior.
A man who surrounds himself with too many advisors soon finds confusion. Everyone has an opinion. To the point they will annoy you to death arguing for that opinion. Most people will offer you theirs without you asking for it. They’ll say “I don’t think it’s a good idea to say that” or some sh!t where they are trying to tell you how you should do you.
It’s kind of crazy to think that there are people out there trying to control us by subjecting us to public pressure to their standards not ours.
On my journey, I tried to make everyone happy. Circa 2010 I wasn’t cussing, I was Mr Motivation and I had this luke warm message that did nothing but fall on deaf ears. I carried this fake ass appearance for about a year until I got tired of not gaining momentum.
The problem with being luke warm is you can’t start a fire with warmth, nor can you freeze water with warmth. What I’m saying is my message was bland and it fell in the middle. I’m not Joel Osteen and I can’t write a message for everyone. So I stopped.
I started being the Ryan online that I was in the office. D!ck jokes, cussing, locker room humor, drinking etc. Guess what happened?
As soon as I got real with who I was, people started flocking to me in droves.
At the same time, they also ran to the hills in droves. The first time I dropped the F bomb on Facebook, I got tons of unfriends and private messages scolding me. On the flip side, I had a lot of people reach out to me and thank me for keeping it real and saying what they wanted to but couldn’t.
Let’s relate this to marketing. Good marketing attracts those who can benefit from what you sell, and at the same time repels those who have no use with it. This keeps you from wasting time trying to sell your stuff to someone who can’t use it. This also allows your leads to be warmer due to the attraction model.
In order to attract and repel you have to take a stand on one side of the other. The more you try to please the masses, the less sales you’ll make. It’s ok to not make a sale to someone you wouldn’t mesh well with any way. Some people don’t deserve to be sold by you.
The more you take a stand, the more confident you appear and the more people will see you as a leader and make the decision to hate you or follow you. That’s all you can really ask for is for people to decide if they are for or against you. At least once you step up, they’ll know where you stand.
At first, don’t expect it to be easy. When someone you like unfriends you it might hurt your feelings. Don’t sweat it, people change and they’ll come back if it’s meant to be. Meanwhile you’ll find yourself attracting new friends who you mesh better with anyway and who shares many of the same views as you do.
If you’re not polarizing in one way or another, you’ll never close the volume of deals you want. Get real, get in your face and get in a position to where you know where you stand. If you’d like my guidance or help with this, simply fill out the form below and let’s have a sales conversation. Don’t forget to subscribe to the blog while you’re here.
