I’m Over Being A Sleazy Internet Marketer

Why are we all so busy trying to help each other succeed?

Because marketing says we have to put stuff out there and be helpful. It says you have to be visible online, you have to show you’re a thought leader — or at least the helpful type — so your name or brand is top of mind for people. You have to be positive, with your shit together, making it happen, and on your A game in order to make it. You need to run a meetup, start a movement, publish videos, write an e-book and be some kind of mythical business or life guru.

It’s not enough to know your craft and do a good job at it — you have to tell everyone about it on every platform in short form with links to it in a full color, video montaged, long form article anchored with emotional photos and a call to action to:

BUY | SUBSCRIBE | DOWNLOAD

or whatever.

For a while, my entire being hated this cycle, it pissed me off. I felt like the truth was that no one cared or was that together all the time and all that stuff was only written or designed to get me into a sales funnel. No one really gave a shit about helping me or enlightening me to the amazing way in which they worked — IT WAS ALL FOR THEM — because they care about making money.

I get it. People need money to live.

But that doesn’t make the constant barrage of content, programs, and strategies any less sleazy feeling when it’s being slung at you in every ad and all over your inbox.

And the thing is, I’m sleazy, I’ve done it—because it’s how business is working these days.

This is the hustle if you’re a business owner. But it’s exhausting and I felt hateful about it sometimes.

Every business blog I read, every podcast, webinar, book, and networking event, is full of this hype.

Sometimes it’s a soul sucking endeavor to put yourself out there because some days you feel bad, overweight, tired, unattractive, stupid, over it, like a fake, and you get to feeling really lost. I know I did. I even decided I didn’t want to do it anymore. Truly.

It’s easy to get caught up in thoughts that tear you down.

When I got overwhelmed by all of these horrible emotions, I stayed away from online marketing for a while. I would instead play my guitar in the middle of the day, go for a long walk in the sunny NC woods, meditate, do yoga, and write fiction. But no one knew I was doing amazing UX work when I did that, no one knew I could help them start a business or launch a product, no one really knew what I thought or who I was or that I could help them understand digital marketing.

And the worst part of all: I felt unfulfilled. I wasn’t living the life I wanted, I was just avoiding a place where I felt trapped.

BUT…the problem wasn’t digital marketing. It was that I had become an Expert and didn’t even recognize that I needed to move on to the NEXT level.

I read a lot, all the time, and would come away thinking — is this person truthfully a thought leader? Ugh, I didn’t learn anything I haven’t read a hundred times before. I tossed many books aside in frustration. I’m not saying I don’t like the way people put things at times, but it’s not like I was finding business and life epiphanies out there.

When you hit that wall, that’s when you know you’ve become an expert at something. It took me a while to realize this and I had a lot of fights with myself over it, but I had to face that I was pissed off because I wasn’t learning from my gurus and the “smart” people like I used to because I had advanced beyond that and become an expert myself.

If you’re running an online business doing some kind of consulting, once you’re an expert, you really need to stop attending and buying everyone else’s stuff about how to be that expert and run that business and instead focus on joining mastermind groups and building your own products. It’s time to package and sell that expertise so you can eventually turn your sights toward your own higher ticket consulting and events. This is the path if you want to reach that high 7-figure income and stop getting so freakin’ stressed out and pissed off at all the hypey crap in your inbox.

It really became clear to me when I was reading a recap from a fellow UX person I follow. She listed all the things she tried to do to increase her sales this past year and it was as I expected — many of them only yielded a small return. I know that feeling all too well — it’s just like the one I used to get after writing a response to an RFP.

But here’s the thing: you have to hustle and do what she did. You have package up and put your expertise out there so you can get better at delivering that expertise and then teach others how it’s done. This will lead you down the path to getting better and better at digital marketing and, ultimately, position you as an expert. Once you hit that level, you can run multiple sales funnels to your products, run live events, start a mastermind group and then that’s when amazing opportunities really open up for you in life.

Please know you are not alone.

If you’re struggling with becoming or being an expert, the digital hustle, and don’t think you can keep going: know you are not alone because I have been there, too. It’s a hard road and I still go driving there sometimes. There are days when I feel like the hustle and grind is going to overthrow my life. But you have to keep going or you’ll stay right where you are. If you’re happy with that, and some people are, then that’s totally fine. But if you want this, you’ve got to keep going and one of the best ways to do that is to find other people who are going through it, too. Join a Facebook group, follow someone who writes about entrepreneurship and digital marketing who aligns to your journey, start your own little inner circle of people like you who are trying to make things happen and help each other.

I keep pushing through all the feelings of frustration and how hard it all is and am putting everything I know online to help others like me.

Sometimes just knowing you are not alone is all the help you need to take that next step.