Online Business changed my life.
I get to create every single day.
I get to experiment and play.
What I create impacts people all over the world.
I have “fans”.
The ideas I have get to become real things…
and those real things affect real people.
The core of what I do is “teaching”. I’m a teacher. The platform for my teaching is the Internet. The vehicle for my teaching is the content I create; the videos I film, the blog posts I write, the courses I produce.
I get the feeling that my work actually matters.
And then at the end of the day, somehow, it turns into money.
My Online Business provides a good living for me.
I really don’t worry about money. Part of that is my mindset, and the healthy relationship I’ve created around finances.
But the truth is, I can pay the bills. I can feed my family. I can donate to charities I care about. I can give to my church. I can take my family on vacations throughout the year.
The truth is, you can do most of these things even if you don’t make very much money. But I know what it’s like to not make very much money, and these things are harder to do when your bank account balance seems to be gasping for air.
Answer me this:
Have you ever stumbled across something for the first time, and then all of a sudden you see & hear it everywhere?
You know, where you hear of a weird name or concept for the first time, and then you notice it everywhere?
That’s called the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon.
When you learn about something, your mind is primed to look for it everywhere, and often these “things” have been there all along, it’s just now your brain is primed to notice.
When I first came across Online Business, it was brand new to me. Then the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon kicked in, and the amount of information I learned about Online Business over the following weeks, months, and years grew at an exponential rate.
The more I read, the more I came across — the blogs, the entrepreneurs, the strategies, courses, products, webinars, books, and so on.
At this point, I’d consider myself a relative expert in the world of Online Business.
And over the years, I began to see patterns…
- How certain websites “sold” things to me
- How I would “opt-in” to a blogger to receive a “freebie” of sorts, in exchange for my name & email
- The marketing email sequences
- The “sales funnels”
- The Facebook ads
- The proven formulas for convincing website visitors to buy your products
- The psychology behind how sales pages convert people to customers
- How scarcity works
- The long game that entrepreneurs play, from end-to-end, to grab your attention, establish trust, discover your pain points, and present a solution to you, so that you can buy from them.
The amount of information, strategy, and knowledge I’ve acquired is powerful.
It’s one of those powers that can be used for Good.
I realized you can use all of these “techniques”, “strategies”, and well-designed marketing systems to truly help people, solve their problems, and be rewarded financially in return.
But it’s also one of those powers that, if in the wrong hands, can be used to exploit people. To prey on people who struggle. To fool people. To make enormous amounts of cash at the expense of others.
To put profit at the very top.
And people at the very bottom.
When I noticed one sleaze ball online marketer, I noticed another.
And another.
And now I see them everywhere. I can spot one from a mile away (or perhaps, a few hundred pixels away).
I know their tricks; I know what they’re doing.
The truth is, I have the power, knowledge, and ability to do exactly the same thing.
I can choose to make fast money. I can take the list of 24,000 people who gave me permission to email them; the 10,000 Code College customers; the 260,000 students on Udemy; the 35,000 YouTube subscribers who have learned from my tutorials…
and exploit them.
I know what they struggle with. I know their goals, their stories, their aspirations. They explicitly tell me.
I can use that knowledge, my influence, the trust I’ve built with these real people, and exploit them in the name of profit.
But I’m not going to do that.
It’s easy to be a shitty person. It’s easy to throw integrity and honesty out the window in exchange for fast cash.
But that’s not sustainable. You can only fool people for so long until you can’t fool them any longer.
Your reputation hangs in the balance, and you’ll become known as “one of those marketers”.
So how do you grow, succeed, and make a good living in Online Business while maintaining Integrity and Honesty?
You Serve People.
You become the Servant.
You put yourself last. At the very bottom.
And all of these strategies, the knowledge, the skills, the tactics?
Use them for Good.
Use them to get in front of the people who need you. And help them.
Solve their problem.
Serve them.
It’s not the fast way to make money. It’s not romantic. It’s not pretty. It’s not hype. It’s not “hustle”
It’s honest.
And honesty and integrity are rewarded.
Slowly.
Surely.
If you follow me. If you’ve purchased something from me. If you’ve given me your email address. If you’ve shared a personal story with me. If you’re a fan. If you’ve received any value from something I’ve created.
Thank you.
You’ve changed my life.
You’ve given me freedom.
And for that, I owe you. I owe you my Service.
It’s my duty and my mission to be a source for Good in this crazy world of Online Business.
It’s an honour and a blessing to serve you.
Sincerely,
Brad
p.s. If you’re in online business or thinking about starting an online business, I want you to ponder some of the following questions. And please, if what I shared with you today has resonated with you in any way, please leave a comment and share your thoughts below…
- How do I grow my business & make more money while keeping my integrity intact?
- Is it really all about Growth? “Hustle”? The Grind?
- Can I sell my products/services with honesty?
- How much money and success is _enough_?
- Are you about People or Profit? Can you have both?
- Is wanting to grow and earn more money a bad thing?
- What was the ORIGINAL idea that attracted you to Online Business in the first place? That one THING that started the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon for you?