Today was all about killing the Buddha
Revenue Secrets — Episode #2
Insights for self-employed professionals who didn’t just fall off the turnip truck
This week was filled with amazing conversations, insights gained, and hunches confirmed.
One of the core tenets on my list of self-employment learnings was confirmed.
Here’s the list.
⛰️ There are no easy answers
⛰️ Widely adopted ideas don’t work
⛰️ Social proof doesn’t matter
⛰️ If you meet the Buddha on the road kill him
⛰️ Community unlocks all doors
Today was all about killing the Buddha.
What I mean is that just because somebody has excellent testimonials, obvious success, and incredible charisma that what they are selling will work for you.
Life is a popularity contest for most people. When somebody is popular heads tilt in their direction. We want to be popular too. It makes sense right?
If they are happy, wealthy, and popular we will too if we follow their advice. This is totally wrong for all kinds of reasons. These are just a few possibilities.
- What they created years ago no longer matters because things changed
- The ideas are great but won’t work because you are solving the wrong problem
- They are just a plain old charlatan with no morals, scruples, or value
Here’s what prompted this thought about the Buddha.
A very well-known social media personality told me the truth about her journey.
She’s extremely successful, big on a variety of platforms, and named as one of the top social media celebrities of the past year. We had a great conversation and really clicked. She’s successful now but went back to when she got started.
When she began the social media path it felt overwhelming to her. She had some money to invest so she sought out top industry experts. Like most of us, she sought out the popular kid’s table. Unlike many, she was willing to pay to get a seat.
You know the names of the people that she paid tens of thousands of dollars to launch her social media presence and campaigns. Here’s what she told me.
“It was as if there wasn’t even a real company there. I got nothing out of all that money. Nothing. And I never got to talk to the person that I thought had all the answers”
It gets worse. She figured another top thought leader would be different. He cost even more money. Now, this is someone that you know for sure. He’s all over social media. One of the top content producers, personalities, and experts. Her experience?
“It was amazing. We were told there was a special company just for small companies like us. They charged a ton of money but we were really excited because we love his videos. The result was terrible. All we got was a bunch of crappy Facebook ads and a few boring extremely conventional videos”.
What she learned was exactly the same as my own experience. You can’t pay somebody else to figure out yourself. Once she realized that everything changed. She got in the trenches, learned the business, and found her own way with support.
There is no one formula or system that works. Nobody has the answer. People have their own experiences to share based on success and time in the trenches. That’s really valuable. My approach is to listen carefully but find my own way forward.
We have to wrestle with these core challenges or we will run on the self-employed hamster wheel for years without much change or success. You can’t outsource this stuff. We can learn, get help, and hire resources. But nobody can do it for us.
In this case, each of these people is very good at a few critical things. Knowing what those are and taking advantage of their expertise is free. They talk about it all over the place on social media on a daily basis.
Digging into the details of what they are saying is good enough. You don’t need to hire them because you aren’t hiring them. You are hiring the system they put together to allow them to scale their businesses and not have to talk to you.
We need community, frameworks, and resources to succeed. What we don’t need are service providers that will do the work on our behalf, until we get big enough to know enough to hire, direct, and manage those sorts of companies.
The reason this is true is that finding your voice in social media, building your own presence, and getting known in a way that guarantees income is highly personal.
You have to wrestle with these issues yourself. It’s important to get coaching and guidance to support yourself. But don’t expect that because somebody succeeded that what they do will be valuable for you given your own situation in life.
The top people are the Buddhas. When you meet one know that they don’t have all the answers. Then hire the good ones after you learned the score.
