I’ve attracted some real slime ball situations over the years in my business…
Years ago, I crossed paths with a guy in the real estate industry whose idea of marketing was to scrape every real estate agent’s address he could find, load it into some shady bulk mailing system, buy a brand new set of IP addresses to avoid the filters, press GO and watch the s*itty emails fly!
It was a throw it up against the wall and see what sticks operation.
Apart from the sheer shortsightedness of beginning a relationship with a prospect by barging into their life like a thief in the night, the whole thing was a small representation of everything that is wrong with the state of doing business online.
I’d describe his method of business building as, “I’m going to get what I want no matter what it takes.”
We had some “philosophical” differences that eventually led us to part ways, but I ended up learning a pretty valuable lesson:
If you don’t know who you are, you are going to be trampled by someone who does.
What does it mean to “know who you are?” It means that you have a clearly defined part of reality that you inhabit. You have boundaries beyond which you will not go. You have preferred methods of taking action. Certain ways of thinking. Specific values and ideals that you hold dear. Not because other people agree with them, just because they represent YOU.
Most of all, knowing who you are means that, when someone presents an opportunity for you to engage in behavior that runs contrary to who you are, you have the guts to say “No.”
I didn’t back then. I just wanted to be liked!
Why do you think the Matrix trains its slaves in school to enjoy earning the favor of the teacher for proclaiming arbitrary units of measure called grades like A, B, C, D and F? Why are we conditioned to want that feeling of being praised, accepted, applauded for giving the “right” answer or displaying our “compliance?”
Because that’s how you get masses of humans to grow up to be babies in adult bodies. When that happens, you can control them. You can spread the most heinous forms of evil throughout the world and watch as they stand by and do nothing.
They can’t do anything because their view of reality is that it happens to them, not that they create it.
While these are serious life lessons I was gifted with by this client (I even got paid!), they can also be used to build profitable businesses.
What you will find is that people with boundaries, ideals, and values are respected. They are attractive. Sometimes they get martyred, but most of the time, they develop into a powerful force in the world.
You don’t have to DO anything to be that way, you have to STOP doing the things that run contrary to that.
You have to resist the conditioning to be anyone but YOU. Learn who that is. Be that being out loud. Watch as reality reorganizes itself in order to support who you are.