Solid products sell themselves. Mediocre ones always leave the seller with guilt and an inner conflict.
You should only work with solid products.
And I don’t just mean physical goods — services count too. Any product (a vacuum cleaner or a haircut, doesn’t matter) can be solid — genuinely good and worth the money for the client — or not solid, the kind that makes you want a refund and a one-star review.
A very large share of people never get good results in life because they spend a big chunk of their time on goods and services they don’t really believe in themselves.
People often sell physical products they would never buy for themselves. Or provide services to others while they’d never become their own client.
Sometimes people do this simply because they need money, and this is where the money is. Sometimes a person figures every business has a bit of deception and manipulation in it anyway, so why swap one grey scheme for another. And they stay in that grey zone for a few more years.
But I’m personally convinced that good results come to people who sincerely believe in their product and are fans of it.
And it’s not only that selling a solid product makes you sound more confident and competent. When we work with goods and services we truly believe in, we give ourselves — and our future clients — a subconscious green light.
We know that if someone buys from us, they’ll be happy and better off, just like we are. There’s no nagging feeling that we’re handing over some grey half-baked thing and pocketing the money like a scammer.
I get a lot of partnership offers. Someone wants to advertise a car-sourcing service on my blog, someone a clinic, banks want to push their deposits and credit cards, someone wants to promote their tea or perfume. There are dozens of such offers, and I’m sure some of them are genuinely good products.
But so far I don’t take outside advertising like that, because I’m not a user of those products myself. To tell you about them, I’d have to extend those advertisers credit on trust I haven’t earned yet. For now, I’m only willing to do that when I’m sure of the result.
For example, I know for a fact that if you come to my Nastya with a question about psychology or relationships, she can help you as a gestalt therapist.
I’m sure that if you go to Paula for a consultation on social media, your blog can start growing too. I’ve worked with Paula for over a year, and she’s responsible for all of our media activity and the team.
It’s easy for me to tell you that at our New Lifestyle school you can buy any of 16 courses, and I know they can do you an enormous amount of good if you listen carefully and do the assignments between lessons.
I can talk about those programs so freely because we regularly get feedback from people about how much their lives changed after studying with us.
So good, solid products sell easily, while grey products always leave the seller with guilt and an inner conflict.
If you realize you’re working in some field but you wouldn’t want your mother, your daughter, or yourself to be a client of it — then somewhere along the way you took a wrong turn.
You can make money on plenty of things, but your reputation will either work for you or against you. There’s no amount of money for which I’d pour my reputation into some shady project. Though when I was young, I made all sorts of mistakes.
So do you feel you’re working on a great product? Would you want to be your own client? Would you hire yourself?