Being in business, you’re forced to come face-to-face with your true self daily.
There’s no hiding.
When you work for someone else, you collect a guaranteed paycheck every couple of weeks, and you usually don’t have to face the scary reality of wondering, “How do I produce money out of thin air?”
Money just comes to you, courtesy of your paycheck, because your employer is doing all the work of making sales.
However, when you’re in business for yourself…you don’t have the luxury of simply collecting a check. You have to make it happen yourself. You have to create that money yourself. You have to figure it out for yourself.
(This process exponentially speeds up when you pay the right people to help you.)
On any given day, the war between your best self and your worst self can get in the way of you making money.
Your best self is the one who’s focused on delivering value, on helping others, on keeping yourself free of distractions.
Your worst self is the one who’s self-absorbed, trying to “get” instead of give, while spending YOUR ENTIRE DAY in distractions.
I spent many years letting my “worst self” run the show. I struggled on and off with mood swings, depression, intense emotions… I hated who I was for the longest time. And I projected this hatred onto others. No doubt I’ve had times when I probably scared off potential clients, simply because I didn’t want to deal with the “imperfections” of their humanity. (My best self would have simply forgiven them without getting irritated!)
Today if there’s a single ounce of chaos, worry, doubt, fear, or judgment showing up in my life – I know my “worst self” is starting to take over. I stop what I’m doing, take a deep breath, and abandon the erroneous thinking or behavior.
It’s that easy to get back on track.
Every day is a fresh start, a chance to create something new, and make better choices. Hell, every minute is a fresh start!
As a home business owner, you can nurture your best self, while forgiving yourself and still loving you even if you slip into your worst self occasionally.
The world could use more nurturing of people’s best selves.
Small, simple choices made by your “best self” add up.
If every person on earth abandoned their “worst self,” all problems would be solved instantly.
Until that happens, we’ve got a lot of work to do…
You can help people make better decisions, and choose to be their BEST self, courtesy of your sales funnel (or as I call it, the anti-sales funnel).
Your anti-sales funnel can nurture people. It can inspire them to align with the best version of themselves… even if that simply means making a better, healthier buying decision for themselves.
The words you write, the content you produce, can spur positive, lasting changes in a person’s life, by helping them think and act differently.
Unlike typical marketing — which is about convincing the customer to make a brainless, bad, unhealthy, spur-of-the-moment decision with no thought whatsoever — anti-marketing gets a person to stop and think, so they can access their best self before making any decisions.
So get writing!
Michelle Lopez Boggs is a copywriter, copywriting mentor, and author of "The Anti-Marketing Manifesto: How to Sell Without Being a Sellout." She's helped her clients sell millions of dollars' worth of products and services online by using the MEI(S) principle — motivate, educate, and inspire, and sell. 