Another important point of business,
not just the marketing strategy and products and pricing points,
but the ethics of how we actually conduct ourselves and run our business.
So this is really just kind of a quick public service announcement.
So this quote I found, I really like it.
There's my ethical obligation to tell you it's not mine. Uh,
trust takes years to build only a second to lose and a lifetime to repair.
So basically just not sacrificing your integrity for a quick buck,
it could really hurt you in the long run, right?
So we want our customers and people to trust us if they're gonna buy from us,
right? That's kind of one of the three things they teach you in marketing,
is you want a customer to know, like,
and trust you before they're most likely to purchase.
So this could also come down to things like not promoting things that you don't
believe in, like from an affiliate perspective. Um, you know,
once you start getting on social media, you're gonna have companies, you know,
giving you an email, or you're probably get two or three,
four times a month some company reaching out.
One to give you a free supplement or something to promote for them,
and they'll give you more or give you a code or percentage,
whatever the case may be. But if you look into it and you're like, eh,
maybe you know, there's some ingredients there I don't really like, or, uh,
you know, it's just not something you would use,
probably better just not to try and promote that even though, you know,
maybe you make a couple hundred bucks or something. Um,
probably better to keep the practice up of sticking to sticking to your guns,
if you will. Things to watch out for on the content production side is just,
you know, attribution citation. Like,
if you get an idea that came from somewhere else that maybe isn't just,
you know, kind of more on the common knowledge side of things,
it's probably a good idea to just reference where that came from, right?
It doesn't make you look, you know,
dumb or like a bad person because you learned from someone else. If anything,
that probably shows, uh, the people learning from us that, hey,
this person is going out there trying to better their knowledge,
looking for other sources that they can learn from.
They have the humility to realize that they don't know everything and didn't
come up with everything themselves.
So that kind of works in our favor if we just, you know,
maintain that of we learned something new from somewhere.
Let people know where it came from original work. Um, so I mean,
there's a ton of things on social media, like the x and check videos.
Everybody does 'em.
There's nothing wrong with doing an X and check of a vid of a comparison
somebody else did, but maybe just put your own spin on it. Maybe, you know,
add a little bit of, you know,
if you have a little bit of extra knowledge about something or your opinion on
something or how you would apply it, just add a little bit of originality.
Common versus proprietary knowledge.
This comes more down to like the product level of stuff.
So if you buy a course or an ebook or something from someone that has like some
specialized knowledge and you know, that's the selling point,
that's why you bought it, that's why they made this product,
it's probably not a good idea to just try and recreate it, um,
and sell it on your own, especially, or, you know,
share that proprietary stuff free. Um, it's just,
it's not good obviously for the person you are, um, buying it from. Um,
so it's more of like just an ethical thing. Uh, intentional ambiguity.
So this is more like when you're trying to sell a product. If you find that, uh,
you know, maybe the, the details are being a little big, uh, on the,
on the sales page or whatever, just you want to try and question, like, don't,
don't feel like, don't,
you don't wanna feel like you're trying to trick someone into buying something,
right? Cause the worst thing that can happen is they buy it. They're like,
this is awful. And then they wanna refund,
and then they go and tell a whole bunch of other people that, Hey, this,
you know, this product was misleading, or something like that.
And it can kind of have, you know, a, a long term negative effect on you.
So try and be as clear as you can. Give as much detail. Don't want to,
don't word things in a way that, you know,
might seem like they're trying to trick people. Just be very, you know,
transparent, trustworthy is also good for business.
We talked about competitors and allies.
If people who are your peers potentially view, you know, view you as, you know,
a good person or someone who's trustworthy,
they're gonna be more likely to partner with you, team up with you. Uh,
people may be willing to maybe help you, give you advice. Who knows, uh,
what kind of benefits that could have.
The other side of it is if people kind of view you as shady character,
they're probably gonna avoid any contact with you.
You might lose out on a po a lot of potentially beneficial opportunities and
relationships in the industry,
depending on how you're trying to grow your business. The quick self check is,
if everyone knew you did fill in the blank,
would that help or hurt your reputation?
A quick example here, um, and this is a real world example,
but I won't give his actual name. Uh, we'll call him the Fast Pass ABS guy.
He was an extremely popular figure, figure in the fitness space, uh, years ago,
had millions of subscribers. You'd see ads literally everywhere.
I probably saw like at least once a day, no matter where I went. Um,
programs, DVDs in the store. Magazine feed, yeah, DVDs. It was,
it was a while ago. Um, and then he just kind of,
you didn't really see much from him anymore. Um,
and there was a lot of stuff that happened in the background. He, you know,
got some supe suspensions for misleading advertising practices,
false supplement claims, et cetera. Um,
he did some affiliate marketing stuff that wasn't really on brand,
shall we say. Um, and eventually a lot of the, a lot of his peers who were,
you know, promoting his products or, you know,
they were kind of doing affiliate marketing stuff kind of stopped working with
him. And it seemed like almost overnight his, you know,
who knows how much money, it was. Probably a lot of money he was making.
Just his business evaporated because he, you know,
seemed to allow some of his ethics to degrade.
And even though he made a lot of money short term,
it eventually imploded and then he disappeared.
So that's a very extreme example. Obviously that can happen in a micro scale.
So just sticking to, you know,
what we think would be the greatest good for the most people is probably, uh,
a good guideline to stick with when we're moving forward in, you know,
making business decisions, not only on promotion,
but designing our marketing strategy ad copy, uh,
or really anything in our company.