Once upon a time, child elBenbo watched a show called “Ren & Stimpy”.
The two main characters are a cat named Stimpy and an “asthma hound” chihuahua named Ren. Anyway, in one of the episodes, Ren got angry at Stimpy and his cousin Sven and decided to pee on their board game which was called:
“Don’t Whiz On The Electric Fence”
(Yes, these are the kind of shows I was influenced by…)
Then, the house blows up, they all end up in hell, and the devil says:
“You whizzed on the electric fence didn’t ya?”
Anyway, here’s the point:
Whenever I think of that, I can’t help but realize what an apt metaphor it makes for what we talked about a couple days ago — with all the I’m-gonna-pretend-I’m-not-gonna-sell-you-anything email campaigns and playing “Twister” with trying not look like you have anything to (gasp!) offer. I do understand for some people these tactics sound sexy from the stage — especially to people who are scared to death of selling (or looking like they are selling anything). After all, it sounds new, it lets you look like a nice bloke, and it gets applause and praise from the social media fluffpreneurs.
(Who are the most vocal.)
So I get it if you are scared of selling.
I feelz for you.
Really, I do.
I used to do the exact same thing many years ago.
But then, I started realizing how I was turning perfectly good leads into non-buyers (who then bought from someone who actually did sell them), lost a lot of leads who got bored and impatient with all my fabulous “content” they never valued (much less used)… created swarms of hostile freebie seekers who cursed me when I finally did sell something (I remember only the second time in about 4 years of sending emails I sold something — I got accused of being a “list pimp” ooh)… and I didn’t help any of my would-be customers at all because I didn’t have the balls to sell them the solution they were on my list to have in the first place.
In other words:
I was whizzing on the electric fence.
And, it blew up on me.
Moral of the story?
Don’t whiz on the electric fence.
Whizzing on the electric fence is bad.
And it kinda *stings* too…
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Ben Settle
