Are All Business People Dishonest?

Seems I’m rant­ing a lot these days, and a lit­tle more opin­ion­ated than the norm. Per­haps it’s my bro­ken back, which is killing me, that’s mak­ing me more sen­si­tive or irri­ta­ble. I don’t know.

But some­thing some­one recently said in my copy­writ­ers forum irri­tated me. And it’s not what this per­son said specif­i­cally, but the mind­set behind it that’s both­er­ing me.

In a thread about an Inter­net mar­keter who was recently arrested (yes, it had some­thing to do with forced con­ti­nu­ity, but it had more to do with refus­ing refunds and avoid­ing cus­tomers than it had to do with forced con­ti­nu­ity itself), one mem­ber said:

“There is NO such thing as an hon­est busi­ness man. (…) Ask any accountant.”

Now, I have no clue as to why this per­son said this. And my opin­ion here is not about this per­son specif­i­cally. Again, it’s about the think­ing process that some peo­ple have when they make such assertions.

Per­son­ally, I believe this view of busi­ness peo­ple is skewed, off, and wrong. It’s destruc­tive, too.

In fact, copy­writer Mar­cia Yud­kin said it best. In her reply, she said this gem: “I feel sorry for you. That is a ter­ri­ble phi­los­o­phy to hold, hurt­ful to you and hurt­ful to the hon­est peo­ple who deal with you.”

Well said.

I know what the orig­i­nal com­men­ta­tor was try­ing to say, but I wouldn’t have said “dis­hon­est.” I believe the word choice is wrong because of the impli­ca­tion. Are all busi­ness peo­ple really dishonest?

Say­ing it that way can be eas­ily mis­con­strued. And it can also be eas­ily mis­in­ter­preted, too.

That’s the power of words. That’s what makes us copy­writ­ers, too.

We choose our words care­fully. The words we use can be incred­i­bly pow­er­ful — both good and bad.

If “dis­hon­est” is refer­ring to com­mu­ni­ca­tions, I’ll be the first to admit that we do exag­ger­ate from time to time. We try to put our prod­uct in its best pos­si­ble light. We focus more on the ben­e­fits than we do on the downfalls.

But you know, that’s not reserved to busi­ness peo­ple only.

We do it when we try to explain a movie we love to our friends. Or when we bol­ster our ego talk­ing about a great deal we got at the local store. Or when we court a poten­tial life partner.

It’s human nature.

Words have emo­tional impact. Even with the most log­i­cal, ana­lyt­i­cal peo­ple out there. Our choice of words can make or break the sale, whether the prod­uct is good or not. Just as words can make or break rela­tion­ships, court cases, even wars.

For exam­ple, real estate agents will say they sell “homes,” not houses. Den­tists will say they cre­ate beau­ti­ful “smiles,” not “teeth.” We tell sto­ries to com­mu­ni­cate a product’s pur­pose or brand. We use words that paint vivid men­tal pictures.

(I rec­om­mend Seth Godin’s book, “All Mar­keters Are Liars.” By the way, Seth is refer­ring to the power of telling sto­ries in marketing.)

But to say all busi­ness peo­ple are dis­hon­est, and even imply­ing that one should ask any accoun­tant, is a ter­ri­bly skewed vision of the world. And I’m speak­ing gen­er­ally, not just about busi­ness itself.

Busi­ness peo­ple do try to make max­i­mum profit with every trans­ac­tion, and they will try to do it at the least amount of expense.

That’s busi­ness.

The dif­fer­ence is, the hon­est ones will do so at the ser­vice of oth­ers, while the dis­hon­est ones will do so at the expense of others.

Mak­ing a profit can be seen by a lot of peo­ple as “dis­hon­est.” I’m a cap­i­tal­ist through and through, and I believe in win-​​win. I don’t see any­thing wrong with mutu­ally ben­e­fi­cial trans­ac­tions, which is what busi­ness is and should be, in my opinion.

We sell prod­ucts and ser­vices that ben­e­fit our cus­tomers. But just as much as we are respon­si­ble not to mis­lead, lie, or deceive, cus­tomers are just as respon­si­ble for their own lives, their own deci­sions, and their own actions.

What I have a prob­lem with is, some peo­ple do see any kind of mar­ket­ing, or any kind of sell­ing, as dishonest.

And for some rea­son, that both­ers me.

For exam­ple, in the same vein as “all busi­ness peo­ple are dis­hon­est,” some have said, in the recent forced con­ti­nu­ity debate, that all mar­ket­ing is uneth­i­cal.

They say that a prod­uct should sell by itself based on its own merit. And that mar­ket­ing and sell­ing (and to that I would add copy­writ­ing) exist because it’s the only way to sell a poor prod­uct that can’t sell itself.

Oh, really?

If so, then we must be all psy­chics, because we should know about all the good prod­ucts in the world. We should rely only on word-​​of-​​mouth — we all have friends who will tell us what we need to know, right?

And we should all buy every­thing that “is good” (even though “good” is sub­jec­tive and per­sonal) solely because they alone merit our atten­tion, our patron­age, and our money.

For­get about life get­ting in the way.

For­get about competition.

For­get about our innate fear of loss.

For­get about the state of the economy.

For­get about the need for mar­ket­ing to help bet­ter decide how we spend our money.

And for­get our nat­ural pro­cliv­i­ties to want to be secure, to pro­cras­ti­nate, to avoid mak­ing bad deci­sions, and to save our money to buy only what we need — not what we want. (Good­ness for­bid we buy what we want, not what we need!)

Obvi­ously, that’s wrong. At least to me, it is.

My opin­ion?

(Here comes the rant.)

In my expe­ri­ence, peo­ple who think all mar­ket­ing is uneth­i­cal or that all busi­ness peo­ple are dis­hon­est are usu­ally peo­ple who feel every­thing should be free.

Now, I’m not try­ing to start a polit­i­cal debate regard­ing cap­i­tal­ism ver­sus social­ism. I’m talk­ing about peo­ple who have a sense of enti­tle­ment, espe­cially those who whine and com­plain all the time.

Peo­ple who bitch about busi­nesses exploit­ing them are just as much try­ing to exploit busi­nesses them­selves by always try­ing to find, or hag­gling for, a good deal.

This is called “pro­jec­tion.” (I’ll come back to this in a moment.)

Peo­ple who feel that they deserve great prod­ucts and great cus­tomer ser­vice (which is a given and expected) but for the least amount of money possible.

Peo­ple who feel they should get the most by work­ing (or pay­ing) the least.

These peo­ple who have a sense of enti­tle­ment blame oth­ers all the time, never take respon­si­bil­ity for their own cir­cum­stances, vic­tim­ize them­selves con­stantly, and whine all the time about how unfair the world is.

To them, not only are all busi­ness peo­ple dis­hon­est and all mar­ket­ing uneth­i­cal, but also every­thing costs too much. They auto­mat­i­cally assume that all mar­ket­ing is a scam, and that they, in turn, will do their darnedest best to scam busi­nesses, too.

They will suck them for free­bies. They will never buy any­thing. They let coupons and deals dic­tate their lives. And they will be the first ones to pounce on any mis­take a mar­keter makes — such as a gro­cery store acci­den­tally pric­ing an item too low.

They’re the ones who think, “if it’s that good, then it should be cheap… Or free.”

They try to get the most by pay­ing the least (now tell me, how dif­fer­ent is that from the busi­ness owner who tries to make the most profit with the least expense?).

Peo­ple who make such asser­tions should look in the mir­ror first.

In a recent blog post, one of my favorite authors and speak­ers, Larry Winget, talked about ban­ning one of his blog com­men­ta­tors who was toxic, always neg­a­tive, and went out of his way to bad­mouth Larry.

This per­son was so incensed, even to the point of going on Ama­zon and giv­ing every book Larry wrote a bad review.

In that blog post, I com­mented that, if only the bad com­men­ta­tors would put as much work into, well, work­ing on their own suc­cess, I betcha they wouldn’t find the time to bitch.

They would be too busy being successful.

Larry once noted that the hard­est thing one can and will ever do in their lives is to look at them­selves in the mir­ror and say, “It’s all my fault.”

These “bad com­men­ta­tors” aren’t look­ing in the mir­ror as they should be. And I would ven­ture to say that peo­ple who don’t look in the mir­ror expect every­thing else to be one. (That’s what I mean by “projection.”)

Remem­ber the old Ein­stein say­ing that, when your only tool is ham­mer you see every prob­lem as a nail? It’s the same idea, here.

That is, when these fault­find­ers blame oth­ers, they are pro­ject­ing their own self-​​loathing onto others.

Sim­i­larly, what I found is that those who whine and com­plain are usu­ally the ones who aren’t happy with them­selves, and feel the need to blame others.

And they put a lot of work, effort, and even money into drag­ging other peo­ple down, or into whin­ing about how bad things are (e.g., how broke and tired they are, or how scammed they’ve been).

Why don’t they spend all that energy and money on get­ting ahead instead? Or dare I say it, into start­ing a busi­ness, and — here’s a novel con­cept — mar­ket­ing and sell­ing themselves?

Go fig­ure.

In Larry’s pro­gram, “Suc­cess is Your Own (Damn) Fault,” he quotes the San­born Maxim, which goes: “The cus­tomers who are will­ing to pay you the least will always demand the most.”

While that might be true in terms of money, I think it’s the same with every­thing else.

For exam­ple, “The peo­ple who are will­ing to pay you the least respect will always demand the most.” (And I believe they’re the ones who deserve it the least, too.)

I agree that there are some busi­ness peo­ple out there who are dis­hon­est. Think­ing that all of them are hon­est is just as skewed as the converse.

But that kind of think­ing can be a lot more hurt­ful and dam­ag­ing than the sim­ple com­ment “there is no such thing as an hon­est busi­ness per­son.” Dam­ag­ing to one­self as it is to others.

In con­clu­sion, let me quote some­thing Michelle MacPher­son said, a mar­keter I admire a lot, which sums it all up beautifully:

“If you don’t take respon­si­bil­ity for your own actions in life and instead hand that respon­si­bil­ity (in the form of blame) to some­one else, you have no power (you’ve effec­tively given that power to some­one else, since it’s ‘not your fault’). If you have no power, you’ll never have suc­cess — you’ll just spend your days blam­ing oth­ers for your lack thereof.”

Thanks for listening.

P.S.: What do you think of the new blog design? Just a larger font, more white­space, and less “busy­ness.” It’s based on your feed­back, which I appre­ci­ate immensely.

About the Author

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