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.

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“Per­fect self-​​expression will never be labor; but of such absorb­ing inter­est that it will seem almost like play.“
– Flo­rence Scovel Shinn

In Suc­ceed­ing Through Inner Strength, Dr. Nathaniel Bran­den says that peo­ple uncon­sciously lower their self-​​esteem through their goals.

They usu­ally start by writ­ing down some neb­u­lous wish and may start work­ing on it with the best of inten­tions. They may even know exactly what they want and work really hard in order to get it. How­ever and more often than not, they quit and do so some­times just as fast as they have writ­ten it down.

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Have you ever made a buy­ing deci­sion only to have that gut instinct called “buyer’s remorse” creep up on you imme­di­ately after you’ve left the store?

Or, worse yet, have you ever felt the need to ratio­nal­ize a pur­chas­ing deci­sion to save your­self from this conflict?

This very thing hap­pened to me just a few days ago. How­ever, this time it was the ven­dor who ini­ti­ated the remorse. (The result was the loss of a four-​​figure sale!)

Read on to find out their grave mis­take… and the mar­ket­ing les­son behind it.

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