Providing value
How authentic do you actually want it to be? (John Margolies, Library of Congress)
You don’t have to look too far online to find people offering free information in the name of “providing value.”
Sometimes, this free information is worth a lot. I taught myself to knit using little more than YouTube. I’m grateful to the people out there who created all those videos demonstrating the various stitches and techniques — without them, I would still be lost.
However, when it comes to marketing and business strategy, a lot of the free information is worth just what you pay for it. Often, it has been carefully constructed to share very little even as it purports to solve a particular problem.
This content creates an illusion of helpfulness, authority, and generosity, but it’s actually pretty useless. It’s missing the “secret sauce” that is the difference between success and failure.
Naturally, not every person offering a professional service can provide a custom plan. But it’s disingenuous to offer a framework without the truth about what will take to be successful.
That’s like my knitting instructors pretending I could get their results with no yarn.
Here’s a typical example:
Want to grow on X platform? Here’s the plan I used to gain 50,000 followers in three months:
1) Research your ideal client.
2) Create hooks to grab their attention.
3) Add value.
4) Show up for your community!
So simple, isn’t it? Alas...it’s missing a few details. if you were to try to follow this plan, I guarantee that you would not be able to gain 50,000 followers in three months. All the details you need are behind a paywall, but even with those details you are not going to be able to replicate the success of the person offering them. There are too many variables and too much that is left unsaid and unexamined.
I’d like to teach people how they could actually “grow on X platform,” but there is a strange recursive quality to offering advice like that on the platform itself. Plus, it’s a lot of work and the results cannot be guaranteed. When the truth is unglamorous, it’s hard to sell. Thus, I’ve focused my efforts elsewhere.
The problem is that people who teach marketing tend to be really good at marketing. They often present marketing as though it is the solution to every business problem. They create an irresistible narrative that we hopeful business owners buy into eagerly, only to blame ourselves when it doesn’t work out the way we had hoped.
A lot of these marketers know full well that their advice, even in their paid courses, is useful to only a few, like the gym that enthusiastically sells monthly memberships in January with the awareness that only a tiny fraction of those members will return on a regular basis. They’re offering a fantasy — the chance to try on an identity you wish you had — and they know that people are happy to pay for that.
As a teacher, I am not satisfied with that. I want to help every single person I work with to reach their goals. Of course, I don’t have control over whether they do, and that is something I’ve had to accept. Still, I will break things down thoughtfully and offer direct support and encouragement. I am not just selling the promise of a future outcome — I want to give people the practical tools to reach it.
The thing that will always be tricky is that “value” is in the eye of the beholder. We each have to figure out what that means for the people seek to serve. We have to figure out what it means for ourselves. And then we have to create a way to communicate about it and deliver it. It’s not really all that simple, and it’s not easy, either. It takes practice, persistence, and more than a list of bullet points.
