There’s a service in Europe called BlaBlaCar.
It’s a kind of decentralized, Wild-West, long-distance Uber.
I’ve taken it many times when shuttling from one eastern European metropolis to another, and it’s always been a good experience.
Except once.
Once, I was set to go with a Hungarian woman.
She was two hours late and didn’t think to apologize.
Instead, she started complaining immediately about how difficult life is and how nobody understands her troubles.
This went on for a couple of hours.
And then, for a break, she put on a 40-minute infomercial by Deepak Chopra, M.D.
The product being sold was some kind of “law of attraction” course. “Once you strip away all the nonsense,” Dr. Deepak seemed to be saying, “once you uncover the true you, then the universe will start to work with you instead of against you.”
Want a promotion at work? Find the true you.
Lonely and unlovable? Find the true you.
Mountains of credit card debt? Find the true you.
Eventually the Hungarian woman dropped me and the other Blabla passenger — a frustrated Spanish girl who missed a reunion with her friends because of the two-hour delay — on the outskirts of Budapest.
I was glad to get out of the car and away from the brainwashing of Deepak Chopra, M.D.
Because I think this “true you” stuff is nonsense.
And not just because finding the true you won’t help you get a promotion or make more money or magnetically attract an attractive mating partner.
Instead, I think the whole idea of your true self is fake. I’m not sure what the real truth about our “selves” is. But I know from observing myself and from observing other people that we are very different people throughout the day. Sometimes from moment to moment. If we’re hungry, if we’re reading the news, if we’re talking with one friend rather than another. In each of those situations, a different self takes life.
But maybe you’re not into this kind of philosophy stuff. So let’s talk turkey.
I once had a client selling a “male enhancement” info product. We’ll call it by the codename JELQ4LIFE.
In order to sell this product, he decided to run ads on Pornhub. You know, where bored, sexually frustrated guys go to watch men with much larger penises terrorize small women.
I advised against it. Sure, many guys on Pornhub might be interested in a 200-page JELQFORLIFE ebook, sold through a 15-page sales letter. Maybe, when they are in a different mental state. But not when they are bored or impatient or primed by having watched 15 porn videos.
But my client insisted. Aaaand…
It bombed completely. Lots of random clicks. A few optins. Zero sales. (I hate being right all the time.)
This is an extreme example. But it applies just as well to more mundane businesses that advertise their products by running straightforward “Here’s our exciting product!” ads on Facebook, or Instagram, or Pinterest…
The people these businesses are reaching with their ads might have the same social security number as their target audience — but they are not the same people in that moment.
That doesn’t mean you cannot reach those people. But you’ll have to think a little bit in order to avoid wasting your ad money. And if you want my ideas on how you can do this, write me an email and we can continue to talk turkey.