Be you, or suffer the consequences

I have been in a heated spat with somebody over email who thinks my welcome email turns people off. I have been trying to impart to her that the point is to make the wrong people run away, and to drive the right people to my brand to engage with me.

It didn’t work of course, because she wasn’t the right human to hear my message. My emails were made to drive her away because she isn’t a good fit for my message.

I tried to educate her none the less, though, because it’s an important concept, and one most people will never understand.

They think everybody needs to love them, but the truth is that no matter what you do, most people will dislike or nothing you.

Most potential customers won’t even dislike you. Most people will nothing you. They won’t even care about anything you say, even if you scream at them. If you are bland and homogeneous, trying to cater to everybody, then your message will be so watered down nobody will respond to it.

And if nobody responds to it, then you are dead in the water. There is so much sensory information out there trying to grab people’s attention, you have to plant your flag and make sure that people know why they should care.

Then, there is another truth that will rear its ugly head if you try to please everyone.

You can’t.

No matter what you do, some people are going to hate it. If you’re polite they will call you too nice. If you’re whimsical they will call you weird. If you are helpful they will call you fake.

If you worry about pleasing everyone, then you will worry too much about those who hate you, and there will be people who hate you. The more success you have, the more people will hate you. You can’t focus on them or you will drown.

You have to focus on the people who love you and your work, and cater everything to them. There’s no other way to survive in this world.

If you want to find those people, you have to be yourself 110%. You have to call out to those people to find you. If you instead water down your message, you might as well not even try, because nobody is going to hear it, and you won’t find the people who love your work.

And that would be a travesty.