I’ve been thinking about a few ideas for the last couple of weeks, and rather than launch into what I think, I’d love to hear what you think. So, here we go:
Let’s pretend that I developed a process that will make you happy if you walk through the steps. And, by happy, I don’t mean ephemeral, silly happiness, but something richer like holistic or flourishing happiness. The happiness I’m thinking of is the end of everything else we do.
- Would you buy the product that walked through the process for $47?
- Would there be anything wrong with me selling the product
Now, take out the word “happy,” and replace it with “wise,” “enlightened,” or “transcendent.” Do your answers change? Why?
Last switch: replace the word “happy” with “rich” or “successful at business.” Do your answers change now? Why?
If you think there’s no process that yields happiness, wisdom, enlightenment, or transcendence, keep in context the fact that there are institutions, organizations, and practices around just those things.
Edit for clarity: The process is contextualized, in that it’s a process that leads to an outcome that is individualized for you. Holistic happiness, for example, is not a one-size-fits-all type of thing, so the process will have to address your uniqueness.
What do you think? I’m looking forward to the conversation!
Interesting, because the answers do change slightly for me (or at least the “feeling”). For example, charging someone to help make them happy, vs. charging someone to help make them wise…not sure I get the same vibe from that. If they’re not wise already, then you can’t pay someone to make you wise. Then again, if you’re not truly happy, then I suppose you can’t pay someone to make you happy, either. People can buy services that make them *feel* happy and give them joy or pleasure, but true happiness is the big-picture stuff.
Very thought provoking. For a Friday, even. 😉
.-= Lisa Wood´s last blog ..Why is Accountability Important? =-.
I agree with Lisa’s point that happiness, wisdom, enlightenment and transcendence must all necessarily come from within. But I’d say that it’s possible that a coach, teacher, leader, or even a religious practice can help you get in touch with that which is already within you. Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project is a good example of that. I’m betting that Gretchen’s upcoming book will be a success.
Success in business and wealth production is a more process and action oriented objective. The outcome is not as directly dependent on your internal landscape as long as you take the correct actions. But there’s no guarantee that that success will make you happy. And if you aren’t happy with what you’re doing, it’s less likely that you will exert the effort necessary for success.
You’re right Charlie, lots of food for thought for the weekend.
.-= Mike Stankavich´s last blog ..Home Networking Versus Voluntary Simplicity =-.
Will it make me happy forever? I’m not looking for a temporary high. But a permanent high, that would be awesome!
But seriously, these are excellent questions that I have been pondering too. In fact, I actually do have a service that promises to make people happy in a whole, balanced, integrated sort of way, by going to the core of your being and experiencing a kind of ultimate end—and I’ve been struggling with how to market this service.
OK, so let’s say it’s true that everything we want is an effort to be happy. I think a false conclusion often drawn from this premise is that therefore if I were happy first, I would “want for nothing,” and therefore not buy or seek out anything. I’ve found that when I “want for nothing” I still need things like food, water, companionship, etc.—in other words, all of Maslow’s hierarchy still applies, but I now go about fulfilling these needs in a “non-anxious” way. That is, the addiction to buying stuff or doing things drops away in such moments, but I still need to piss, eat, have friends, make love, wash the dishes, and have meaningful goals for myself. Chop wood, carry water, as they say in Zen. Or “after the ecstasy, the laundry,” as Jack Kornfield put it.
Back to the temporary/permanent high that I started out with. If you sell me something that makes me temporarily happy, I have to keep buying it from you to keep getting high. That might or might not be a problem. If you sell food, clearly I need food in an ongoing way to live—BUT I also need ongoing friendship, love, belonging, and even meaningful goals, if we use Maslow’s hierarchy (which does seem to fit my direct experience). If you sell meth, well clearly that’s more of a problem. We can see that as a problem because meth doesn’t fulfill my needs in a very sustainable or holistic way. Perhaps working on a creative project would give me a tiny bit of that “rush” while also adding value to the world and making sure I don’t end up in a ditch somewhere.
The other thing is that nothing you can sell me will ever give me a permanent high, because nothing is permanent (except perhaps death, depending on whether or not you posit reincarnation!). Even meditation or enlightenment itself is not a permanent state (at least from any of the debates I’ve had about this with fellow Buddhists).
Ok, so four of your words (happy, wise, enlightened, transcendent), are ultimate ends someone has posited, except for “successful in business” and “rich” which I consider a means to some other end, and are comparative. When people speak of being “happy,” they normally don’t say “I’m happy because you are less happy than me.” But success in business occurs in a competitive context, as does being rich, which is always relative to someone who is less rich or even quite poor. Helping someone to become rich or successful in business is helping them to be higher on the socioeconomic ladder than someone else, so it brings in questions of ethics and society, status and class. Happiness or enlightenment, etc. if truly an ultimate end, does not depend on conditions (or not as much) and therefore does not bring into question (as much) notions of class and economics.
But there are lots of paradoxes here of course, and many more unanswered questions. There’s a first pass at least.
.-= Duff´s last blog ..The Dark Side of The Secret: Reading James Arthur Ray’s Sweat Lodge Disaster through a Magickal Lens =-.
Oh, I noticed I hadn’t answered your questions 1 and 2.
1) What’s the market for such products? Is it priced similarly, far higher or far lower? What have reviewers said about it?
2) There may or may not being something “wrong” about selling the product, which would of course depend on the ethical or moral criteria one holds. “Spiritual” products that deal in ultimate ends are somewhat controversial to sell of course, but I tend to land with keeping the price low and fair is reasonable, and giving away some free to those in need. Would it be “wrong” to have different ethical criteria? I don’t know if that’s the question I would ask, more “is it worth fighting against this particular thing because I find it highly corrupt?” is more my tact.
In addition, there are the type of products in the self-help and new age world that are apparently selling information about how to become happy, enlightened, wise, or transcendent, but are really selling the promise of becoming wealthy by selling expensive products about how to become happy, enlightened, wise, or transcendent. All too often we are selling status in the name of spirituality in the ponzi scheme of “harmonic wealth.”
.-= Duff´s last blog ..The Dark Side of The Secret: Reading James Arthur Ray’s Sweat Lodge Disaster through a Magickal Lens =-.
@Duff: Given that it’s a process towards happiness, while affect of happiness may change, the ability to return there is something that you can use over and over again, with the desired result.
Also, one view of economic exchange is that it’s zero-sum, i.e. I, the seller, win, and you, the buyer, lose. Some also think that if you buy from me, then I’ve “beaten” someone else. While this may seem true under corporation-dominated capitalism based upon scarcity and exclusion, it’s not clear that it’s the only way to understand business in an abundant economy.
On to your second comment:
1) I chose $47 just because it’s one of those common prices on the interwebs. So let’s postulate that it’s not excessive. There is also full transparency with the product – others have reviewed it and verified that the process works, and there are no sweat lodges or deceptive marketing stunts involved. Thanks for cleaning this portion of the conversation up for me.
2) I’m leaving the way to understand “anything wrong with me selling the product” open for interpretation, but I am particularly interested in the moral dimension.
Given that it’s a process towards happiness, while affect of happiness may change, the ability to return there is something that you can use over and over again, with the desired result.
Ah, yes. Yea, what I’m selling is also that, and I’m working on how to structure my coaching such that people learn how to do the method on their own.
I don’t necessarily think that business is only viewed accurately as competitive either, but I do think wealth (or becoming rich) is always competitive, unless you totally reframe the word (and the best example of this is in James Ray’s “harmonic wealth” which didn’t turn out so well in my opinion). The only exception I’d say there is to that is if you are actually focused on wealth for all, in which case you’re talking about economics instead of personal achievement, but this is unlikely to be the subject of a $47 ebook.
The other problem is that much of economics, and the structures of government and business that is based on economics, begins with assumptions of scarcity and competition between rational actors, etc. So while we can see business as win-win and cooperative, just as we can see everyone a winner in little league sports, the rules are structured such that some people are winners and others losers. Wealth or amassing capital actually does depend on others having less wealth or capital, given how money and economies are structured.
Also, it seems to me that the $47 price point is WILDLY inflated, given that new books sell for $10-20, and that eventually the market will correct (because consumers complain and refuse to buy low-quality overpriced ebooks). In conventional publishing, authors usually get $1-2 per book, and sell perhaps 10,000 copies if they do very well. The inflated price point justifies all sorts of other inflated things, like massive affiliate commissions, future products that promise similar results (with the “* results not typical” cover-your-ass disclaimer) which creates the real product as not about happiness but being at the top of a wealth pyramid.
By reducing the price, the product becomes a simple product again, rather than the promise of wealth in a game where the odds are fixed against you.
.-= Duff´s last blog ..The Dark Side of The Secret: Reading James Arthur Ray’s Sweat Lodge Disaster through a Magickal Lens =-.
@Duff:
I agree with much of what you’re saying here. Have you bought any textbooks, scientific books, or “serious” business books lately, though? How about a subscription to a professional journal?
My point here is that any claims of inflation have to assume a baseline as the norm, which opens the question as to why the lower baselines are the ones at play rather than other accepted norms.
I’ve got an email drafted that covers your third and fourth paragraph better – it’s a follow-up to a prior Twitter conversation between you, me, and Eric. I’m leaving it out here because it’s a somewhat different conversation about profit, capitalism, and ethics. I’m letting it percolate before I send it – or maybe I’ll just post it here for everyone to see as I think it’s a fascinating problem.
What is, exactly, happiness, wisdom, enlightenment, or transcendence? And how do I know when I have it? What are we really talking about here? To me, these words are not inner qualities so much as performances we stage for other people. For example, wisdom is really just acting wise and being acknowledged as wise, whatever that means to your audience.
You might object, saying, “I don’t live my life for other people!” and that’s probably true. But, when we refer to a mature, independent person, we really mean someone who stages a performance for a virtual audience, not for other real flesh-and-blood people. This audience is posited, and we perform for them by looking in the mirror, trying to see how they see, judge or praise us.
Personal development (and institutions, organizations) claims it just wants to give us what we are looking for. But really, it tells us (through marketing) what we should be looking for – what our inner audience is expecting to see – and then sells us ways of performing correctly.
This is a fickle audience that can’t really ever be satisfied, and selling a process or practice that claims to be able to do this is fraud. What we need is not new demands and new ways to live up to those demands, but a way to accept that we will never achieve any ultimate human purpose.
.-= MrTeacup´s last blog ..mrteacup: Scientific management started as a way to work. How did it become a way of life? http://bit.ly/JMENV =-.
My point here is that any claims of inflation have to assume a baseline as the norm, which opens the question as to why the lower baselines are the ones at play rather than other accepted norms.
Personal development books should be compared to personal development books, should they not? A $47 personal development ebook is basically a $15 paperback, marked up $32, and often without professional editing or typesetting, and even more commonly written in 24 hours to a week (which is what is strongly encouraged from most ebook writing courses).
I also think that textbooks are overpriced (and pretty much every college student and parent complains about this, but there is a kind of academic monopoly in place). As a consumer having purchased multiple overpriced/overhyped info products, I can tell you right now that I will never again buy any $47 ebook, even if it had the keys to the universe and the combination to the vaults at Fort Knox.
.-= Duff´s last blog ..The Dark Side of The Secret: Reading James Arthur Ray’s Sweat Lodge Disaster through a Magickal Lens =-.
@MrTeaCup
I do think that much of the transcendent is merely performances we stage for other people, but I don’t think all of it is, nor do I think all inner experience should be reduced to social realities.
.-= Duff´s last blog ..The Dark Side of The Secret: Reading James Arthur Ray’s Sweat Lodge Disaster through a Magickal Lens =-.
Good Questions – I’ll take them backwards.
2. Would there be anything wrong with me selling the product
There wouldn’t be anything wrong with selling the product as far as I can see. The problem I think is that (and this is part of my next answer) that the words you use are difficult to define, even harder to understand, and I think different for everybody. It’s one of those ideas that you could say, jeez, if I could bottle this, I could make a million dollars.
1. Would you buy the product that walked through the process for $47?
That brings us to this problem. Happiness, enlightenment, wisdom, all that probably don’t result from the same process for everyone, and the guarantee would be a killer.
The other thing is, if you have to buy it, is it really any of those things?
.-= Mike Kirkeberg´s last blog ..Who Else Wants a Simple Way to Protect Their Health? =-.
@Duff, I agree that there are inner realities, not just social realities, but the problem is that without the social component, they aren’t very meaningful. Imagine if someone said that sometimes when they remember certain past events, they get a feeling of pressure in their torso – what advice could you give them? To be meaningful, those have to be interpreted through a set of cultural coordinates, to arrive at constructs like “my life” or “my purpose”, the normal things that personal development and psychology deals with.
.-= MrTeacup´s last blog ..mrteacup: TEH LULZ R HERE -> http://twitter.com/FakeAPStylebook =-.
Question 1: I don’t mind spending 47 bucks, but the fact that happiness is so personal and different for everybody, I would be hard pressed to buy anything that sold me the process to something so arbitrary and subjective. Actually never mind, I’d probably buy it just to see what the process is, and if it applies to me.
Change the word to “wisdom” or “enlightenment” and I’m actually probably less inclined to buy, because in these modern times, information is available around every corner. Niche experts are everywhere with every point-of-view, it seems you can find your “guru” if you look hard enough.
Question 2: I don’t have a problem with you selling it. If you have information that is worthwhile, I personally believe you should be paid for it. But, if your process really works, I believe that you could so greatly impact people in their lives by giving it away for free that there would be a far greater value in the “philanthropic” helping of the human race.
@MrTeaCup
The funny thing is that if someone said when they remember certain past events, they get a feeling of pressure in their torso I would know exactly how to help them using NLP. 🙂 Many methods of inner changework can be done entirely with process, i.e. lacking content.
That said, you are totally right that inner experiences lack meaning without social/cultural context. Thanks for also acknowledging inner realities too though! I do agree that “glittering generalities” like “happiness,” “enlightenment” and definitely “wealth” are defined socially.
.-= Duff´s last blog ..The Dark Side of The Secret: Reading James Arthur Ray’s Sweat Lodge Disaster through a Magickal Lens =-.
It’s also worth noting that in The How of Happiness, Sonja Lyubomirsky summarizes the findings of Positive Psychology research as claiming that happiness is only 40% in our control. So anything one buys that attempts to create happiness can only maximally affect 40% of the overall picture, and this would also have to somehow account for all the factors Lyubomirsky determines to be part of the 40%.
.-= Duff´s last blog ..The Dark Side of The Secret: Reading James Arthur Ray’s Sweat Lodge Disaster through a Magickal Lens =-.
I think like others have said, I have a hard time just getting my head around the idea that happiness (or wisdom, enlightenment etc) can be taught — which is an assumption you’d have to make if you postulate a product that can deliver those.
Still, I’ll accept for the sake of argument that a person who follows the $47 course *will* definitely become happy (wise, enlightened, etc).
1. Would I buy it? I’d have to be pretty darn convinced that it would work. 😉
2. I don’t think it’s wrong to charge: after all, I’ve no problem with people getting paid to be life coaches, religious leaders, etc.
Changing “happiness” to a different word does make a difference, though I’m struggling to completely pin down what that difference is. “Transcendent” troubles me because I’m not sure what it’s supposed to mean, or even whether it’s something I’d want – depending on the context. It’s also not a word which fits so well with my religious/spiritual framework as “wise” and “enlightened”. I think I’d have an easier time being convinced that happiness was buy-able than the others.
.-= Ali Hale´s last blog ..When Following Your Passion Will Leave You Broke =-.
Actually, a further thought: part of me feels that it would be “cheating” to try to buy happiness. I feel like it’s something which perhaps we should have to learn, to work towards, to figure out in our own way (and “wisdom” even more so). Taking a shortcut makes me wary.
I know you’re talking about a “rich” sort of happiness rather than a fleeting emotion, but I still can’t quite square it with myself that it could be something I’d just click a few buttons and download.
(I suspect these thoughts are prompted, in part, by Sid Savara’s excellent post http://sidsavara.com/personal-development/personal-development-roadblocks-pushing-pleasure-buttons … possibly also by seeing Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus at the theatre last week…)
.-= Ali Hale´s last blog ..When Following Your Passion Will Leave You Broke =-.
As someone who is on a continuous spiritual journey, the journey never ends. It will never end. And that is the beauty of it. You cannot “make” anyone happy. All you can do is provide words of inspiration and perhaps a few guidelines. If that person’s heart and mind are ready to open up to find beauty and truth , great. If not, perhaps another time.
I think that happiness can be a rather foggy term. So I will more or less agree with the author and scientist Barbara Fredrickson and say that happiness includes these 10 traits – joy, gratitude (including reciprocity), serenity, interest, hope, pride, amusement (humour), inspiration, awe (”goodness on a grand scale”), and love.
I think the same can be applied to the word “enlightened” It can be a foggy term by itself.
“Rich” and “Successful” at business do not convey any intrinsic value to me. However they may provide a stepping stone to freedom and perhaps at one point greater meaning and purpose.
And yes, nothing wrong with opening a door for people and providing a methodology or a different way of thinking.
It’s all in the mind. Only you are the master of your life.
.-= Terry´s last blog ..3 Ways To Make Peace With Money =-.
Hey Charlie, I was so swamped yesterday I couldn’t jump in until now.
Here’s my take on it: you can’t sell happiness or those other qualities. You can’t. I’ve explained what I’ve to be true in an article you’ve read: How Spiritual Teachers Make A Living. From my perspective, the steps you would need to take to become happy have to do with mainly internal work/spiritual practice and such, and I’m not personally into selling that stuff, unless it has a very clear context.
For instance, there are some spiritual exercises and practices included in many of our programs, but they are very clearly in the context of doing the internal work needed to be effective, and they are always based contextually in other specialized knowledge around marketing, sales, writing, something practical.
I think one has to be very careful in our culture around selling anything remotely spiritual. Our culture has what I call “spiritual anorexia.” There is real hunger and thirst for connection to the deeper things in life, and yet much of that hunger or thirst is somewhat unconscious, displaced or conflated with materialistic goals.
Selling anything that touches on those qualities means that you are basically selling food to people with eating disorders. Strong marketing copy and understanding the psychology of selling, coupled with the irrationality of an audience that has a complicated, confused or unconscious relationship to the heart can lead to some pretty unhealthy dynamics.
Yes, people have individual responsibility. And if you have a starving person in front of you, and the choice between giving them healthy food or a candy bar or even poisoned food, the person serving it up has a larger sense of responsibility because of the power dynamic.
.-= Mark Silver´s last blog ..In Which Promotion Happens on the Blog =-.
@Duff- One side note about the $47 ebook being a $15 book with a $32 markup. You didn’t make any judgment about that that I could read, but in case there was, I’d love to just take a moment and defend the price on ebooks. You probably already know all of this.
The publishing industry financial setup is outdated. Someone invest years or decades or training and work into their speciality. They write a book. The lion’s share of the money from those book sales done through a traditional publisher goes to everyone *but* the writer. And a large part of the responsibility for the marketing lays squarely on the shoulders of the writer. It’s an unethical setup.
I have long supported small business owners and the self-employed to create info products instead of trying to get published for these reasons:
1. You have control over your work.
2. The timeline to publishing is much shorter- you don’t have to wait 18 months until it comes out, which can make a huge difference to someone just starting out and needing to feed their family.
3. The majority of the money stays with the author.
4. For very small businesses who typically reach dozens, hundreds, and on the high side a few thousand people, you don’t have to sell very many to pay for groceries. Someone selling a $47 ebook, if they can sell 10 or 20 a month, that can be a significant amount of cash in pocket.
It’s true that often small business owners don’t invest in getting a lot of editing or design done, and that can be a problem. But, it’s a correctible one. With an ebook, you can sell 20 of them, pay someone to edit it, and then reissue it to everyone who bought it.
Just my two cents on the topic.
.-= Mark Silver´s last blog ..In Which Promotion Happens on the Blog =-.
I don’t think that you can buy happiness (or wisdom or any other virtue/personal quality) per se.
As others have said, you can buy things that will lead you towards possession of the qualities you want – for example, if you want erudition you can buy a book, or if you want happiness and peace of mind you can buy psychotherapy – but the qualities themselves are not purchasable nor salable.
This is actually a good thing, I think. After all, if “happiness” came in pill form and anyone could have it – then what would the value of happiness do? Any economist will tell you that as the price of something goes to 0, the perceived value goes to 0.
Things are valuable – and valued – because they are hard-won. It is hard to pursue true happiness, or erudition, or wisdom, or optimal health. And that really is the beauty of the pursuit. 🙂
.-= Charlotte´s last blog ..The Last Days of the Polymath? (In which I compare the internet to a beehive.) =-.
My first thought: I wouldn’t buy happiness, because it can’t be purchased.
But if you’re selling a process, a path I can walk and see for myself what it can do, I’d be intrigued… but I still wouldn’t buy, but only because I don’t consider myself to be in the market for happiness, as I already feel happy (acknowledging my state as a work-in-progress, anyways).
I wouldn’t think you’re a shmuck for trying to sell such a thing, though. If you’ve found something that really provides value for people seeking happiness, and you have invested a decent amount of time and energy into preparing it, you are perfectly entitled to charge money for it.
All those other words to replace ‘happy’ though? They reek of schmuck to me, which similar to the scent of shady car-salesman.
Do you really have to promise what the end product is, in order to sell something? Why not just sell the thing, the process, instead of some elusive potential endstate that might be different for everyone who uses it? Sell me a car, not a pussymagnet. 😉
.-= Qrystal´s last blog ..Mental Battlefield =-.
@MrTeacup: You’ve expressed at least five different substantial theses/question, and while I understand that the context of your response is a comment, it’s not clear which one is the foundation of your point.
#1 The epistemological question: How do I know when I’m in one state or the other?
#2 The metaethical (or metalinguistic) claim: To be “wise” is to act in ways that are praiseworthy for a specified audience.
#3 The metaphysical claim: Happiness, wisdom, enlightenment, and transcendence are not inner qualities.
#4 The psychological claim: we have inner audiences that can’t be satisfied.
#5 The defeatist claim: we will never achieve any ultimate human purpose. (#5 could also be a metaphysical assumption that there is no ultimate human purpose.)
Each one of those claims entail other premises, but they don’t automatically lead to each other.
For instance, it’s plausible that you’re in a state and not know it. (So, #3 is false, but #1 is determinant.)
It’s plausible that those states are real, but we can’t achieve them. (So, #3 is false, and #5 is true.)
Obviously, if those states have no real reference, then we can’t achieve them. (Both #3 and #5 is false.)
It’s also entirely possible that I’ve misunderstood what you’re trying to say, but your lead reminds me of Thrasymachus’ argument in the Republic, which seems sound at first but is surprisingly difficult to defend.
@Duff: Re: ebooks vs. books. What I meant here is that, to choose personal development books as a baseline, we have to look at what happens in traditional book publishing. Mark provides a pretty good explanation of what goes on, so I’ll let his comment carry the discussion on that end, but when you look at the process holistically, even though the revenue is higher on $47 ebooks, the volume of revenue spread out over the amount of purchases doesn’t necessarily mean that individuals selling $47 ebooks are rolling in the dough.
Also, thanks for including the information from Lyubomirsky, as I’ll have to go look at the research now. That said, it violates the thought experiment, which I never supposed was real. It’s a frictionless plane, as it were, that allows us to focus on the salient characteristics at play.
@Jason: Is it only the “softer” stuff that I mentioned that you think would be better greater value to give away for free? If I developed a technology that converted solar energy at a 98% efficiency, do you think it would be a greater value to give that away for free?
@Mike: Interesting. I left it open as to whether the process is contextualized to the person, but I should have made that explicit. If I made it explicit like I just did, would it change your answers?
And because you can buy it doesn’t mean you have to, so how does that change the nature of those things?
@Ali: I had a lot of trouble with “transcendence,” too. Basically, I wanted it to be something like “able to understand and incorporate divine truths” – the point is that it’s an internal process and not something like being blessed or holy.
Also, regarding “cheating”: how is learning a distilled process different than reading the vast amounts of literature that we have that teaches us how to become happy, wise, enlightened, etc.?
@Terry: I agree absolutely that the words are foggy; I made a stab at happiness only because I wanted to separate affective, ephemeral happiness from the character state of happiness. But while the meanings are foggy, they’re solid enough that people’s intuitions can grab on to them. “Successful at business” is foggy, as well, but it’s interesting that that’s not causing intuitive discord, too.
@Mark: Thanks for the awesome comments and pushing the discussion along further. You and I have been talking about this subject for a few weeks now, and the post you referenced has been on my mind prominently, too. I don’t have a conclusion on the matter yet, but I have a lot of thoughts and observations on the subject.
I’m especially interested between in the between wisdom and happiness, but that makes sense given my neo-Aristotelianism. The link between wisdom and happiness is a long-standing philosophical problem, and different traditions will incorporate transcendence and enlightenment into a rich understanding of wisdom, so I wanted to make room for them.
That said, I find your point that you can sell applications of wisdom/spirituality interesting, and what I was trying to pull out (and haven’t done so successfully yet :p) is the opposite: what if we sell a process that gets not to the application of wisdom/spirituality, but to the wisdom/spirituality itself.
I also so hear you on the spiritual anorexia. We have happiness and wisdom anorexia, as well. Too bad that the medicine available all too address financial and material symptoms and not the dis-ease itself.
Loved the comment about the $47 ebook – it gave a different perspective that helps with my thoughts on the matter.
@Charlotte: Your last paragraph is fascinating, as it touches on something that I’ve worked with many clients around. We have this strange notion that anything worth having has to be hard to get, which sets up all sorts of mental props and obstacles for us. A simpler, easier answer that leads to happiness is suspect precisely because getting happiness has to be hard.
I’ll give a somewhat related case: I love my wife dearly, and our relationship is easy. Would it make my love for her more valuable if our relationship wasn’t easy?
@Qrystal: “Do you really have to promise what the end product is, in order to sell something? Why not just sell the thing, the process, instead of some elusive potential endstate that might be different for everyone who uses it?”
What’s interesting here is the degree to which buyers influence what sellers do. Simply put, it’s harder to sell a product without including some endstate, because benefits are one of the strongest reasons people buy – features are a secondary consideration. The stronger your benefit resonates with a persons emotional state, the easier it is to sell that product.
What I’ve learned in the last year is that the buying process isn’t nearly as rational as many of us would like to think.
@Mark
While I appreciate and agree with some of your arguments, they all fall on the side of the publisher, which I find imbalanced.
Customers also have families to feed. There are ethics not only between publisher and author to examine, but between publisher and consumer.
I also think there are questions of quality in an industry. I’ve purchased probably 10 or 20 absolutely horrible eBooks, which is at least half of the total information products I’ve purchased as a consumer, compared to probably only 3 or 4 physical books that I wanted to throw in the trash (and I’ve purchased hundreds of physical books in my lifetime). The electronic “publishing” industry has created a mass of crap, largely because information marketers encourage non-experts to write books quickly and publish them without edits for high prices with pushy marketing. This includes Project Mojave and other more “conscious” information marketing programs. Could an eBook theoretically be worth $47 and high-quality? Sure—but I haven’t seen one, and I’ve seen 100’s if not 1000’s of the former.
In addition, in the music industry we also have people arguing similar things, except that nobody—not one single band I’ve ever come across—is trying to sell an album for $47. In many cases, independent albums are selling for $10 or less.
The industry is inflated, largely due to hype marketing and promises of wealth and “the long tail.” It seems clear to me that the long tail is mostly a myth, and that on the web as off, there are a handful of “mavens” dominating the market and getting rich, while the rest of us buy into the idea that one day we can too, perpetuating the ponzi scheme of the promises of wealth which distracts from the structural inequities that keep many people impoverished.
.-= Duff´s last blog ..The Dark Side of The Secret: Reading James Arthur Ray’s Sweat Lodge Disaster through a Magickal Lens =-.
@Charlie
Love is an involuntary response to virtue. The “hard” part was in getting where you are now, to be the human being you are now – loving and beloved by your wife.
I’ll also say this: if getting to erudition or virtue or happiness or whatever isn’t hard or shouldn’t be hard… then why is everyone not erudite or virtuous or happy or whatever else? If being a happy, healthy, good human being is not hard – then why isn’t everyone happy, healthy, and good?
I do not think that “hard” necessarily entails suffering. Working to create my business is hard. It is VERY hard. But I am not suffering. I enjoy the challenge.
I think you and your clients are conflating difficulty with suffering. 🙂
.-= Charlotte´s last blog ..The Last Days of the Polymath? (In which I compare the internet to a beehive.) =-.
@Charlie, I’m not really making a philosophical point — at least, not about the real nature of happiness, wisdom, etc. My point is mainly an observation about the culture of personal development – that it represents notions of the Good as universal metaphysical givens, ignoring and even obfuscating the way that those concepts are culturally conditioned, how we are socialized into worldviews in which those concepts make sense.
Several critical points come out of that: personal development culture is primarily concerned with constructing and performing an identity that is understood as happy/wise/spiritual/whatever. Look at James Arthur Ray’s recent sweat lodge: he demanded certain performances from participants — that powering through pain, discomfort and even vomiting demonstrated one’s spiritual attainment — with deadly results. Going beyond a critique of authority, we should notice how authority fundamentally is the authority to demand certain (often moral) performances from us.
Isn’t it interesting that so many people who do personal development end up as coaches and motivational speakers themselves? There may be many reasons for this, but it seems that in this culture, the highest rank you can achieve in personal development is being acknowledged as a teacher. And if we expect a teacher to fully embody the concepts he or she teaches, aren’t they under intense pressure to perform? Every movement, glance and word must sustain the fantasy that they and their students have constructed, and under the watchful gaze of their customers, doesn’t this make their very identity and personality into a living, breathing advertisement? No wonder that so many “enlightened” people, by trying to achieve ultimate authenticity, come off as fake.
All of this is distinct from the question of whether happiness/wisdom/enlightenment exists and whether it is achievable. I think those things do exist — but there has been no greater forcing in preventing people from accessing them than the personal development and spiritual subcultures.
.-= MrTeacup´s last blog ..mrteacup: How the Kindle got it’s name: "Jeff Bezos wanted to talk about the future of reading in a small, not braggadocio way" http://bit.ly/2Q8vmp =-.
Charlie, good question about why it feels like “cheating” to me, to buy happiness. I suppose I feel that a big part of genuine happiness (and wisdom, and success) in life is figuring things out for yourself. Sometimes, I know there’s a quicker or even better solution to something I’m trying to do — but there’s more satisfaction in working it out for myself, and learning how it works.
I’ve been realising recently that I do tend to limit myself a bit, though, by feeling that “happiness” (“success” etc) is something I have to learn/do myself. So I’m not sure if it’s really a valid objection to your questions in the original post, or whether it’s just my own hang-up!
.-= Ali Hale´s last blog ..When Following Your Passion Will Leave You Broke =-.
@Duff- Question- did you return the ebooks you bought and didn’t like and get a refund?
There’s a few different issues, and they’re getting mixed up together which can cause some confusion. And, unfortunately, they are all subjective.
The first one has to do with quality- Quality is such a question of perspective. Yes, there are certain standards for editing/spelling/grammer/design. But, I know my expectations are completely different depending on my relationship to the seller.
If I buy a book from a store, I expect certain things. I also have pretty much zero relationship to the author or publisher-I might have a relationship with the bookstore, if it’s small enough.
In buying an ebook, the chances are high that I have a relationship with the seller- I’ve read their stuff for awhile for free, the author is directly responsive to me. That changes my expectations entirely- then my expectations are much more on whether I receive help from them or not, than whether the production quality is high. I like both, but I have a lot of forgiveness in me for the production quality.
The second issue is price. Clearly if you don’t think something is worth that much money, you shouldn’t pay it. There are books I’ve paid $12 for and regretted. There are information products I’ve paid 10-20x that for and been happy about. There is no absolute line you can draw about pricing, so it’s a hard conversation to have. Someone thinks $10 is expensive, someone else doesn’t. Sometimes it has to do with how much money someone has- sometimes it doesn’t.
A third issue has to do with sophisticated/manipulative marketing tactics. I totally agree with you that there are people out there who are using these kinds of things to push information products. The vast majority of info products I’ve come across are not like that. It’s more like a raw foodie who made up an ebook and is offering it to her email list. Or someone who helps people in intimate relationships communicate who has a workbook. Some copywriting is involved, but there’s no sophisticated psychological campaign.
Were you manipulated by pushy marketing to buy those 10-20 ebooks you didn’t like?
It seems in some way that we’re just discussing ideas for the sake of ideas- I’m not sure where we can possibly go with this. Are you suggesting that because there are many ebooks out there that you found disappointing that self-employed folks shouldn’t produce any more ebooks? Are you saying that they should voluntarily limit themselves to a price that means they have to sell so many of them that they have to start resorting to more sophisticated marketing techniques, rather than just connecting with a few handfuls of people who sincerely like them?
I get your frustration. I agree that there is a lot of self-published stuff whose quality is iffy. I agree that there are individuals who charge prices that I’m not willing to pay. I’m just not sure where you’re going with it.
.-= Mark Silver´s last blog ..In Which Promotion Happens on the Blog =-.
As somebody who is charging $47 for a product and I’m guessing by the verbiage THE product that stimulated this debate. Let me ask these questions.
Leaving aside whether it works and leaving aside the cost v worth argument that some people simply can’t get past. Some of whom I may add are happy to spend $200 per month on an iPhone that sends AT & T into profit in month 2 of a 24 month contract.
What if the book also came with videos to explain exercises?
What if the authors were dealing with questions via e-mail on a daily basis from readers and were happy to continue to do so ad infinitum?
What if they were planning free teleseminars to support people starting in December?
What if they offered to refund the full price up to 12 months in advance?
What if there were plans to set up a charity to distribute free copies of a hardback version to schools?
Does that shift the dynamic?
The fact is, a $47 e-book isn’t a $47 e-book. All should be judged on their merits and nothing more otherwise you are judging on cost and that is ridiculous.
We have had 3 complaints about our book and not one of those people has read it. In fact John offered one guy a free copy and he only had to pay for it if he saw the value after finishing it. He turned the offer down. Very open-minded eh ;–)
I have just re-read that and I sound a mixture of defensive and whiny.
So just to lighten things up a bit because that wasn’t intended:
There’s a knock at the door and a young boy shouts;
“Daddy, daddy, there’s a man at the door with a bill”
“Don’t be silly son, it must be a duck with a hat on”
.-= Tim Brownson´s last blog ..The Real Purpose of News =-.
@ Charlie:
My point was that you could give away the 47 dollar book and reach lots of people, especially skeptical people who would never spend money on a “happiness solution”. If your process works, you could potentially help millions, who would become your followers and constantly visit your website, come see you at speaking engagements, and who would certainly buy your second book. The feeling of genuinely helping people and the community generated by that would in my mind be more valuable than simply generating book sales.
But if you developed a 98% efficiency solar-power system and revolutionized the energy industry, yeah, you’d probably want to get paid for that. As much as I LOVE the idea of giving that away to help the planet (you’d be a hero), the market for that product is just too large. Your technology could influence energy production for the rest of history, it’d be downright irresponsible to give it away (it would be equally reckless to simply sell it to the highest bidder without knowing their intentions, but that’s for another post).
After rereading this (there’s a point in there somewhere I promise) it almost seems that the difference comes down to market. In the first example, you open up your market by giving it away, in the second, the market would be so huge it’d be foolish and even dangerous to give it away.
@ Jason – Let me say something if I may because you raise a good point.
With my first e-book I did exactly that. It cost me about $500 and I even spent money on an ad on Zen Habits. I had about 1,000 downloads in a short period of time.
The net result? A waste of time because people give little or no value to ‘free stuff’? People were downloading it purely because it was free, a bit like you see kids collecting flyers at motor shows and then throwing them away a few days later.
I would wager hardly anybody did the exercises and I got almost zero feedback.
Since How To Be Rich and Happy was launched we have had LOTS of feedback and questions about the exercises. We have people committed to doing what needs to be done to get the results they want.
We could have sold at $10 and probably sold more than 5 x as many, but I’m not interested in people buying it if they aren’t going to use it properly. Not interested at all.
.-= Tim Brownson´s last blog ..The Real Purpose of News =-.
@Mark–
My views are not theoretical, but come from first-hand experience as both customer and marketer.
Have I been manipulated by long-form sales letters of the Dan Kennedy type that overpromise and underdeliver? Yup.
Have I been fooled by “reality infomercials” of the Frank Kern Mass Control variety? You betcha.
Have I been suckered into buying products that elicited my hidden greed, lust, insecurity, scarcity fears, or desire for power? Absolutely.
Have I even purchased programs that teach how to sell information products by manipulating others to buy things, to push their “hot buttons” of greed, lust, insecurity, etc.? Yup, done that too.
Many of these products were from the “big dogs” of internet marketing that nearly everyone in the blog world buys from, is an affiliate of, and talks highly of. Nearly all of them teach write an ebook in a day/week and sell it for high prices with pushy marketing.
Did I ask for a refund? No, because the cognitive dissonance of feeling like I was manipulated by someone I trusted, combined with having to admit that I was sold based on hidden shadow elements of my personality made me feel ashamed. I wish I would have fought earlier, but it took me sometimes YEARS to see that I had been ripped off.
The pushy marketing justifies the high prices and low quality, which is why I don’t separate them out. It’s a gestalt, an inflated model for an inflated market.
Could someone theoretically sell an ebook to their list at a fair price? Of course, but I haven’t seen anybody “escaping from cubicle nation” doing this.
Perhaps we run in different circles, but from what I’ve seen, that is *rarely* what happens. What usually happens is that people buy something like Mass Control and do a full-on hyped up product launch with very manipulative psychological tactics, attaching ideological values like “freedom” to their product, charging enormous sums of money for information on how to make enormous sums of money. Or at least, those are the majority of people who are making a living at this in the blog world.
The models underlying pretty much all online marketing have been pioneered by the manipulative marketers, and so most people who want to be “successful” at online marketing end up buying the manipulators courses and learning from them—or at least that’s what I see happening.
If you are truly doing something different that is not based on the premises and assumptions of Frank Kern, Eben Pagan, Dan Kennedy, and the other manipulative marketers, I applaud your work and would love to hear more.
.-= Duff´s last blog ..The Dark Side of The Secret: Reading James Arthur Ray’s Sweat Lodge Disaster through a Magickal Lens =-.
Hi Charlie,
Some excellent questions!
I’m looking forward to reading the comments, as well. But for now I’ll answer your questions, in case I get overwhelmed by the wonderful points your other readers have shared.
I would really have to know how you define “happiness”, “wisdom”, etc.
It’s like the words “justice” or “freedom.” They mean different things to different people. I wouldn’t go running after every person who uses these words.
Some people define happiness as following what your heart tells you to do. I think that’s a bit vague, and we don’t always know what’s truly compatible with our needs as human beings. We might desire something now only to realize that our desire was drawing us towards something that’s ultimately damaging for us. Therefore, a product on how to follow our hearts is something I wouldn’t be interested in, even if it promises happiness.
I think anyone who knows a thing or two about human nature and what leads to human happiness deserves to be rewarded (i.e. paid) for sharing this knowledge, so I think it’s sensible to charge for such knowledge, whether it be for happiness or for enlightenment (they are both learnable).
A series of modules might work better than to sell the whole process for $47 dollars. That way people would at least notice the change the process is bringing into their lives, and can choose to continue along with it or not.
These are my thoughts on the subject. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some comments to read! 😉
@ Duffy – Seriously dude, chill. Take the day off from changing the world, it’ll still be here when you get back 😉
Think of RAW, because you are in your reality tunnel and everybody else is in their’s.
As good old Billie Shakespeare said:
“There is no right or wrong only thinking makes it so”
BTW, if you want a copy of my book, let me know and I’ll send you one. Then if you think it’s not worth $47 you can cement your opinion and rip it on Twitter with my pleasure!
.-= Tim Brownson´s last blog ..The Real Purpose of News =-.
Charlie, to answer your questions, being rich/successful at business DO change perception because they deal with a desperate pain people have right now: “I HAVE to have more money to [fill the blank], therefore I need to learn how to get rich”. You can find lots of buyers for this.
Same with any other acute pain.
Happiness is something that is nice to have, but I don’t have to deal with it today. So marketing how to be happy following certain steps is a lot harder. It’s like selling enlightment, finding your purpose, etc. If I don’t get enlightened or find my purpose, what’s the big deal?
You can however, sell the experience of “happy” and that’s something being done quite successfully. There are “Rich, happy and hot” workshops, there’s Tim’s book on How to be Rich and Happy, there’s the Happy for no Reason book and workshops, and Richard Holden’s Happiness Project which has been a phenomenon in UK with a whole empire built around it.
Given the right audience, you can sell whatever you want at whatever price. At the end of the day, we all want our problems to be solved. What real pain are we trying to get rid of when we think of happiness? That’s a question I ask myself all the time.
.-= Claudia´s last blog ..Lost your mojo? Find inspiration =-.
I’ve purchased many expensive e-books/info products in the past, which did not live up to my expectations. Had they truly benefited me in the way I expected them to, the price would have been insignificant compared to the value they would have brought me.
The issue here isn’t the price, but the value of the info products being sold. If Charlie’s process can truly bring happiness, then $47,000 would be a bargain!
(People try to become millionaires to experience happiness!)
Rather than debate whether $47 is a good price or not, we can think of another business model that small businesses and the self-employed can use to make money, as well as have the broadest social impact possible.
An idea would be to allow people to buy distribution rights for an e-book (e.g. 10 copies can be shared for $50). That way, people can legally share e-books, while supporting the author financially, and helping a larger number of people benefit from the author’s work.
This is just an idea, but I think if we shift the discussion in the direction of benefiting both the author and society, we’d end up with a more valuable outcome. 🙂
.-= Haider´s last blog ..Playing the Part =-.
@Duff: One of my biggest learning points here recently is precisely how irrational the buying process can be – and how difficult it can be when you, as a seller, approach the process differently than your consumers do.
What’s particularly hard is that we can’t translate value for other people, especially when dollars have no inherent worth. I generally try to translate the dollars into something more meaningful, more for me than for my buyers. What’s $10 worth to someone? I don’t know. Does this product deliver more value than a couple of beers? Absolutely. I’ll grant that in that last question, I am making an assumption about the value of beer, so I’m fully open for criticism there.
Another contextual thing to consider is that, while I agree that the quality of many ebooks can be suspect, there are also a lot of ebooks being written in which it’s not clear what it means to be an expert. What does it take to be an expert at NLP, for instance? What does it take to be an expert at blogging, Social Media, Rails development, productivity, or business strategy?
I don’t have answers here – just a lot of curious questions. After spending 10 years becoming an “expert” at philosophy (which is what the granting of a Ph.D. really means), I can see that that model has its uses, but it’s severely bankrupt in many areas and doesn’t address the world most people live in.
It seems that many of your ideas are strongly influenced by volume sales and perhaps a conflation of profit and revenue. There are entire organizations that are vehicles for volume sales in many of the industries you cite as examples, and, when you have an entire organization of people driving sales in the thousands, that sets up different economic realities than when you’re a solopreneur or small creative time who both has to produce and distribute a product. I’ll touch on this more really soon.
Fundamentally, there is much to worry about with some of the gurus of internet marketing. There are also realities about the buying process that are also at play, and to pretend as if economic exchange were more rational is more naive than it is wise, ethical, or enlightened – yet this doesn’t justify abhorrent ethical practices. I guess that’s why this discussion is so interesting…
It just occurred to me: effective civil rights movements often press hot buttons and manipulate people’s emotions in order to get them to act. Think of how much King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” used pathos to really integrate the logos and ethos of his argument. Also consider the way in which Eric uses rhetoric to get people to really think about what’s going on. I’m not saying this to excuse deception, overpromising/underdelivering, and some of the obscene psychological priming tactics used by some of the people you’re speaking of.
@Charlotte: You’re absolutely right that conflations abound, but I didn’t necessarily mean hard in the suffering way. I probably meant it closer to what you mean it to be, in the sense that you mean when you say “working to create my business is hard.” One of the funny things about philosophical conversations is that it often makes words that seem easy to understand difficult – who knew how much could spin around a simple word like “hard”? :p
I don’t have a good answer for why everyone isn’t happy, healthy, and good, really. Part of the problem is the phenomenon by which we account for future consequences differently than we do for present consequences – for instance, I’d rather have fun now and work later, but “later,” I’ll still want the same thing. All sorts of issues of irrationality and delayed gratification come up from that alone.
Another problem is that we haven’t really learned good decision procedures that factor in incomplete information, so we either delay decision-making or make the wrong ones based off of the more secure wrong information.
Yet another is that we’re often torn between different aspects of ourselves – sometimes we do what we know is wrong because it feels better, and other times we don’t do what would be right because our mental faculties fool us into thinking that emotive consequences should be undervalued.
Add in various social structures that script certain behaviors and realities and you get a whole grab bag of “hard.”
My point is not that things are easy, but just that how difficult things are have very little to do with their value, just as something’s scarcity says little about how intrinsically valuable it is. Diamonds – the paradigm of hardness – are only valuable in as much as we make them valuable, despite the fact that they’re both hard and rare. :p
@MrTeacup: Your points are really philosophical, whether you intend them to be or not. You’re coming in with a pretty sophisticated social critique, and I want to be clear that I appreciate it.
What you call someone being a “living, breathing advertisement,” I call leadership and integrity. I do expect someone to do as they say, at least most of the time – we all slip up occasionally. If James Arthur Ray really believes in what he’s doing, he’s a man of integrity and leadership who’s (perhaps) horribly misguided. (I say perhaps because I know him only through the sweat lodge incidents and that I haven’t read all the details about what happened, so I’m suspending judgment on his character.)
I don’t find it particularly interesting that personal dev people end up as coaches and speakers, really, for the same reasons that it’s not particularly interesting that deeply religious people become priests, rabbis, pastors, or religious leaders, and for the same reasons that people who are good at sports & helping other get better at sports become coaches.
Now, whether they’re good at delivering is an entirely different question, and I think there are plenty of people who are helping people become more happy, wise, and enlightened who are unfortunately overshadowed by the James Arthur Rays of the world. This is not particularly interesting either – big, bad examples stick out more to us than small, good examples, which is why there’s more bad news being broadcasted than good.
@Tim: It was really insensitive of me to not make it clear that this discussion was not prompted by your product, but it’s because I largely didn’t think of it. I liked your point about the iPhone, which really buttressed some of my thinking about trying to translate value into cost.
And, defending Duff: I’m glad he’s on 24/7. Evil men toil while good people sleep.
@Jason: I think Tim raises a good point, so I’ll address another: the market for people who want to be happy is probably larger than those who care about super-efficient solar technology, so surely your point is not about the size of the market. Creating a process that led to global human happiness would probably change the world more than a clean energy technology, as well.
And if it’s about their willingness to pay for the product, then it’s pressing right into the center of this discussion.
@Duff- Wow, man, I really have empathy for you and your experiences. Sounds like you’ve had quite a journey along the way, learning about yourself from mistakes, and it costing a pretty penny in the process. Although I’ve never bought any info products from Kern or other big guru names, I have had my own encounters with less-than-ethical marketing, in the MLM world- that was where I got schooled – in the bad sense.
However, when I think about the folks on Heart of Business’ email list, all 5200+ of them, I have serious doubts as to whether even 1% of them have bought anything from the folks you are thinking of. I would suspect that many of them haven’t even heard of them.
The “internet marketing guru” world, as large a reach as it has, is still pretty limited. There are tens, nay hundreds of thousands, nay millions of people who have never heard of them, and who are just trying to figure out how to really help the people the want to help while feeding their family.
So when you say “that nearly everyone in the blog world buys from, is an affiliate of, and talks highly of. Nearly all of them teach write an ebook in a day/week and sell it for high prices with pushy marketing.” I think you are talking about a very specific slice of subculture. Careful about thinking what you see is all there is.
I have no idea what you’d think of our approach at Heart of Business, but you are certainly welcome to take a look. When we send a sales email, or write a sales page, I try to be educational about what’s offered, be clear in my asking for the purchase, and also clean in letting people know that I would prefer they check in with their hearts, and if they don’t buy, they’ll be okay.
I told Charlie that I’d take it up on my own blog, since this side conversation about value and price is important- I’m going to try to write something early this week.
I love your analysis of the self-growth movement- it’s much needed, and it makes me think–your writing inspired a post that will go live on Wednesday about addiction to breakthroughs. I love your analytical mind brought here. And, please take care to not make too sweeping a generalization. There are honest folks who are trying to do what feels right- they seem to be happy, their customers seem to be happy, and there’s no psychological manipulation going on. It seems a bit hasty to paint everyone who sells digital information products for more than $15 with the same broad brush.
.-= Mark Silver´s last blog ..In Which Promotion Happens on the Blog =-.
@Charlie
Interesting points! Thanks for the clarification. I’ll have to sit down and have a long think about that one. 🙂
.-= Charlotte´s last blog ..Why I’m Not Buying Any More Info Products. (or: How Merlin Mann changed my game.) =-.
I’m actually a little more resistant to the idea of selling wisdom or enlightenment than happiness, perhaps because I’ve encountered more instances of those things that seemed false to me.
The real answer to whether I’d buy it is that I probably wouldn’t buy it right now, because I’ve just found your blog. But if, after six months, I was still reading your blog and finding what you have to say valuable, I’d probably add it to my list. Unless it was a video thing. I’m not a video kind of person.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with selling a process you’ve developed if you believe that it works. If it were me, I’d want to lead my friends through it first so I could feel really sure that it worked (which would then let me confidently mention it to people and all that), but if you have something figured out, great 🙂
Wow. The intensity of this discussion shows me once again that I am living a different reality. Everything we do, or very close to everything, is motivated by our wish to be happy. Food – we could live on rice and a few legumes. Shelter – how many rooms can we be in at one time? The clothes, cars, and vacations we choose, even programs to help us be successful in business come down to our wish for happiness.
But if I know steps and practices to help someone develop steadfast inner happiness, what? I’m not supposed to provide that? I’m to think people are starving for this and therefore may not use discernment as to whether it can really help, so I should not even offer it? Or, I may offer it, but it has to be free or so low cost that I cannot even sustain myself well enough to keep it going?
In my reality I’ve lived with a brain injury for over 20 years, lost everything and in the long slow healing found what was most important. Love and compassion. My life has so many limits, but I am one of the deeply happiest people I know. Am I going to offer that to others? With joy! Am I going to sell it at some exorbitant price and do yellow-highlighter shouting marketing, no. But there’s going to be a price. And the ones who truly want to do the work and receive the benefits will be happy to pay me.
.-= Mahala Mazerov´s last blog ..A Brief & Beautiful Prayer =-.
I’m so glad I came over here today. Charlie, you really hit on a soft spot. We are all trying to deliver value to the world. Whether we work for someone else or ourselves. Some of the value is clear. I pay $70 for a massage and that’s what I get. Info products are a little different since it’s really the reader or user that has to run with the info and make it work for them.
How do we deal with getting paid for teaching something that everyone should have? I know I’ve felt guilty for creating my business around happiness. This guilt doesn’t last long because it’s needed in the working world. Too many people have giving up control for their happiness. If $47 can help give them that control back, it’s worth every penny.
I’ve paid too much for info products and it hurts. You expect the world and all they take is your money.
I think it comes down to perception. Like always. If a person gives up their $47 and is happy then you’ve done your job. At the end of the day that’s all that matters.
.-= Karl Staib – Work Happy Now´s last blog ..How Does Your Confidence Affect Your Work? =-.
I wanted to thank Charlie & everyone else who spoke so openly about this issue. It gave me some desperately needed clarity on the direction of my blog and the courage to take more time to experiment before I write the ebook I’ve been planning.
I sincerely believe that the essence of emotional Happiness (wisdom, enlightenment, or any other variation) can NOT be bought or sold. You can’t order it on the internet in a soda can and drink in true, authentic Happiness.
However, I do believe that it is possible to define and share the different processes that others have used to reach their goals. (whether that goal is running a marathon or learning to meditate doesn’t matter) And, depending on how important and how large those goals are, the recipient may find a measure of Happiness, Success, Richness etc in life. But they still have to do the work. They have to take the meaningful actions. And while they take those meaningful actions, internal work (growth) can and usually does occur on one level or another.
Yes, I have bought a few ebooks/programs that didn’t live up to my expectations but I found, in most of those cases, that I had dropped the ball as well. Perhaps this is because (as a physicist) I was trained to take most written books, articles, and papers as a theory–a hypothesis that was not proven unless it has been tested many times and may only be truthful within a certain environment. Even if proven, these experimental laws are more of a guideline for my own tests of reality. The more proof, the stronger the theory, but it remains a theory none the less.
The few times I purchased a book that I was sincerely upset about due to the quality of content, writing, editing, or the feeling that a false promise was made (& not delivered), I returned the product for a refund. Or, I wrote off the experience as a lesson to better understand my own emotional needs. The dollar amount was mostly irrelevant except during the actual purchase, because if I did not believe the material worthy of the price, I simply did not buy it.
So yes, I will buy products that sell “Happiness” (including Tim’s $47 ebook 🙂 with the understanding that the product includes (not the essence of happiness) but an experiential process that has helped others reach happiness. And I have definitely found them to help me along my path. But I make very sure to evaluate both the writer and the ebook samples available. Apparently I’ll never been able to outrun my scientific process and mathematical pattern filled background. 🙂
Again, thanks for this illuminating discussion. I truly appreciate the honest communication of so many varied viewpoints.
.-= Lira Vaughan´s last blog ..A Change of Heart to Keep My Promises =-.
@ Tim,
You make an excellent point, especially about people not giving value to free stuff. Also, before we go any further, I’d point out that you are infinitely more qualified than I to speak on actually creating and releasing a free ebook since you’ve done it and I haven’t.
I was simplifying and giving the best case in my example, but my point was that the reaction we were seeing when Charlie first asked the question was that a lot of people would not spend $47 on the book because of subjectivity and the fact the definition of “happiness” is different for everyone. My thought was to overcome those objections by giving it to them, then when the process actually worked for them, they’d become your tribe. With the key to happiness, the value would be high because it works. Unfortunately, when we go down a level, simplifying doesn’t work because it doesn’t take into account the fact that people may not do the worksheets, may not follow the instructions, and may not actually find happiness. It flat out may not work for them, possibly because it was free and “it couldn’t possibly work because it didn’t cost anything”.
By charging what you did you created value with people, and you managed to get MUCH more qualified sales leads. People who are excited about it, fired-up about doing the worksheets, and overall responding well. So it was in fact, much more valuable to sell it than to give it away. Honestly, I hadn’t even considered that. So now I wonder, is it an issue of subject? Would you have better luck building a following and getting speaking gigs at “Bass Pro Shops” by giving away something more tangible, like “The guaranteed 10 steps to learn fly fishing”?
@ Charlie,
Sure, the amount of individuals seeking happiness is going to be much larger than the amount of people actively searching for a 98% efficient solar power system. I think instead of saying my point was about market, I should have said it was about sellability. You could sell your solar power system to an energy management company TODAY for millions, whereas we’ve seen skepticism in people spending 47 bucks for the secret to happiness. That’s the difference I was speaking about. “Creating a process that led to global human happiness would probably change the world more than a clean energy technology” ONLY if you could get people to use it.
@ Jason – Tim and excellent point in the same sentence are always going to win me over. Maybe you could e-mail my wife? 😉
I love your open-mindedness mate and also willingness to come back and admit you hadn’t thought of something. I wish there was more of that around the blogosphere.
.-= Tim Brownson´s last blog ..Who Cares What Tim Does? =-.
Folks (Charlie and commenters, the lot of you!), I love you dearly, I really do. Your hearts and minds are amazing, fertile, rich. I envy your energy and drive toward the truth.
But God, I’m so overwhelmed by this conversation, and so many others of its kind in the blogosphere. It seems so overheated. My weary ears can no longer distinguish discernment from hairsplitting.
I alternate between phases where I follow you on Twitter or my feedreader, then unfollow in sheer exhaustion or stupefaction. Then somebody references you in a way that piques me again, and the cycle resumes…
Social Media Burnout would be my self-diagnosis, but I’d bet it’s a second-order effect 😉
I pray this doesn’t come off as trolling. I fear it may.
@Mark: I understand you completely – you’re not trolling. This is an intense and long discussion, so I completely get how it can feel overheated and overwhelming.
It’s also clear that many of us needed a reasoned, safe forum to talk about it. There are so many changes, and many of us are concerned that we’re not asking the right questions – specifically, just because we can doesn’t mean we should.
Thank you for sharing your perspective, and I understand how it can be exhausting. Sometimes signal becomes noise simply by being too intense.
Unfollow me/us as you need to – I respect your need for some time away from the firehose and I don’t take it personally, and thanks for joining the conversation when you can.
Given that this is exactly what I sell, you bet I’d say yes…
Well actually I wouldn’t say yes because I don’t need to buy happiness – but I certainly hope others do! 😉
.-= Alex Fayle | Someday Syndrome´s last blog ..Controlling Creativity: Timeblocking My Way to Success =-.
pretty brilliant way to introduce the idea, personally if a pitch page convinced me that i will get the promised effect i will pay anything 🙂
Thanks!
Hello Charlie,
Great Blog. Sharing ideas and wisdom is something I call Foundation of being… The best gift to me is when I learn How to live less and not accepting less.
Thank you
Thank you very much for your contributions.
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