183. Rise Above Scarcity - It's Not Real

Hey everybody, hope you are doing awesome. And all as well in your world. Wanted to do a little bit of a public service announcement about a conversation that happens very often. It's all about scarcity. As somebody who's been an entrepreneur for over 20 years and just a consumer for many more than in that, we're often shown situations where we're told that there's something we need and if we don't have it, our life is not going to be okay.

We need this tool, we need this toy, we need, I don't know, six pack ABS, we need toner, thighs, whatever it might be. And if we don't have that, we're not going to be enough. And so it leads to this conversation around scarcity. There's not enough going around. There's not enough sexiness within you.

There's not enough fitness within you, or you don't have a car that's expensive enough, or you don't have enough things, or these things that are now being sold. They're awesome and they're shiny and they're cool. And you know what? There's only a few of them left and you're not going to get them if you don't hurry. Now, realistically, there are certain things that specifically, if you are obsessed with a certain model of a car or a signature shoe, yes, some of those are scarce.

They're intentionally scarce. The supply is kept low in an attempt to artificially, yes, that is the word. Artificially increase demand, artificially create a situation to try to make them more valuable than they are. If you look at some parts of the world, some of us have water in abundance and we don't even consider a big deal. And in other parts of the world, people don't have water.

It truly is a scarce resource. And to some of us it's not a big deal, to others it is. And yet we have these people that are trying to sell us on something. And you might be somebody that uses this. In fact, as an internet marketer and online marketer, we're often told to use the two most important closers, scarcity and urgency.

Now, we live in a world with over seven and a half billion, I think it's close to 8 billion people now. There are rivers, there are oceans, there's food. There's more food on the planet than needed to feed all the people, even though we still haven't figured out how to distribute it. There's so much abundance. Our heart beats without us doing anything consciously.

It just does it. So we have an abundance of life and oxygen and flow, and yet somehow people are looking to focus on scarcity. So what I suggest you use this. I want to speak to two people first. I want to speak to you as the consumer.

You as the consumer. Scarcity is a bunch of nonsense. I'd use other words, but I try to keep it clean. But insert whatever word you can think of that equals manure or nonsense or poop or whatever. It's garbage.

It's not true. It's something that somebody who has an inferior product leverages on you to try to get you to buy it. I'm going to say that again. It's somebody who has an inferior I said it product or an inferior business situation or a tense business situation or a fearful business situation where they're trying to manipulate you to do something you don't want to do so that they'll be okay. If you watch the best businesses, the best entrepreneurs, they don't dabble in scarcity.

They don't do that. They simply say I'm here to deliver, I'm going to deliver. Awesomely. And if you want what I have, great. There's plenty of it to go around.

There's enough for everybody. When you are being shown scarcity as a consumer, it's by somebody who does not have all their stuff together. If they did, they wouldn't be using scarcity with you. They'd be offering you abundance because they'd say yes, there's plenty. There's this idea that they'll sometimes market something and somebody say look, there's only a little bit of this left.

And in fact it's so good that if it works really well and we make tons of money, we're never going to sell it again. OK, that makes sense. No, that's nonsense. It's not true. It's a trick, it's a game, it's a manipulation.

It's something that leads to fear and anxiety and FOMO in people. Now that's very different than if a person says hey, I have this event coming up and the hotel I'm going to be at has x number of seats or the cruise ship we're going on has x number of seats or whatever it is. There might be real scarcity. But for the most part I see all these internet marketers. There's limited spaces on this webinar.

Any webinar platform can hold more and no entrepreneur is going to say, you know what, there's too many people coming on and trying to buy my product. I'm going to slow this down. I don't want as many people coming on. They will make room. So I encourage you, when you see that, be very mindful, be very scared.

Yes. Or fearful in a way. Or wise or prudent perhaps. Maybe not fearful that that person is not looking out for your best interest. They're not telling the truth.

And while a lot of people will sometimes tell me where you know what, you're too harsh about trying to help people be honest and clear. At the end of the day, all I can go off of is somebody's words. So if somebody is not being clear with me, I know in some way that might end up kicking my butt later. I'm not looking to judge them. I'm not saying they're a bad person.

I'm not saying they're a better person. I have plenty of things about myself that are less than desirable that could be better. But when I see somebody not being honest about lack and especially when you talk about things that are scalable, like webinar seats or time to buy a product which is a little bit more urgency than scarcity, those things are simply not true. Now, as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, I encourage you to consider, do you want to attract people who are easily manipulated by words like scarcity? I can tell you those are some of the worst clients to have because people who are constantly fearful, it's like if you're a financial adviser, there are some advisors who have clients, and let's say they're doing investing, they have some clients that are always fearful of the market.

Every single day they're watching the market. What does the market do? Oh, it went up, it went down, it went up two points went down, two points. And they're constantly calling and they're harassing because they're so scared. And so scarcity not only breeds fear, but it connects you to clients and people who are by their nature, more fearful.

They might still be awesome people, they may still be great people, but you might not want them as clients. Also, just as fellow entrepreneurs, when fellow entrepreneurs see marketing employees that are not clear and not true, they run away. So I've been blessed to work with insurance agency owners for over 30 years. Here's the funny, cool thing. I'll see internet marketing things come out like, do this today or it's going to go away or whatever it is.

And being in the insurance field, there's a lot of people in insurance field who are awesome professionals and there are a lot of really cheesy cheese balls doing really shady stuff. And most of, at least in the most of the really cheesy or highpressure word tracks like, hey, you agree with me. Why don't you buy my stuff? Right? That was invented by the insurance field.

So having insurance agency owners and salespeople's clients, I can't throw scarcity urgency at them. They'll say, Dude, why? I really don't care. I'm an entrepreneur and I'm busy or I'm a salesperson, I'm busy. If you have time in your class this time, great.

Or if the timing works with me, great. Or if your schedule doesn't work with me, you don't wake up just next time you're doing it. And so if you want to attract abundant minded people and if you want clients that are happy to pay you and are not nickeling and diamond every single thing that happens, then you need to speak in a language that's their love, language, abundance, affluence, positivity, possibility. And this is not about delusion. This is about saying, here's what we're going to do.

We're moving towards something. I'm not going to leverage fear as a weapon against you. I'm not going to try to coerce you or force you to do something. I'm willing to put in the time. I'm willing to deliver my course three times, five times, ten times for low prices or for free or with smaller groups of people until I get it so right that it's so good that everybody has to have it.

And so I really suggest you all and maybe I'm a little passionate today, so maybe I'm going to ease off. I don't drink coffee, so it's not the coffee. But I really encourage you to consider that this thing is a cycle and it feeds upon itself. And so if you're somebody that sells scarcity and you think you're wielding that weapon and it's not getting you, I promise you somebody's wielded it against you because you're caught in that fear mindset. You're believing the lie that there's not enough on the planet, that there's not enough abundance, there's not enough life, there's not enough money, there's not enough for you.

And so once you tap into that, it's not easy to just leverage it on other people and not have it leveraged on you. Because if you fundamentally believe, or when you fundamentally believe and know that you have enough, that there is enough, you don't do that. And so for those of you all who might, I feel like now I've just shamed people. I'm not trying to shame people. I'm trying to show you because I've done things.

At times I'm like, gosh, you know what? I really want people to get this. I so believe my message. I so believe my message. And I'm willing to tell people that they need to hurry up, okay?

That's my opinion that they need to do this, okay? But maybe they don't. Maybe I don't know their path. I might tell somebody, you have to have life insurance, but maybe they're not going to die, and maybe they don't need the life insurance. Maybe they need the money for something else.

So I know as coaches, as entrepreneurs, as salespeople, we get really passionate about our work. And in the same way that other people, perhaps who have different political beliefs than you or religious beliefs than you will sometimes feel like, you know what? I'm happy. You don't have my beliefs. You have to have my beliefs.

And I think most of us know what that feels like. It feels very either scared or desperate or uncertain. And if you know who you are, you don't need to convince anybody. I don't need to convince somebody I'm a male. I don't need to argue with somebody of that.

I know I'm a male. I know I'm a human being. If somebody calls me rhinoceros, okay, that's fine. I'm still not a rhinoceros. And if somebody believes differently than me, that doesn't change my knowing about what's good in my life.

I happened to, in my own way, believe and know that there's a God or a divine force operating in my life. Empirically, I might be inaccurate. It's possible that there's not a God. Now, I have every evidence in my life to know and believe personally for me that that exists. But me arguing with other people or fighting with other people.

The same way when you see people arguing and fighting on social media over beliefs doesn't do it. So leveraging a tool like scarcity or urgency thinking, that the end. It justifies the means that I'm going to persuade you against your will to do something that's in your best interest. Any parent knows that that usually is not an effective strategy to help your child in the long run to develop and who they need to be. So unless you're literally talking about something that is a life or death situation, in which case true scarcity or urgency is happening, yes, if you don't do this, if you don't get out of evacuate the area before the hurricane comes, that's real scarcity.

There's urgency, excuse me. There are certain things, but for the most part, most of what you see on the internet isn't that. And I encourage you to consider and see this a different way as both a consumer and as an entrepreneur or business person. When somebody's leveraging scarcity urgency, it's really like saying the kid that says I'll be your best friend, it's like that's kind of a weak argument or because I said so, or because I've got all this cool, shiny stuff. Well, the people who really make the biggest impact and are really living their life don't have to convince you and don't have to convince anybody else.

So again, as consumer, I encourage you, when you see somebody wielding the scarcity sword, I'm not saying don't ever do business with them, but beware, be mindful. Ask them, tell me about this. What is are they running out of it? Sometimes? Yes.

If it's a product, there might be a limited supply or they might say, yeah, there's a limited supply that we're going to make. This one time we did, let's say 100, because that's sometimes unproductive. We did 100 these products or 500 books or whatever it is, and we only have a certain number of physical copies. But let's be clear, if 10 million people want to buy those 500 books, we'll print some more books. They're not never coming back.

It might just be that you can't get them right away. Get clear on what that scarcity is and as an entrepreneur, get clear on what you're selling. Because some of the clients you most want to do business with are looking at your pseudo scarcity. They're eyeballing it and they're moving on without ever contacting you. And I can tell you because I've had clients do that or tell me they do that with other entrepreneurs and I've done it with other people.

Again, so not trying to have this be a soapbox thing, but I'm so passionate about this because I watch good people part with their money by being manipulated by scarcity and urgency and having it thrown around. And I also watched coaches go and other business people have their business go like this and just like that because they weren't ready to deliver at a certain level. They use scarcely urgency to boost their numbers, to boost their enrollments, to boost their sales too quickly and then all of a sudden they can't deliver it because they didn't know how to deliver it. And then all of a sudden it goes the other way. So I hope you are doing awesome.

Hope your loved ones, your work, your family is doing great. I hope there is plenty of abundance in your life and evidence of that. And depending on where you are in the world and what your financial situation is, you might say, wait man, I don't feel so abundant. Or maybe I do feel abundant and some people say I'm going to compare myself to other people in the world. And so yeah, I can always find somebody that's poor and I can always find somebody that's richer.

But more than that, I just suggest you to consider the fact that do you simply have enough? Do you have enough to be happy? Was yesterday pretty much a good day? Is today pretty much so far a good day? And even despite the things you don't have in your life, are things in your life pretty okay?

And can they be better? Can you still aim for more, but with hope and intention and aspiration and without desperation, without scarcity, without anxiety or anything else that's going to keep you up at night, need you to drink extra caffeine drinks or take any sort of substance that keeps you awake, burns fat in some unnatural way, or has you doing things to try to fit in. So I hope you're doing awesome as always. Look forward to helping you impact more people and make more money in less time doing what you do best so you can better enjoy your family, your friends, your freedom and your life. Thanks so much for listening.