Narcissists & The Internet
As the Internet space is getting more and more full, more and more people are coming on, creating content, and growing their online businesses, it's starting to become difficult to differentiate between people who can actually support you and those providers who are really just getting their kicks by having this space where they can talk about themselves and post their photos everywhere and share their accolades non-stop.
What we call Marketing in this day and age can so often feel like a brag-fest, and sometimes, it can be hard to know if someone is just charismatic and maybe magnanimous, or if they are actually somewhat mentally unstable…
In this special episode, I tackle a conversation I have been thinking about for a long time, and I share how to avoid narcissists on the internet, how to avoid acting like one, and how to market in a way that is comfortable for you- but still ensures you are visible for those who need your services the most. Enjoy!
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Narcissism & The Internet
Hey CEOs! So today I am going to share a little bit of a tricky topic with all of you, but I think it's important to talk about because…. as the Internet space is getting more and more full, right more and more people are coming on, they are creating content, they are growing their online businesses and it's starting to become more and more difficult to differentiate between people who can actually support you, those who can actually help you get real results, those who are actually moving the needle for their clients ….and those people who are really just getting their kicks by having this space where they can talk about themselves and post their photos everywhere and, you know, share their accolades non-stop. and I say this with a smile on my face because that’s basically kind of how we show up, like that’s what everyone, including myself, is doing on the internet.
But sometimes, it can be hard to know if someone is just charismatic and maybe magnanimous, or if they are actually somewhat mentally unstable…
…
A few years ago, when I was starting out in business, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who is an exceptional marketer and copywriter, about our coach at the time. He displayed somewhat erratic behavior, being this family man and former preacher and truly acting like he wanted to help people on one hand- but then getting into ridiculous arguments in his ad comments, calling people names and cursing at them within his programs. We saw two different people, one seemed to be a normal dude who figured out how to make money online, and the other guy was just a jerk. Of course, like many coaches, within his programs he shared a morning routine that included affirmations and how he put himself in the right state of mind for his work. My friend said, “I think he’s a normal guy who literally brainwashes himself with his morning routine, and he literally turns himself into this narcissistic, arrogant person because he thinks that’s who he needs to be in order to be successful.”
I found that so interesting and all these years later I’ve never forgotten it. I wonder how many people are acting like completely different people from who they truly are online, just because they think their authentic self isn’t good enough? Because they are trying to keep up? How many of the bro-marketers talk about getting no sleep and running on energy drinks and sustaining this ridiculous amount of content production just to keep up? And at what point does all of that actually go too far?
…
It’s interesting, because in this internet space we are all kind of saying to each other, “hey, look at this really cool thing I can do!” as we share pictures of ourselves, ourselves working, ourselves with our families because we want to create that recognition, we want people to know who we are and that we are just like them, and the truth is that a picture really does say 1,000 words… right photos just go so far in creating that trust factor with our clients. So sharing who we are and what we do and how we do it really really well is what we literally call marketing, and so all of us are participating.
But what’s interesting about it, and something I’ve actually been thinking about for a long time is that what we just call ‘online marketing’ actually looks and feels very similar to narcissistic behavior. Sometimes I pause and go, gosh- that is a lot of my face on this sales page, or I wonder if listing so many accolades in my bio is simply too much. Sometimes it gets uncomfortable to just be putting yourself out there in this way. And I know you get it and I think that's why so many people really struggle to market, and to be visible on the internet right because most people are not narcissistic!
Now, Before I continue I want to give a little disclaimer here- I am definitely not a mental health professional. I'm not an expert on this topic and I am not an authority on narcissism by any means. But, I have certainly come across my fair share of narcissists… both within my family and outside of it. So there has been a lot of therapy on my end as I’ve navigated healing from the trauma that has caused.
Before I continue, let's define narcissism. There are two different types, there is the narcissism spectrum, which we all fall under, and then there is Pathological Narcissism Disorder, which only affects 1% of the population. Here’s the definition from the DSM-5: “Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is a long-standing pattern of “inner experience and behavior that deviates markedly from the expectations of the individual’s culture,” leading to “clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.” All personality disorders may affect 1) cognition, how we think and perceive ourselves, others and the world; 2) affectivity, how we experience and process emotions; 3) interpersonal functioning, the way we think, feel and behave in relationships; and 4) impulse control. NPD, affecting 0.5 to 1 percent of the US population, the majority (50-70 percent) male”.
Okay, so this is when narcissistic traits impair someone's ability to function in their everyday life. Right so think about someone who can’t sustain a relationship, who purposefully ignores social and cultural mores and customs around what is accepted and how people expect to be treated. Someone who is exceptionally antagonistic, is completely intolerant of disagreement or questioning, and who cannot live without an inordinate amount of attention. Psychology Today says, “In seeing themselves as superior, the pathological narcissist naturally views everyone else as inferior.
Then there is the narcissism spectrum, which we all fall under, some of us lower and some higher. It goes from 0-40 and most healthy people fall around the high teens. Some narcissism is good! It makes us charming, gives us a healthy sense of confidence in our abilities, and ensures that we expect to be treated well in relationships, in various social circumstances, etc. Obviously, this healthy self-esteem form of narcissism is not what we are referring to here, and 99% of people are not pathologically narcissistic. So as a side note- I think we tend to throw this word around a lot, where it would be more appropriate to say someone has narcissistic tendencies or falls higher than normal on the spectrum, and maybe they have other problems that make them mean or abusive or whatever. And those are *usually* the people we view in our everyday life that we call narcissists. People who just fall really high on the spectrum.
So as we talk about this, its really easy to see how the internet really is the perfect place for narcissists, right it’s all about you, your content, your wins, your successes, getting people to fall in love with you and hire you.
And so for many of us, it can feel wildly uncomfortable to be in this internet space… to ‘put ourselves out there’, especially in the way we see so many others doing so… consistently, unabashedly, talking endlessly about their wins, taking ownership of their client’s journey as if they had been the hero and not the guide… and I will tell you that even non-narcissistic people can fall into the trap of doing these things because they feel that is what they have to do to compete. I see alot of men fall into this, they lose themselves in the competition and so they beef themselves up with meditation and insane workout routines and energy drinks so they can create more content and shame others into more and more productivity, output and spending more and more money.
What I see more often in women, is the shying away. They are afraid to step into their power, afraid to step into their voice, afraid to say “I am the world’s leading expert on THIS.”
We don’t want to be like them, right? We don’t want to show up and create endless content and take a million photos and put our face in every which place and do all of the work that comes with being a narcissist. Truly, I cannot imagine how exhausting it must be to have to uphold this absurd image of yourself, to imagine that you are better than, smarter than, more worthy of right and to be consistently putting that out into the world while simultaneously ignoring all of the cognitive dissonance that comes with that. In my healing it's been that realization, the ‘work’ of being a narcissist That has given me a lot of compassion for the narcissists in my life, to recognize like wow, this is actually a horrible mental illness that I would absolutely never ever wish on my worst enemy. The inability to see people and things as they really are, to be so deluded and self-deceived, to not be able to see the truth or to only see part of the truth. And to have to be constantly convincing yourself that you are better, that its ok to hurt people because you deserve more, and worst of all, the crippling, crumbling weight of the insecurity because they are so afraid of being exposed. So they build hoards of walls and blocks around their heart so they will never be found out… only because they refuse (or maybe, really just truly can’t) realize that by humbling themselves, by being vulnerable they can experience the truest form of love, acceptance and grace in the universe.
What I find often in the online space is that many of us, in attempting to avoid coming off as completely narcissistic so as not to be grouped in with those who maybe actually are, shy away from doing the necessary, “Hey, here I am, this is what I look like and this is what I do really really well for people’ type work that is actually a fundamental *requirement* for any kind of small business success.
But here’s what happens- when you do that, when you shy away from doing that work, whether its out of a false sense of humility or low self-esteem or because it’s not your style or whatever, what you are actually doing is making more room in the market for those who are legitimately narcissistic, and maybe not good at what they do, and perhaps actually in the business of scamming people. Right like we can’t just let them run rampant online, we have to give them competition!
Now, note that I am not speaking here of doing unaligned marketing. I am not saying you need to be on tik tok and twitter and making reels and dm’ing people or doing anything that does not feel good for you. In my program, Soul Offer I teach women how to create their own, custom marketing plan that is in alignment with the way they were created to share their gifts. It’s 100% custom and unique to you, as it should be.
However, when I see CEO’s trying to avoid having to market at all, to avoid the responsibility that comes with being the benevolent leader for their audience, they actually end up acting more like narcissists than not. Let me explain.
Right so the crutch of narcissism is that narcissists are actually never actually truly happy, they are addicted to their victim or superiority story and this addiction typically does one of two things.
For some narcissists, It can make them wildly, unbearably dependent. They are the martyr, everything is someone else’s fault, and in business, they can’t believe people are not falling at their feet begging to purchase what they have. They believe what they have to offer is *so good* they shouldn’t have to ‘put it out there’. Which is never true for any offer.
I see this similar behavior a lot with older generations- they are both skeptical of putting themselves all over the internet, and they also want their clients to come to them the way they just ‘went’ to the dentist, doctor, or hair stylist as a child. I remember my parents told me they chose to name my Dad’s Veterinary Clinic ‘Advanced Veterinary Services’ because AD showed up the highest in the yellow pages so they were often the first option people called. Right like how you would pick up a phone book, flip to your category and start calling a few options and once you found one that had the time or the service you needed you would just go, and if it was good you would tell your friends. Boom. easy. Just be in the yellow pages and provide good service… for many providers, that was marketing.
Right and the truth is back in the day consumers were less discriminating. But the reason for that is not because they didn’t love exceptional service, its because it was a market without the internet. They didn’t have as many options so providers didn’t have to try so hard.
The hard truth is, that market is gone and is never to return. Consumers have too many options now, and so they can choose to be much more picky in who they choose to work with. That is the trade off in the ability to do business over the internet, we get to work from home, have this amazing flexible lifestyle, and be more present for our kids, BUT we also have to simply be better than the others in our internet space. And that includes being visible (as always, in the way that feels most in alignment for us).
So can you see how the refusal to participate in the market now kind of reflects narcissistic behavior because avoiding any embarrassment or rejection is of the utmost importance to narcissists.
Now Don’t worry, I’m not accusing anyone who doesn’t market or who isn’t visible of being a closet narcissist. Because the truth is, Rejection isn’t fun! Right like no one likes to be embarrassed, ignored, or overlooked.
The difference, from what I’ve observed, from actual narcissists and those with just low self esteem is that narcissists blame *others* for not recognizing or realizing how great they are. They blame the market, they say people are too stupid to recognize their greatness, that others don’t have the intelligence or the wherewithal to understand the utter genius that the narcissist has discovered or achieved or how much they could help them.
Right While those who simply may have low self-esteem usually *know* they aren’t marketing enough, they know they aren’t being visible, they know they are scared and they just, for one reason or another can’t bring themselves to overcome that.
Now, if you are listening to this and saying “no Janelle, I do market, my audience does know who I am and I do do all the things!” That probably means either your offer or your marketing isn’t aligned with who you are and that is something I’d love to tackle with you inside of my program, Soul Offer.
You know, at the end of the day, I truly believe everyone has a unique and amazing purpose in this word, and I truly believe that everyone has a ‘soul offer’ inside of them. And just like we all have a soul offer, we all have our perfect way to market that is completely aligned with us. With the way we were designed to communicate, attract our clients, and share our gifts. And it's completely unique to you because there is no one out there like you!
And the truth is that when you refuse to market and put yourself out there out of fear, you are actually refusing to help those who need you. You cannot support people who don’t even know who you are!
The good news is that you don’t need to be a narcissistic, Lamborghini -renting, content- machine to be successful. You have a unique marketing process that works for you and energetically attracts your people, and it’s blatantly spelled out in your astrology and human design charts. Obviously this concept is one that I teach often so I won’t exhaust it here, but I just want to drive that point home.
And I want to remind you of this. Humility, staying out of the spotlight and being the internet’s ‘best kept secret’ does *not* make you more moral, a better person, or less like the narcissists who may have hurt you in the past.
Before I close this episode, I want to share how to avoid narcissists online, because it truly can be hard to spot them amidst the sea of those vying for your attention.
So Here’s how you can spot narcissists on the internet: Are you ready?
-Are they toxic? Do they advocate for setting aside things that are important to you, like sleep or time with your kids or your spouse, in favor of success in your business?
-Do they call people out or make them feel less than if they are not as successful as they are? I once worked with a coach who routinely told the men in the program to ‘stop being a little b-i-t-c-h’... as motivation! Obviously that is extremely toxic and not the right way to go about motivating someone to achieve their highest potential.
-Do they force people to stay in contracts that are not in their best interests? Do they make it difficult to pause a subscription or massively overcharge for a minimal amount of value and then blame the client for not recognizing it or ‘putting in the work’?
Maybe as I’m saying this memories are flooding into your mind as you come to the realization, ‘I didn’t even catch that’! This online space is so permeated with this behavior that we often don’t recognize it for what it is. I have totally experienced it too, and it’s not okay.
A concept that is so prevalent now, and rightly so is this idea of being ‘trauma-informed’. Right and truly the importance of recognizing that some trauma victims actually really tend to get caught in and somewhat.. Feel comfortable in right not because it’s actually comfortable but because that’s what they know, trauma victims may tend to continuously join or find organizations or relationships where they never feel good enough. It’s similar to women who keep going back to men and abusers who mistreat her right. It’s the same cycle. I find this cycle often in business where people are simply *used* to feeling not good enough, and so they keep joining these programs who honestly prey on that mentality (they keep feeding the lie, “you’ll make it when…”) and they keep moving the needle further back and further back. And they keep saying “just one more offer, one more payment, once more xyz “ but they never actually deliver.
Even some programs that are not *trying* to do this end up doing it without realizing because they are simply following the yellow brick road and doing what they see others doing, and so the toxic pattern continues.
The good news is there is another way to do business, and there are a few key things that people with a healthy self-esteem do, call them best-practices if you will, which I firmly believe can help you differentiate between providers, because the truth is it can be hard to tell the difference online, because we all tend to come off a bit braggadocious.
Here are some best-practices that I have found really fair service providers do:
First and foremost, They offer a Pro-Rata refund. Obviously, you need to get paid for your work. I always cringe when I see unlimited money back guarantees on products that people put their heart, soul, and intellectual property into. That’s not fair, you should be paid for your time and hard work. BUT this is also part of being trauma informed, people sometimes change their mind, have an emergency or unforeseen circumstance come up and that’s ok. Its wrong to hold people in contracts they don’t want to be in. You should get paid for your time, energy, effort and access and they should be allowed to make decisions on how they want to move forward.
The way I manage this with a more passive info product where people get access to my intellectual property right away, is I offer a 7 day money back guarantee and then a pro-rata refund after that. You have a week to get in, make sure this is what you thought it was, ensure its where you want to be etc. within 7 days, I’ll give you all your money back- which is actually a major cost for me because our team does a whole onboarding process with mailed gifts and everything, so I could potentially lose money that way, but it feels like the right thing to do and I’ve never had to offer any refund on Soul Offer before.
Fair Service providers don’t belittle people for not succeeding on their timeline. They let their clients have their own journey. Of course they push their clients to succeed and give some tough love when needed, but it’s never mean or bullying someone into results so you can brag.
They Showcase others, they allow others to use their platform to rise, etc. Look at someone’s community, do they promote others and allow them to shine? Do they interview others on their podcast and treat them as the expert in their field? Do they feature other authors in publications or in blogs, youtube videos etc? Do they support their audience members hiring one another? The truth is, my clients and community hire each other *all the time* and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
So as you go about doing business and hiring people off of the internet, feel free to do your research and ask those questions like, “what is your refund policy if I find we are not the perfect fit after all?” That question should never offend a good service provider. I love answering that question because I stand by my work. Also, Look at how they promote others and how they talk about their client wins. Be observant of how they treat those in their community. Maybe even reach out to former clients to see how they motivated and coached people and to ensure you don’t see signs of questionable behavior.
In next week’s episode I’m going to share a case study from a client of mine named Cytel Schultz who went through Soul Offer. It’s a very special episode because it was originally intended to be a private training for my clients, but it ended up being *so* good that I just had to share it with all of you. Cytel shares many of the fears I hear often, about not wanted to make her audience feel like they are constantly being sold to, about how she hated feeling like a piece of meat on sales calls in the past, and how she was legitimately concerned about downloading my sales script, which I offer my clients in the modules. She also shared how she went from all of those fears, to a business now where she literally closes 60% of her sales calls into a high-ticket offer and is well on her way to a six-figure business. I hope you tune in and enjoy next week’s episode, and if after hearing today’s episode you are ready to discover your unique offe and marketing process, click the link in the show notes to chat with me about Soul Offer. Have a great week CEOs!
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