the best objection came from a prospect

i pitched a founder on how we do things and he did not give me a polite no. he handed me the sharpest criticism of my own strategy i have heard from anybody.

do you see this becoming a crowded space? i get five to ten of these a day. it is a bit of a trojan horse, is it not.

he is right on both counts and i said so on the call.

it is crowded and getting worse, because the mechanics are easy to copy and the results are easy to see. and the trojan horse charge is the one that actually matters, because the moment the invitation is only a pretext the whole thing collapses, and it deserves to. nobody minds being sold to. everybody minds being tricked. the difference between those two is not the tactic. it is whether you meant it.

my answer, and i believe it or i would not do this: the show is real. five a day. research before every one. i spend more time on the title than i spend on the pitch. i ask a question and then i shut up. if i had no intention of publishing any of it, he would be describing a scam and he would be describing me.

then he told me what he does instead, and it was better than my rebuttal.

he sees a company hiring. instead of emailing to say i can fill that role, he sends over fifty candidates who match. free. no ask, no calendar link, no next step. he gives away the first step of the paid work so completely that people start wondering what the rest of it must cost.

same doctrine, different instrument. he gives the work. i give the stage. both of us are betting that the quickest way to earn a stranger's attention is to spend something before you ask for anything, and the reason so few people do it is that it costs something real. the give has to hurt a little or it is just marketing with better manners.

i left that call with a better argument against my own business than i walked in with, which is worth more to me than the deal would have been.

who told you no this month, and what did they teach you that your customers never will?