In the Charles Dickens novella, A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come.
He's given a glimpse into each.
We all know how the story plays out.
This is my version.
This page (Lesson 2) is a real use case example of using coercion to drum up sales, instead of leading with empathy. I'll flip this dynamic around in the next two pages (Lessons 3 and 4).
She's 51 years old from Swampscott, Massachusetts.
Amy suffers from pain in her joints.
The joint pain isn't constant.
It's not all-the-time.
Some days are better than others. But many days are really terrible.
She has a desperate burning need (desire) to solve this problem.
In her mind, her life depends on it.
She first thought it was a good idea to consult with to her doctor, because, after all, doctors know best.
The doc promptly prescribed her a cocktail of “legalized drugs”:
Oxycontin for pain, Lorazepam for stress, Cyclobenzaprine as a muscle relaxer, and Prozac and Topamax as an antidepressant.
Sure, it was depressing and disheartening when the pain got bad. But had she been suffering from depression?
Maybe.
So powered by a body and mind numbed by pharmaceuticals grade drugs, she attempted to seek out a non-pharma solution to her pain problem.
She visited website after website on her search for a long-term solution.
No website attempted to UNDERSTAND her problem.
There was no meaningful empathy for the chronic pain she was dealing with.
No “I understand what you're going through, I've been there before…”
Instead, they all lead with their solutions after funneling her into their sales hoppers powered by AI chatbots and, “go here to order now before our special ends,” emails.
All the Google ads were for pills and creams like sooothe.com, jointsalive.com, stopagingnow.com, and purathrive.com.
If it wasn't e-comm sites, it was:
- Sign-up For Our Free Pain Relieve Webinar,
- Get Our Free Report on How To Cure Pain Relieve Naturally.
Because she was so desperate, she signed up to few offers to see what was there. Just in case.
Every single one pushed for her to “ACT NOW” before it was too late to get their super-special formulation or proprietary whiz-bang information.
None ever helped long-term (shocker!).
They were all “Band-Aid” solutions for her symptoms, never solutions to fix the source causality problem.
This caused her more distress.
And she felt stupid for trying so many “fixes” that were all doing nothing more than maintaining her symptoms in a perpetual loop.
The sad thing is that this scenario and use cases like this are playing out all the time.
Right now.
Amy is a real person with a real story.
She was featured in a Netflix documentary named, What the Health (with every claim backed by medical fact).
In the documentary, Amy didn't suffer from joint pain.
She had severe asthma, was on a CPAP machine (to help her breath at night), and her doctors gave her a month to live.
Now I'm sure her doctor was somewhat empathetic, but the doctor's need to pander to “Big Pharma” won out, and drugs were handed out like candy at a kid's birthday party.
Whether it's the government, pharma (the meat, sugar, or egg industry) or Joe Bloggs pimping his wares from their Shopify store.
… the result is the same.
These selling-machines are powered by “coercion” to get the sale as quickly as possible, not driven by empathy first (or empathy at all).
Think about this.
Think about the last few products you purchased and the marketing that influenced persuaded your decision to buy.
Let's change the dynamic on the next page.
