You have been there. Someone makes you feel like something is broken — your skin, your business, your visibility — and somehow you end up paying them to fix it. Maybe you even knew, somewhere in your body, that something was off. You paid anyway.
That is what this post is about.
This week someone sent me an email with my YouTube channel metrics, showing me why my videos are invisible and proposing to help with my SEO. Of course, no.
I am not a masterful seller — I will be the first to acknowledge that. But what I know for a fact, what I know for sure, is that you cannot sell out of fear and you cannot be sold by putting the fear of God into you. Since I started having websites, since I started having an online presence, people have been sending me emails telling me why I cannot make money, why I am not visible. The fear tactics they employ to convince me to work with them. People I don’t know. They don’t have a website. They don’t have a YouTube channel themselves. But they want to convince you they know what they are talking about, that they are able to help you change your life.
Real selling is connecting a pain to a solution. It is empathy — showing the person: I see what you are going through, and this can help. In a gentle way. Not forcing, not pushing, not fear-mongering, not making you feel like you are less than. Those people have no idea why you even have a website. Maybe it is a fun side project. Maybe it brings you joy exactly as it is. But they do not ask. They just reach for your fear.
I know this because I have lived it from both sides of the table — and neither one was pretty.
When I started my Airbnb business, I was so scared of not having customers that I was renting a three-bedroom home at ten dollars a night — I kid you not — providing eggs, coffee, tea, sugar, cooking oil, salt, toilet paper, and a weekly housekeeper. I was petrified at the thought of making people pay for my home. It was not until I went through a six-week money bootcamp and learned about money truly for the first time that I started paying attention to my reviews, to the percentage of returning customers, and gradually raised my rates. It required that I work on my money wounds and my money mindset. The fear was mine. And it was costing me.
I have also been on the receiving end. I cannot count the times a pushy seller convinced me to purchase something I was not ready for. The most memorable: I paid for a facial, arrived for the appointment, was not welcomed properly, was put through some kind of facial scanner, was told how horrible my skin was, lay down for the treatment, and never had a moment of peace because the person performing the facial was trying to sell me the entire time. I did not like the treatment. I did not like how I felt. And I kid you not — I paid for another session.
They did not take my money. They took my clarity first, and the money followed.
When I realized what I had done, I was disgusted with myself. That is what fear-based selling does. It does not just empty your wallet. It makes you distrust your own instincts. Since then I have been through money courses, masterclasses, countless books. I earned my mindset and money coach certificate. And now, spending looks very different. I want to know who I am giving my money to and why.
So, when that email landed in my inbox this week — a stranger telling me my YouTube channel was invisible, my videos not good enough, my online presence broken — I did not feel fear. I felt clarity. I know who I am giving my money to and why. And it is not to someone who had to manufacture my pain to make a sale. My channel, my website, my presence — they exist on my terms, for my reasons. Maybe visibility is not the point. Maybe the point is integrity. Theirs was already gone the moment they hit send.
So, before you say yes — to the facial, to the SEO package, to whatever someone is urgently telling you that you need — pause and ask yourself a few things. Do I actually feel seen by this person, or do I feel shamed? Are they solving a problem I knew I had, or one they just convinced me I had? Do I know who this person is, what they stand for, what they have built themselves? And the big one: does this feel like a yes, or does it feel like an escape from fear? Because a real yes feels expansive. Fear dressed up as a yes feels tight in your chest. You already know the difference. Trust that.
Salima
Just me thinking out loud over here