Entries Tagged 'Ethics' ↓

During my career as a freelance copywriter, I’ve encountered a few exceptional negotiators and a handful of con men.

How do you spot a con man? First, it helps to know the definition.

According to Princeton’s WordNet, con man is short for “Confidence Man: a swindler who exploits the confidence of his victim.”

With that in mind, here are three traits to watch out for.

Flattery

This is the first and foremost thing to look out for. A compliment is normal. Flattery is not.

Whenever somebody flatters me, I watch my wallet. Flattery is normally a prelude to an unusual or out-of-the-ordinary request.

The psychology works like this:

Flattery makes you feel all puffed up and great about yourself. But this is a set up so you’ll agree more easily to whatever request comes next.

You are more likely to make a bad decision when you are feeling overconfident. Flattery is an easy way to build your confidence.

“…a flattering mouth works ruin.” Proverbs 26:28

Bragging

A person who brags is not necessarily a con man; he could just be insecure.

It’s the type of bragging that matters.

Some people brag about how good they are at a specific skill. This is your garden variety braggart, relatively harmless.

Others brag about their good character or how much money they give to their church, poor people, etc. This is your con man variety of braggart.

It is designed to get you to lower your guard… to get you thinking about what a good person it is you’re dealing with. Next thing you know, the con-man lowers the boom.

Watch out for people who brag about their good character.

“But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret.” Matthew 6:3,4

Unrealistic Promises

A common negotiating tactic is to build neediness in the other party.

For instance, a potential client might tell you that there’s “huge” potential, and that you could make “tens of thousands of dollars.”

He’s building your confidence to the point where you believe this future pay-off will really happen.

The next thing he’ll do is ask you to work for free for an indeterminate amount of time. If you believe the vision he’s painted, you might agree to unreasonable terms, work hard for months… then never see a single cent.

“Like clouds and wind without rain is a man who boasts of gifts he does not give.” Proverbs 25:14

Safeguard Yourself

A con man uses all kinds of techniques to build your confidence in yourself and in him. Once your confidence is high enough, you’re in a vulnerable position. That’s how you get conned.

Ask yourself: “Am I feeling overly confident? Why?”

Ask yourself: “Why is this person flattering me? Why is he telling me all about his good deeds? Why is he promising me a huge pay-off somewhere down the road?”

Answer these questions. Be honest with yourself. Don’t be taken in.

-Ryan M. Healy

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Back in September, I wrote about Lifelock and how their advertising is brilliant.

But ever since then, I’ve had my doubts about the company. And my research (which has taken quite some time) has turned up some interesting details.

Let me back up for a second. The whole reason I started doubting the company’s business practices in the first place was because of some comments left on my old copywriting blog.

A commenter dubbed ID Thief wrote, “Oh, and that SS number is not really issued to a Todd Davis. Its a phony number set up with the DOJ to try to catch stupid people. Five minutes online could have told you that.”

Then an anonymous commenter wrote: “Hello, my name is Butthead and my social security number is [457-55-5462]. Looks real enough? Any real businessman knows to NEVER use your own product… and that a lie works as easy as the truth.”

These comments alone caused me some concern over Lifelock’s advertising, but then the Long Island Sleuth showed up and wrote this:

Powerful ad, yes. Truthful, very doubtful.

For fifteen years I was a criminal investigator for NY State and we were trained in spotting phony Social Security numbers as the majority of our fraud investigations were in Unemployment Insurance.

Now, unless the Social Security people have changed the rules since I was employed in the field, this SS # does not exist in their system. Their rules are that you cannot have an odd number in the middle two numbers unless the first digit is zero, ergo, having the middle numbers of his SS # as 55 is impossible.

If that is still true, then the FTC ought to go after this guy for false advertising. Besides, I don’t care how secure his system is, no one in his right mind would broadcast his real SS# to the world.

So I couldn’t help myself. I had to discover whether Todd Davis’s SSN (as advertised) was real or not.

Now, I did find a few sources confirming that the two middle digits of a SSN must be even numbers, but my SSN uses one even and one odd number (and the first of the two numbers isn’t zero). So this rule may have been true in the past, but doesn’t seem to be true today.

Nevertheless, Joe R. claims the Todd Davis SSN is fake. He writes on Yahoo Answers:

I work for a company and can run a “social search,” and that social belongs to several different people, not one of them Todd Davis. In essence, the social is fake and several people have been reported using it. It makes me question LifeLock as a company.

Again, I wouldn’t bank on this source 100%, but it certainly makes me wonder.

But it gets worse. Because earlier this year, Experian filed a lawsuit against LifeLock. The Union (a Nevada news source) writes:

Lifelock has at least one major detractor. Credit reporting agency Experian has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, accusing Lifelock of fraud, unfair business practices and violations of federal law.

Furthermore, Robert Maynard, Jr., one of Lifelock’s founding partners, has filed bankruptcy multiple times, committed identity theft against his own father, and been caught in lies about his past. You can verify these claims in this excellent article by Phoenix New Times reporter Ray Stern:

==> What Happened in Vegas: An In-Depth Look at Robert Maynard, Jr. and Lifelock

Although Maynard, Jr., supposedly resigned from Lifelock a year ago amidst this controversy, he is still a part-owner in the company and still handles the marketing. Wired Magazine reports:

[Todd] Davis acknowledged that Maynard, Jr., still owns 10 percent equity in LifeLock and that he is launching a marketing company. When asked if Maynard will work as a contractor for LifeLock doing the same marketing work he was until now doing as a staff member, Davis said yes.

Hmmm… So is Lifelock advertising a fake SSN or not? Better yet, should the company be trusted?

After doing a lot of digging, I’d say Lifelock’s business practices are, at best, suspect. Possibly even outright deceptive.

What’s your opinion? If you have any more evidence, would you mind leaving a comment below? Thanks.

-Ryan M. Healy

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Today, the VeriChip Corporation launches their first direct-to-consumer marketing campaign for human-implantable passive RFID chips.

The identification system has been dubbed “Health Link” because its purpose is to store patients’ health and medical information and provide an “information bridge” between patients and hospitals.

When a patient becomes unconscious or is unable to communicate, emergency room doctors and nurses can instantly access private health data by scanning the Health Link RFID chip implanted in your arm.

Although the cost of Health Link is not mentioned in this press release, the use of the word “subscribers” indicates the business model will operate on some kind of subscription basis.

Questions:

1. Would you personally promote or market this product to the public?

2. Would you subscribe to this service as a consumer?

3. Why or why not?

Please leave a comment below. Thanks!

-Ryan M. Healy

P.S. Interesting that the VeriChip is headquartered in Delray Beach, Florida… the same place where AWAI is based.

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Last week I asked, “Does transparency hurt business?”

With a few extreme exceptions, the consensus was no, transparency does NOT hurt business. In fact, it is a good thing in many cases.

But what about a lack of transparency?

What about the fabrication of a “grand illusion”?

Turns out, people respond quite negatively when they discover the truth. Many feel like they’ve been duped–played for a patsy.

Which is why I think you should read this post immediately (and the comments too).

• The Grand Illusion: The Real Timothy Ferriss Speaks

-Ryan M. Healy

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Fact #1: Words can be copyrighted; ideas can’t.

Fact #2: Original ideas are about as rare as 10-karat diamonds.

“Idea theft,” as I’ve called it in the title of this post, has been on my mind for a couple of reasons.

The first incident happened a few months ago when a good friend of mine expressed anger about a guy who had “stolen” his ideas and created an information product similar to what my friend had already created.

I understood his anger and frustration, but pointed out that ideas can’t be copyrighted.

For instance, I wrote about overcoming inertia last week. Does that mean I’ve cornered the market on that idea? No way! Anybody can go out and write similar articles or create information products about that idea.

What people can’t do is copy the words I wrote verbatim. That’s a violation of copyright law.

So you can express the same ideas, but you have to do so using your own words.

Go to the business section of any bookstore and you’ll see literally dozens of books all covering many of the same ideas, strategies, and concepts.

If I want to go out and write a book about business growth, I can do so without breaking any laws–even if there are already multiple books that already talk about that subject.

Get this… Pamela Dodd and Doug Sundheim wrote a best-selling time management book called The 25 Best Time Management Tools & Techniques. If you go to Amazon.com and type in “time management,” their book will likely appear first, ahead of David Allen’s Getting Things Done.

How did they accomplish this?

Simple. The bought the top 20 time management books based on Amazon’s ratings, read them all, and “stole” the best ideas they found to write their own book, which quickly became a success.

This, in my opinion, should not be viewed as stealing. This is synthesizing. It adds value. And it’s how every person on planet earth operates.

I could not write a single word if it weren’t for all the books I’ve read, all the teachers I’ve learned from, and all the people who’ve contributed to my life. Am I “stealing” from them? No. It’s simply how we learn, process, and share information.

Now, let’s talk about the second incident that prompted me to write about ethics today.

I recently signed up for a service based on the recommendation of a fellow blogger. The results the service can provide are really fantastic, but the set-up instructions and help files are pathetic. A quick scan of the private forum confirms this seems to be the consensus among most of the users.

As you can imagine, this opens up the door to competition. If somebody has a great idea, but is deficient in the execution, then aggressive competitors are likely to smell an easy kill.

Here’s a general recipe for business success: Identify a problem, find somebody who is already solving that problem, then copy the idea behind the solution, and improve upon the solution. Sometimes summed up with these timeless words… Make a better widget.

Again, nothing wrong with this. It’s been done thousands of times and is routine in business.

So where do we cross the line? Said another way…

At what point are we acting unethically?

Everybody’s moral compass will be a little bit different. I, for one, would feel uncomfortable buying somebody’s ebook and then “rewriting” it in my own words. This happens all the time, even though I would not personally do it.

I would feel more comfortable reading multiple books or ebooks and then writing a book of my own based on what I had learned.

Whatever I wrote would contain ideas I had learned, plus my own style, my own unique perspectives, etc. By doing it this way, I would ensure that my creative work would be sufficiently different from the source material to be definitively my own.

Crossing the line…

Let’s get back to this “second incident,” which I mentioned above. As I already said, the service under scrutiny is lacking in some respects, and that has opened the door to competition.

But I am not here to criticize the service provider; I’m here to criticize an infiltrator. And in this particular case, I believe the ethics line was crossed.

I witnessed it this morning when I received an email that APPEARED to come from the owners of the service I am subscribed to. Here is a copy of the email with the name of the service blanked out.

Hi,

We see you are using __________.

A group of us have got together and wish to improve this great service, with our help. We are sure, like us, you love the system, but wished it was little less stringent.

If you are interested in a free account or just want to know more please fill in the form at http://___________.com

We just need your name and email, but you can include your likes, dislikes and any improvements you think can be made.

Work is already underway and any help or ideas will be greatly received.

Thanks,

Your ________ team

In each case where I’ve included a blank, the name of the service was used verbatim. Basically, whoever sent this email (and I believe I know who sent it) is pretending to be the service provider. He is inviting me to a “new and improved” service, which is not in any way affiliated with the original service I signed up for.

This kind of behavior is totally unethical and unacceptable.

Want to copy an idea and improve it? I have no problem with that.

But it has gone too far when a person hacks into a private community, steals customer email addresses, and then spams them with “new and improved” offers… all while pretending to be the original provider of the service!

This is not just idea theft…

It is customer theft & identity theft, too!

If there is a lesson in all of this, it is this: know what is lawful and unlawful. Know what is ethical and unethical. Determine for yourself where you will draw the line.

And let me encourage you to always err on the side of caution. If it doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t, even if the law may allow it. Act in such a way that you can be proud of the work you have done… and still sleep well at night.

And if you decide ethics don’t matter, and you believe you can act however you want in the name of profit, then be sure to watch your back. What goes around comes around…

-Ryan M. Healy

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I’m a service provider. I write copy for people who want to sell products and services using the written word. Perhaps you are a service provider, too. Or perhaps you sell products of some kind. Either way, it doesn’t matter. This post will still be relevant to you.

Based on a number of posts I’ve been reading on friends’ and colleagues’ blogs, I’ve been thinking a lot about how important it is to treat people right. It does not matter if you’re trying to sell something or not. It just makes sense to follow the golden rule: treat others how you would like to be treated.

One time a lawyer challenged Jesus by asking him what the greatest law was. He wanted to see which law (of hundreds) was more important than all the rest. Jesus’ response was interesting…

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

How many times do we actually love our neighbors as we love ourselves? Usually, we are interested only in loving ourselves. But this is a recipe for failure. As King Solomon wrote, “pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before stumbling.”

It is interesting to me that total freedom is held up as a desirable goal for a business person. I take a different approach. I enjoy helping people. I think my life would be diminished if I were not contributing to other people’s lives in some way… if I were not being of service.

Almost everything you do is a form of service–both to yourself and others. This blog post is a service to my readers. The copy I write is a service to my clients. The special report I sell about how to get copywriting clients provides a service to aspiring copywriters. Etc.

I encourage you to think in terms of service–even if you sell a product. How are you serving others? How can you demonstrate the heart of a servant? How can you treat others the way you would like to be treated? Something to think about.

-Ryan M. Healy

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