Introducing: Why Launching Is Broken—Funnels & Freakouts and Faking, Oh My!

Exhausting our resources, the lie of glampreneurship, content-creation hamster wheels and recycling harm.

Jun 21, 2023

“The simple act of marketing our offers can create a ripple effect of harm that shoots straight through our own lives into the lives of our clients, their clients and beyond.”

This series began as a very short newsletter to my at the time also very short email list in mid-2022 when I was reaching a boiling point about “what the entire fuck is going on with how shitty marketing is all the time??”

I wrote that newsletter and sent it off. It was less than 500 words and only barely scratched the surface of what I thought was broken and harmful about online marketing for small business owners and how we could start to make it better.

In that moment I didn’t think anyone would care to sit and marinate with me about the details of how and why the marketing tactics that have been sold to us are so deeply rooted in white supremacy, capitalist control and patriarchal standards.

But there was something about this topic that would. not. leave. me. alone. I needed to talk about it. I have a burning need for this to be a complete and full conversation.

See, the deeper I got into online business after leaving the ad industry in 2019, the more I saw that the same things that broke me in corporate were out here breaking entrepreneurs who really care about their work.

Not only was it breaking individuals who were trying to do meaningful work, it seemed to be breaking an entire industry. And the closer I looked, the further those cracks seemed to reach.

The simple act of marketing our offers can create a ripple effect of harm that shoots straight through our own lives into the lives of our clients, their clients and beyond.

Many of the collective tactics we’ve come to learn as “the way” to launch our offers and market to our audiences are built to uphold the inequitable systems we openly recognize as oppressive and rigged to cause harm.

Things like:

overwork beyond the point of burnout
working for free
spiritual bypassing and gaslighting as sales tactics
ignoring the importance of intersectionality
white feminism as a gussied-up stand-in for real change
one-time wins being sold as long-term security

There’s no way for me to single-handedly take down entire unjust systems, but maybe there’s a way for me to contribute in some small way to us changing our orientation to those systems, and then finding a way to restructure them together.

If there aren’t more of us talking about the collective harm being categorized as “normal,” how will we ever really create change?

So, I’m inviting you to join me in this conversation. I know I don’t have all the answers or the deepest, most profound insights, but I hope in creating this that we can start to find those answers together.

Originally, I had made Part 1 free for everyone, and Parts 2 & 3 were only available for paid subscribers.

I put so much thought, time, care and consideration into this series, I wanted that effort to be valued and known.

I still do—and-but-also: I want as many people to have access to this series as possible.

I want people to read it, think about it, share it with their friends, ask me questions about it, tell me their experiences related to the topics covered and beyond.

So this series is officially free and accessible to everyone, whether you’re a paid subscriber or not.

There will be more series like this one, and yes, some of them will only be available to paid subscribers.

But for right now, for this piece, the value and the payback for me is in sharing my thoughts and having conversations about this topic with you, my excellent and most awesome readers.

So click below to read all of Why Launching Is Broken—Funnels & Freakouts & Faking, Oh My!:

Part 1: We're doing way too much without any real payoff.

Part 2: The scientific method, the toll of ignoring reality and gaslighting for sales.

Part 3: How can we make this better?

And if you feel so-called: like, share, comment, reply and consider becoming a paid subscriber.

Become A Paid Supporter for $5/mo

It’s only $5/month, goes directly to supporting me and this work, and I’ve got some goodies coming soon just for paid supporters! Stuff like:

Drawings for free Tarot readings
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My undying gratitude

I hope you enjoy this series and find it valuable in some way.

You can start reading Part One now and I’ll see you inside!

Think someone you know will like this? Share this post and invite them to join the conversation too!

Zoha Abbas is an Intuitive Tarot Reader, Business Coach and writer who aims to explore the small business conversations around doing business better, together, and in the grey-area of real life through data, divination and dismantling harmful systems. She is the CEO and Creator of The Ownership Method, a coaching practice where she helps fellow entrepreneurs and small business owners make change in their own businesses and beyond.

For inquiries, please email: zoha@theownershipmethod.com