POV: you just posted 3 IG stories in a row about your new thing, and now you want to throw up, delete them all, and crawl into a hole for the rest of the day.
What if someone thinks you’re annoying?
What if they look at your stories and text their friends about how cringe you are?
What if they unfollow you because you’re so girlboss?
What if people see you posting about your offer and then they find out no one has bought it yet?
What if every single person on your list unsubscribes?
What if you have to give up and get a full time job because everyone on the Internet hates you?
OR... WHAT IF YOU STOPPED OVERTHINKING YOUR SALES CONTENT?!
What if you could talk about your offer unapologetically, without the fear of being annoying or cringe or salesy or girlboss or weird?
There’s no room for SPIRALING in your sales strategy anymore.
…not if you actually want to make any sales, anyway.
There’s no way you’re gonna sell your thing without, well... SELLING! YOUR! THING!
We live in an online-as-fuck world, and as an online business owner, you know how much visibility matters.
You’re competing with a zillion people for attention, brawling with an algorithm just to get a chance for the right person to potentially see your content for one second, and always trying to recreate some supposed “genius” sales formula only to find your content flopping.
IT’S HARD OUT HERE. You don’t need to make it harder by spiraling and second-guessing every little thing you say.
When you assume your followers or subscribers think your sales content is super annoying, you’re counting yourself out of a race before you even got the green light.
Making those negative assumptions only hurts BOTH of you: you’re not able to sell your thing, and they’re not able to experience your wicked awesome service or solution.
PEOPLE WANT YOUR THING. And it’s your job to make sure they can buy that thing.
But that will never happen if you’re too busy worrying about how you’re perceived. The sales won’t magically roll in.
Talking about your offer — whether that’s in sales emails, on social media, in your long-form content, or in your website copy — is the only way people will ever know it exists.
Worrying about being annoying isn’t making you any money.
SO LET’S RIP THAT “I’M SO ANNOYING” RIGHT OUT OF YOUR VOCABULARY, SHALL WE? 👇
One Marketing Tip, Once A Week
HOW TO STOP FEELING ANNOYING WHEN SELLING
The first thing you need to understand is that the feeling itself is not the problem.
It feels like a problem, because it’s loud and uncomfortable and makes you want to close your laptop and disappear into a “maybe I’ll try again next week” spiral.
But that feeling isn’t telling you to stop. It’s just your brain reacting to visibility.
Your brain thinks visibility = risk.
So when you show up to sell, your nervous system goes, “oh shit, we’re about to be perceived,” and starts firing off every possible warning it can come up with:
You’re being annoying.
You’re talking about this too much.
People are probably sick of you. They hate you, actually, and they’re gonna unfollow you and write Reddit posts about how annoying you are.
You should stop
But none of that is feedback. It’s PREDICTION.
Your brain is wired to anticipate negative outcomes to keep you safe — not to accurately assess whether your content is landing.
& bc it can’t actually see how people are responding in real time (and even if it could, it would still skew negative thanks to bias), it fills in the gaps with worst-case scenarios, which is why it feels so convincing.
Add in the fact that your body is reacting like something bad is happening — elevated heart rate, discomfort, that weird “ugh I hate this” feeling — and now you have both mental and physical evidence that something is wrong.
Except… nothing is wrong. You’re just posting. LOL.
Your nervous system genuinely does not know the difference between actual danger and social exposure, so it treats showing up online like a threat, even though the “risk” is literally just someone maybe thinking a thought about you.
THENNN there’s the second layer that makes this all ten times worse:
You’ve been inside your own offer for way too long.
You’ve thought about it, talked about it, written about it, refined it, explained it, launched it, reworked it… over and over again. Of course you feel like you’re repeating yourself.
Of course it feels excessive.
Of course it feels like “if I say this one more time, I’m actually going to lose my mind.”
But your audience is NOT living in your brain.
& despite it feeling this way, they’re not seeing everything you post, not tracking your messaging, not counting your IG story mentions of the product, not sitting there thinking “wow, she’s said this 14 times already, can she stfu already?”
Most people don’t even see the majority of your content — and even if they do see something, their brain is likely to forget it within a day or two.
So, while you’re operating from a first-person, hyper-aware 😫 “I’ve said this a million times” 😫 perspective… they’re experiencing your content as occasional, scattered touchpoints.
YOU feel like a broken record. THEY experience you as a reminder.
YOU feel like you’re overdoing it. THEY are just starting to recognize you.
Repetition isn’t annoying — it’s necessary.
The brain literally needs repeated exposure before it decides something is important enough to pay attention to.
So if you stop every time you feel annoying, you’re not protecting your audience; you’re interrupting the exact process that leads to them understanding, trusting, and eventually buying from you.
WHICHHH brings us to the part no one wants to accept:
The discomfort isn’t something you wait to disappear before you keep going. It’s something you bring with you while you keep going.
You don’t eliminate the feeling first and then show up. You show up with the feeling, long enough for your brain to learn that nothing bad actually happens.
Because right MEOWWW, your brain’s pattern looks like this:
“we show up → we feel uncomfortable → we stop”
So it never gets updated!!! Your brain never gets the proof it needs to recognize that the discomfort isn’t dangerous!!!!
It just keeps reinforcing the idea that stopping was the right move.
The only way to change that is to create a new pattern:
“we show up → we feel uncomfortable → nothing bad happens → we keep going”
By continuing to show up despite it, until your brain recalibrates.
You’re NOT annoying. You’re just visible in a way your brain hasn’t gotten used to yet.
And instead of treating that discomfort like a stop sign, you need to start treating it like proof you’re doing the exact thing that actually moves your business forward.
You’re not annoying, I promise.
But I bet you’ve felt that way a time or two, especially when it comes to marketing your business online!
Selling doesn’t have to be uncomfortable, though.
There IS a world where you can post your sales content AND feel good about it. “Cringe” and “annoying” aren’t the only options.
AND IF YOU STILL DON’T BELIEVE ME, I HAVE A WHOLE ASS WORKSHOP + DASHBOARD OF RESOURCES TO HELP YOU OVERCOME YOUR ANNOYING FEELING.
IN ADDITION TO THE 90-MIN WORKSHOP, YOU GET EXTRA SUPPORT!
Not only am I teaching you allll the neuroscience nerd things you need to know about how to switch your perspective — today’s newsletter was just a tiny piece of it — I’m also helping you APPLY this knowledge & make selling easier!
I have a whole ass in-depth advice column for you, PLUS tons of reframes and sales exercises and supporting resources about the subject! You’ll legit never feel annoying selling ever again.
YOU ALSO GET ACCESS TO MY 30-DAY SALES CHALLENGE!
I am NAWTTTT PLAYINGGG when I tell you that You’re Not Annoying is genuinely one of the best workshops I’ve ever taught.
Instead of my typical workshop, focusing on one specific marketing or business skill, this one helps you in ALL of your endeavors — it’s a lot of neuroscience, explained in a way that is still easy to understand AND easy to implement.
I loved teaching it so much + I think YOU will love watching it and using the resources inside it. <3
→ GET THE “YOU’RE NOT ANNOYING” WORKSHOP!
Author’s Note
It’s almost officially SUMMERRRRR !!!! which means I’m considering bringing back my special-edition, story-free TOC format with more actionable sections, like my beach-chair-friendly back-end tasks and copy conflict resolution.
You guys all loved this last year, but I’m curious if you’d be down for it again!
If there’s something specific you want to see or learn from me, I AM ALL YEARS. I literally write this email for YOU. So, I want you to love it.
HIT “REPLY” AND TELL ME WHAT YOUR WANT!
I’ll do my best to deliver. <3
xo,
SJ