You won't believe how many jerks a person could meet in one day that just being nice is already a marketing advantage for yourself and your product.
You see people mistreating each other every day. They cut the line to the register, tail-gate you on the road, self-promote themselves online, and send mass emails without bothering to get your name correct.
I'm not saying people are naturally worse today than the past. Maybe it is a causal chain of negative medias that are removing the sense of self-worth in people and making them less considerate and patient to each other, or maybe it isn't entirely something else. All I'm saying is most of them aren't shy about mistreating each other.
Remember the times when jerks were considered alphas and went on to achieve great things? Those days kind of ended with Travis Kalanick. Right now, there are so many bad actors out there that being one is just uncool and ignorable.
Being genuine differentiates you.
When I started working on Alphaseek, I really placed a bet on the genuine bits in myself and others. After all, I was going to launch a scrappy service, and there was no use disguising as an Uber-equivalent. I decided there was no need to launch a flashy landing page or employ any kind of fancy email marketing template to communicate to the users.
I felt that it was just a flat lie to them and worst of all, to myself. I mean, who am I to boast? I might as well spend the rest of the time left from building just talking to people instead of fixing my website CSS to perfection.
That's why for each of the user who have signed up and the prospects, I'd tried my best to reach out and connect in-person either through a scheduled phone call or direct chat. I ask for a phone number in the signup form because I want to make sure I can directly connect with my early users, not just email.
I'd tried to take time really knowing them and what they were doing and make sure I was genuinely interested in what they were doing. I made sure I enjoyed the conversation, because I'll bet they would feel it too. It's a relationship, not a transaction.
Email: the enemy of connection.
I've been using emails just for important communications like announcing a release or sending credentials to my users. When it comes to genuine communication, emails suck.
Again, this isn't because email is inherently bad, but just because people are flooded with emails nowadays than ever, especially the non-personal ones. Emails had become synonymous to spamming (most laymen associate marketing emails and even those from services they're subscribed to as spams).
Email is one-sided, and what I dislike about it is you can never be sure how the recipient feels about your what you write. Of course, you could track if your email has been opened, but that says very little about how the opener feels. It is also a bit creepy.
People want to be listened.
The reason why this will work is because we all long to be listened, not solicited. Hearing people out is a value anyone can offer, yet so rare. When was the last time you engage with someone who contacted you to sell something?
Selling is good only if you're selling something of value to someone, and that's difficult to do for everyone. Listen to people and engaging with them is as good for anyone. There's just no reason not to do it. At the very least, listening makes you feel good.
Being a jerk is taxing.
If you aren't a psychopath, mistreating people will eventually take a toll on you and affect your long-term motivation and resilience.
You need constant drives to get up every morning and make it through the day, and there is no easier way to earn them than treating people decently.
The positive karmas are just very powerful. It feels almost like Newton's Third Law of Reactive Force. When you make someone happy, that energy bounces back at you. It may be the result of knowing that that person will also share that to the next person, I don't know. At least that's how I feel.