be just like me and buy my dream

My college experience was anything but traditional. Instead of a straight clear path from freshman year to graduation to a career, I would describe my adventures in academia as riddled with personal trauma and comedic irony.

Originally electing a major in Communications, I ultimately changed my pursuit to an English degree with a focus in Creative Writing.

And once I finally finished my English degree, I opted to apply for a second bachelor’s degree in…drumroll…Communications. This was partially a decision to avoid grad school and partially self-indulgence to study film theory and production.

The strange thread that stitched itself across two degrees, oddly enough, was social media. In 2017, I had to present research on Social Media Management for a Careers in Writing course, and yet I was the most skeptical of the job's validity.

I went on to take few courses on Social Media in the Communications department because the subject kept falling in my lap.

In the summer of 2019, I needed to create a presentation on a social media trend of my choice. Around this time, I was neck-deep in consuming content from online entrepreneurs and their digital hustle mindset rhetoric.

My classmates chose topics about the future of Snapchat, geotagging, temporary Facebook profile frames, etc. However, I chose something I like to refer to as E2E Marketing.

The Infomercial Reborn

I used to be in an MLM.

For a few years, I was an extremely inactive “coach” with Beachbody. I was one of those who signed up for the discounts, but I rarely participated in any of the group rituals and practices.

I will say that my Instagram where I ran my “business” was lousy with cringey motivational posts that ended with a “call to action” to inquiry about my services. Needless to say, I had no follow-ups and thank goodness for that.

Because of the type of content I was consuming and producing, the groups I was a part of, and the links I would click on, my targeted ads were very much calibrated to a specific audience that I had become a part of algorithmically.

I would see these ads mainly on Facebook. And it is not my favorite platform, however, it does offer some pretty great tools for businesses and brands to hammer hard on their targeted audiences.

The ad in question would be a video with a promise to reveal all the secrets you could ever want to learn to do whatever it is this random entrepreneur does if you signed up for their free training.

Sometimes it would be about drop-shipping. Other times it would be about building your own coaching business or how to have your first 10K month. Once, I even saw a free webinar for becoming a script reader.

It goes to show that this approach isn’t exclusive to the vague entrepreneurial, motivational niche, even though that is where I will be focusing my discussion here.

I rarely saw the same ad twice and the production quality would vary from totally DIY to full-blown budget production. Because I’m curious and, more often than not, a chaotically neutral person, I signed up for a handful of these free trainings. Inexplicably there would be one starting in the next day or, better yet, the next hour.

To save you a lot of time and satiate your own curiosity, these free trainings or webinars would all follow the exact same formula:

You click a link and hop into the “live” video presentation where the chat would be disabled. You might be told that any questions would be answered at the end of the training. Then, the entrepreneur extraordinaire would then lead you through a PowerPoint presentation covering exciting topics such as…

Their origin story. A modern retelling of the Americana rags-to-riches classic usually involving living at their parents’ house to start their first business with nary a penny to their name.

Their “success” story. This will be about as vague and broad as possible with a few dangling carrots of 5 or 6 figures in revenue each month.
Testimonials. So. Many. Goddamn. Testimonials. This is to showcase the fact that anyone can do this too. See! I’m not the only one! You can trust me to make you a success.
And finally—the sales pitch. Not only did you learn nothing valuable today, but for a limited time, when you buy a course that is “normally” $5,000, you’ll also get another mini-course, a digital download, access to a poorly moderated Facebook group called a “mastermind,” and certificate of completion—all for the low, low cost of $799.
But wait! There’s more…and it can be whatever hat-trick they can pull out of their ass.

The name of this rando-expert will change. The business, the package, the offer, the niche…the details will change, but its nature won’t.

What I just described to you is the evolution of the infomercial. Except, it is much more fruitless and way less entertaining.

I don’t know if anyone else feels this way, but even though I hate ads on every video I watch (especially the non-skippable fuckers), I can sit through a commercial with no problem. Maybe it’s because the only screen time I grew up with was a basic cable TV. And as a small child, I lusted over amazing kitchen gadgets demonstrated in 15-minute-long infomercials late into the night.

While sales funnels are not new and these supposedly live, free trainings and webinars will pop-up from time to time, the principal behind this kind of marketing points to an ongoing trend that may be another casualty of a post-pandemic culture: Entrepreneur to Entrepreneur Marketing and Sales.

What is E2E Marketing?

E2E, or Entrepreneur to Entrepreneur, is a phrase I used to describe the trend I noticed within the online community of entrepreneurs, digital nomads, self-proclaimed coaches, and content creators.

Now I need to make a distinction about the type of content creators I’m talking about here. Basically, their whole shtick is making a business talking about business or creating content talking about creating content without getting too specific and offering superficial value. There are true teachers and leaders online who can teach you how to grow a YouTube channel, for example. The space is not so much saturated but messy and noisy and competitive, so you do have to take the time to do your own vetting.

You may have heard of B2B, or Business to Business, marketing and sales. These businesses offer services, products, solutions, and/or software for other businesses to streamline operations, bring in more clients, or what have you. An established business will market to and have transactions with other businesses. For example, a web hosting business sells a service to a business or brand to maintain its web domain.

With E2E marketing, you would assume that an entrepreneur is pitching and selling products and services to other entrepreneurs to make their jobs easier, more efficient, or scale sustainably, but that is not their target demographic.

Instead, they target aspiring entrepreneurs and sell them on the concept—the idea—of becoming a successful entrepreneur just like them.

Those who use the E2E approach will offer trainings, webinars, online courses, e-books, coaching calls, masterminds, and other digital content to the lonely heart looking to break out of the 9 to 5.

Now, I must acknowledge the blanketed generalization I just made, and others have made and make when sharing on a topic that requires caution. I do not believe every online course or digital product is inherently without value or a total scam.

There are good resources out there from fantastic creators and business owners.

However, what I have personally discerned between something as a genuine offer of value and an offer that is empty and vague…is whether or not the language, the advertising, the copy is empty and vague.

My greatest criticism of the targeted ads directed at me, “the aspiring entrepreneur and visionary who won’t settle for a cookie-cutter life” is that I cannot infer directly or indirectly what the hell these people do for a living. Better yet, how the hell are they making money?

I have a strong intuition that I can actually answer that second question: They are making money from selling someone on the idea and vague vision of entrepreneurship.

Falling Out of Fashion

For the presentation that inspired this piece, I was tasked with making some long-term predictions as follows:

The trend of E2E marketing will fade; specifically, the hour and a half sales pitched disguised as a “free” training or webinar.

The infomercial template in social media content is a strategy that some may find annoying, misleading, and possibly predatory. They’re called targeted ads for a reason.

The strategy itself is not necessarily poor marketing and has shown some success in its approach, which is how these ad runners have made money. However, what the strategy is selling is in response to a topical trend in business. That response is going to change as the needs of these entrepreneurs shift.

No one stays a newbie forever.

In 2020, we saw a rise in chatter around MLMs and network marketing, the popularity of the Anti-MLM Movement take off, and a collective eye-roll to their strategies that make us cringe.

One obvious reason we noticed any of this at all was the fact that more of us were stuck at home. A go-to talking point for network marketers are the advantages of working from home and “being your own CEO.”

It should have been a recipe for success for “hunbots” and entrepreneurial crusaders alike to convince the newly unemployed or the home office warriors to ditch the traditional path and take control of their work and finances.

Instead, we saw the Anti-MLM movement grow in popularity and many people quick to notice the problematic nature of building a business talking about the idea of business.

MLMs, or multi-level marketing, utilizes the E2E tactic of appealing to the wannabe entrepreneur, centering their rhetoric on their origin story and testimonials to make a case that anyone can do “this.”

Within the online space, the coaching and consulting industry has expanded completely unregulated over past decade or so. Still, it is a wild west, an untamed frontier with a chaotic spectrum of subjective qualifications and manufactured definitions of success.

There are still unclear boundaries of where an individual’s digital presence ends and their entrepreneurial endeavors begin. Some may even be driven away from social platforms because of the pervasive overlap of running businesses on personal profiles.

But then again, it seems to me, as well as some others, that the rise of personality-driven content and personal branding is something to pay attention to. These creators aren’t the ones selling you on a “free training” or giving away their eBook for 99 cents. They don’t have one specific niche or industry insight. They will, however, continue to shape the social media landscape through their creativity and content.

User-generated content, or UGC, became a popular topic on TikTok this year, which falls in line with Jarrod Dicker’s prediction of the Renaissance Creator—a hybrid of creator and entrepreneur working with companies like musicians scouted and brought on by record labels.

UGC seems to offer flexibility and empowerment for creators who don’t have a large following on social media platforms to still create content and earn income. That’s not to say there won’t be corners of the community exempt from emulating the problematic behaviors we’ve become familiar with here.

In the short time I watched the number of UGC TikToks served to me on my For You Page increase, I witness the quick turn of in-fighting flare up between creators teaching others how to become a UGC creator. Similar to the Anti-MLM community drama, at some point, you run of original things to say or suggest or react to or give advice on. And eventually, you turn on each other.

As for the E2E market, I don’t believe the infomercial strategy will leave us entirely, but it will manifest in surprising (and probably annoying) new ways.

What Comes Next for Entrepreneurs and the Internet?

I am increasingly validated by the conversations I hear others having online today.

Over the last few years, catalyzed by the existential crisis of a global pandemic, more and more of the YouTubers I watch have moved away from L.A. back to their hometowns or closer to family.

More creators are taking a week or two or several off from uploading and apologizing less when they come back.

The need to justify existing outside of our screens is becoming quieter and the agreement to slow down and be more intentional is growing confidently loud.

There’s been another recent addition to the discourse of where the tides are turning for creators and social media personalities. Lifestyle influencers are noticeably less and less relatable to their audiences and seem plainly out of touch.

We’ve seen this case-studied clearly with Rachel Hollis last year and her denial that she ever preached being relatable to all the women who followed her advice.

I think what we see next is going to scare the shit out of a lot of folks still banking on scaling a business into multiple figures in a matter of days or weeks. We’re going to see more pride and comfort in the sustainability of fewer followers, less content machine feeding, and obviously, less hustle.

What’s next for entrepreneurs and the internet? They may evolve and embrace the beautiful weirdness to come (honestly, it’s already here).

Or they will bid their time until the wheel turns again, and they will find new land to colonize, believing they are the first ones ever to do the thing they are doing—sell people on vague hopes and empty promises until the pitchforks appear.

River Jack is the owner and founder of Gigcraft Media, LLC.

She is a writer, editor, creative media producer and consultant working with creatives and creators shaping our world through their content and creativity.

THE EMPTY PROMISE OF INTERNET ENTREPRENEURISM