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Happy April Fools’ Day. In the spirit of the occasion, I’m coming clean.
I’ve spent over a decade studying consumer behavior, coaching small business owners, and giving keynotes about marketing that actually works. And in that time, I believed some genuinely embarrassing things.
Not “wore-a-side-ponytail-in-public” embarrassing, but still.
Myth #1: More options = happier customers.
I used to believe that giving customers more choices was a sign of generosity. Look how much we care! Look at all our packages!
Turns out, choice overload is real — it paralyzes buyers. The research on this is rock-solid: when people face too many options, they make no decision at all. The most successful small businesses I work with now have ruthlessly simplified their menus, their service tiers, their product lines.
Less really is more, unless you’re The Cheesecake Factory, but I digress. (mmm…cheesecake…)
Myth #2: If you build it, they will come.
I’d love to meet the person who made this phrase famous and ask them how their version of Field of Dreams is doing in a post-algorithm world.
For years I watched business owners pour everything into building a beautiful website, a polished product, a perfect service — and then sit back and wait. Marketing is not a “set it and forget it” crockpot. It’s more like tending a garden. You have to show up. Consistently. Even when nothing is blooming yet.
Myth #3: You need a big budget to compete.
This one kept a lot of small business owners frozen for years. Meanwhile, the most scrappy, creative, human operators were running laps around their big-budget competitors — not despite their size, but because of it.
You have something no corporation can buy: realness. The ability to know your customers by name, remember their kid’s soccer games, send a handwritten note. That is not scalable for Walmart. It’s completely scalable for you. Your Exact Right Customers — the people who are already wired to love what you do — aren’t looking for the biggest budget. They’re looking for the most human.
Myth #4: Negative reviews will kill your business.
A zero-review business is suspicious. A five-star-only business is suspicious. A business with 4.4 stars and thoughtful, human responses to the tough ones? That’s trustworthy.
Reviews are social proof, and how you handle the bad ones tells your prospective customers far more than the good ones ever will. The brands people fall in love with — the ones that become true Customer Brandships — are the ones that don’t pretend to be perfect.
Myth #5: Social media is the only marketing that matters anymore.
I got swept up in this one too. The algorithm changes. The reach tanks. The platform you built your entire audience on decides to totally change their business model.
Email is still the highest-ROI marketing channel for most small businesses. Old-school word of mouth still drives more purchases than any influencer partnership. Community still wins. Don’t abandon social — but don’t let it be your whole strategy.
I’m definitely still holding some beliefs right now that future-me is going to cringe about. That’s the deal when you jump off the cliff and build your airplane on the way down, as I’ve been accused of on multiple occasions. (I consider it a strength, so there.)
But the biggest myth of all is that small businesses can’t compete with the big guys.
I’ve seen too much evidence to the contrary. The underdogs win more and more in a trust-starved world — they just have to stop believing that small is a liability.
Small is your superpower. Own it with the same level of confidence of people who wear crocs with socks.