Self-help 2.0

The 2020 calendar year is almost a wrap - whatever that means. It’s been an awful year for too many people across the country, dealing with unemployment, industry displacements, small business shutdowns, and economic uncertainty. More families than ever before face the prospects of waiting in line for groceries and looming eviction notices. In health care, workers put their own safety on the line every day while also dealing with limited capacity and the prospects of trying to give comfort to patients often dying alone. As morgues fill up, pictures of mobile refrigerated unit circulate on the internet.

But while so many struggle, a growing number of influencers on LinkedIn and other social platforms tell a much more optimistic story. They prescribe a ready path to success rooted in new opportunities: the “side hustle,” “personal brand building,” “content creation,” and “passive income generation,” among other things.  

On its surface, the guidance appears unique to our times. The narrative varies by influencer, but it generally runs something like this: 

1. We possess unparalleled opportunities today to build an audience, translating into potential income streams and personal leverage. We have never seen this before.
2. Anyone can now be a content creator given the low cost of tools and content curation methods. Anyone can create and disseminate a brand of their own.
3. Skepticism, or negative thinking, is an incessant obstacle. The less successful push their lack of discipline on us, and we need to tune them out. If we embrace a "growth mindset," we can achieve incredible heights.  
4. Opponents of personal growth will not go quietly in the night. Old school managers, focused on antiquated notions of loyalty and productivity, stand in the way of our business and financial independence. But we can prevail.

Clearly, much of this narrative speaks to unique circumstances today. The gap between the supremely wealthy and everyone else has never been so pronounced--accelerated and exposed by the pandemic. Job security is dead. Who doesn’t want to challenge the past and take their career growth in their own hands? Even those fortunate to remain employed in 2020 would be naive to assume stability in their jobs. It seems clear that social media and online learning platforms do give people uniquely powerful ways to develop their individual skills and audience reach. The barriers to access have never seemed lower for anyone.

However, while so much seems new, much of the advice on LinkedIn today is remarkably similar to the “self help” prescriptions of the past. Since the onset of consumption-oriented capitalism, proponents of self-help guidance have promoted the notion that anyone can be successful and incredibly rich, with the right focus, planning methods, and mental discipline. In 1937, Napoleon Hill published Think and Grow Rich. "The object of this book is to help all who seek it, to learn the art of changing their minds from FAILURE CONSCIOUSNESS to SUCCESS CONSCIOUSNESS," he wrote in the introduction. Sixty years later, Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter wrote Rich Dad Poor Dad, ushering in an era or advice for sharing wealth creation principles with everyone.

Self-help guidance is not all uniform, but key themes seem to characterize much of it. As an LA Times writer noted in 1990 of self-help authors, "their pitch is usually that grasping the goal is within everyone’s reach," but to get there requires a unique approach that presumably the self-help author best provides. In the late 20th Century, self-help writers sold books, sponsored infomercials, and held conferences. Today, they launch Patreon sites and run webinars and virtual events. This is not a philanthropic pursuit; it pays to be an effective self-help educator.  

In truth, most self-help promoters readily acknowledge the personal benefits. That said, I suspect most would dispute they're recycling the self-help guidance of the past. The self-help 2.0 movement is obsessed with what's new about it and opportunity today. Social media and online education, its proponents might suggest, have “democratized” access to opportunity in a way that we have never seen before.

But the facts suggest remarkable continuity. Self-help seems to flourish during the most uncertain economic times, and it’s a profitable business for those who practice it well, such as Napoleon Hill and Dale Carnegie, who published their works at the height of the Great Depression - at the very time that success might have seemed less achievable than ever for so many people.

Is there anything wrong with this, if it works? Do the proponents of “self-help 2.0” know the way forward?

In the 19th Century, snake oil, brought to the US by Chinese immigrants, was used as an effective treatment for arthritis. The concept of the "snake oil salesman" as a peddler of fake cures actually stemmed from the rise of patent medicine sellers pitching products that often contained little or no snake oil at all.

There's clearly value and truth in so much advice today, just as the snake oil may have medicinal benefits. Digital platforms offer aspiring professionals unparalleled and real opportunities to extend their reach. Online training courses are incredibly deep and wide.

But, be wary of the snake oil industry. And be skeptical of those promoting revolutionary cures and miracles for success. It's not really that new.