--- title: "Tell the Truth About Your Industry | Robert Nikic" description: "Robert Nikic on why the founder willing to tell the truth about their industry, starting with their own business, wins the customers worth having." canonical: "https://robertnikic.com/blog/say-the-true-thing" author: "Robert Nikic" advisory_role_profile: "https://reseated.com/robert-nikic" type: "Article" published: "2026-11-03T12:00:00.000Z" updated: "2026-11-03T14:13:35.161000" --- # Say the True Thing About Your Own Industry Robert Nikic on why the founder willing to tell the truth about their industry, starting with their own business, wins the customers worth having. **In short:** Robert Nikic on why the founder willing to tell the truth about their industry, starting with their own business, wins the customers worth having. Hot take: the most powerful marketing move in any industry is admitting what's wrong with it. Not what's wrong with your competitors. What's wrong with the industry you're part of. Including you. Every industry has a story it tells about itself. And every industry has the part everybody inside knows and nobody says out loud. The fee customers don't understand. The promise that's technically true and practically misleading. The shortcut everyone takes. The customer who gets hurt and never gets a call back. Say it. Out loud. Starting with your own business. ### Why nobody does Because it's scary. You'll annoy people. Competitors will call you disloyal. Some partners will stop returning your calls. Somebody will point out, fairly, that you've done the same thing. And because staying quiet is easy. The industry's story protects everyone in it. Saying the true thing means stepping outside that protection. So almost nobody does it. Which is exactly why it works. ### What it sounds like It's not a rant. It's not a takedown of a specific company. It's a plain statement of something customers should know, from someone in a position to know it. - "Most of the price you're paying here is the middleman, not the product." - "That 'free' plan costs you more over a year than the paid one." - "Most people who buy this never use it. Here's how to tell if you will." - "The headline number in this industry isn't the number that matters. This one is." - "We used to do this too. Here's why we stopped." That last one is the most powerful. Owning your part makes everything else you say believable. ### My own industry I've been in e-commerce and software for a long time, so here's mine. E-commerce courses are everywhere. Every feed, every week, another one. Some are good. A lot of them sell a dream: passive income, quit your job in 90 days, a store that runs itself. The screenshots are real. The full picture usually isn't. Most people who buy those courses don't end up with a business. They end up with a credit card bill. Be careful, don't fall for scams that are out there. Real e-commerce is a business, with margins, customer service, returns, inventory risk and long hours. It can be a great business. It's not magic. I'd rather tell someone that before they spend their savings than after. ### What it gets you **Trust you can't buy.** Customers have been sold to their whole lives. They can tell when someone's being straight with them. The company that says the uncomfortable thing becomes the company they believe on everything else. **The right customers.** Honesty filters. The customers who wanted the fantasy go elsewhere. The ones who stay are the ones who wanted the truth, and they're usually the best customers you'll ever have. **A position nobody can copy.** Competitors can match your price and your features. They can't easily match your credibility, especially if saying the same thing would expose their own business. **A better industry.** When enough people say the true thing, the industry has to change. Customers get better deals. Bad actors lose their cover. Everyone who does it right benefits. ### What happens when nobody says it Industries that never tell the truth about themselves tend to end the same way. Customers slowly lose trust in everyone, good and bad. Prices get pushed down because nobody believes the value. Regulators step in with rules written by people who don't understand the business. And the honest companies get lumped in with the worst ones. I've watched it happen in more than one corner of e-commerce and software. The bad actors set the reputation. Everyone else pays for it. The fastest way out is for people inside the industry to say what's wrong before someone outside forces the issue. That's not disloyalty. It's protecting the part of the industry worth protecting. ### Why the rule exists In the United States, the FTC's Business Opportunity Rule requires sellers of many business opportunities to give buyers specific information so they can judge the risk before they pay ([FTC, Business Opportunity Rule](https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/rules/business-opportunity-rule)). A rule like that only gets written after enough people are sold something that didn't match the facts. Saying the true thing about your own industry is doing, by choice, what the honest players should have been doing all along. ### How to do it without blowing yourself up **Never name a company.** Talk about practices, not people. "A lot of providers do X" is a public service. "Company Y does X" is a fight you don't need. **Lead with your own part.** If you've done it, say so first. It disarms the critics and proves you're not just attacking others. **Back it up.** Use numbers you can show. A claim you can't support turns honesty into gossip. **Offer the better way.** Don't just point at the problem. Tell customers what to look for instead, even if it's not you. **Get your house in order first.** You can't call out a practice you're still doing. Fix it, then talk about it. ### The point Your customers already suspect the true thing. They just don't know who to believe. Be the one who says it first. It'll cost you a few friends in the industry. It'll earn you the customers who were waiting for someone to be honest with them. ### Related reading - [The five principles Robert Nikic builds by](/blog/principles) - [Why founders should share the upside](/blog/the-people-who-build-it-share-in-it) Robert Nikic is an entrepreneur, TEDx speaker and Advisory Council Chair at Reseated Councils (United Nations SDG 8 & 9). He writes about what he has seen build and break companies, and about the rules that decide whether small businesses get a fair shot. Read his writing on [Medium](https://medium.com/@robertnikic), the Open Doors newsletter on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertnikic) and daily posts on [X](https://x.com/robertnikic).