DumbTax

When starting out your business, chances are you’ll have a fierce competitor in your market trying to squeeze out any new entrants. It can feel like you’re a tiny mosquito on a gorilla’s butt, but take heart. The best thing about being significantly smaller than a behemoth competitor is that they stand to lose a lot more than you. 

It’s important for every startup and small business to keep a close watch on its competition and capitalize on their mistakes. Making the right move at the right time may create a huge windfall of success for you. 

Here are 6 tips to capitalize on a competitor’s mistake that will turn their headache into your profits:

Be the first to spot a bad move in the making. Make sure you know more about your competition than they know about you. Staying on top of your competitor’s email newsletters, press releases, twitter feed, website updates, product videos, and anything else that is publicly available. Doing this will allow you to understand bad moves in the making and be able to plot your response. One thing I have learned is that competitors pay for mistakes over a long period of time. You’ll have lots of time to exploit the mistake to your advantage – you just need to be able to start it early enough. 

Take a stand: Make some noise. Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty with your competition. If they raise their prices, decry foul on your website, newsletter, twitter, and every other avenue to say how much their price increase sucks. Don’t be afraid to call a competitor out on the mistake they’ve made. Have a little fun with it and crack some jokes about it. On one venture, we have an actual GougeMeter that allows you to see how much our competitors are gouging their customers with enormous pricing. Chances are you’ll strike a chord with other people who feel the same way.

Create a promotion in honor of the mistake. As existing customers are feeling the effects of the mistake – whether it be a price increase, huge service outage, a political issue, or whatever – have a promotion ready that is exclusive to your competitor’s existing customers. It lets your competitor’s customers know you’ve noticed and are thinking about them. They will begin to consider switching with a promotion just for them.

Don’t be afraid to lose money for the new customers. When acquiring customers from a competitor, don’t be afraid to lose money for the first year or two. We have offered a free year’s worth of service to switching customers before knowing we would lose money. Sometimes you need to do something drastic to get people to switch to you. This is also important because you want to think long term with your converted customers. You want to have them for years to come. When we have lost money on a converted customer, we have always been able to make it up in subsequent years from their service. 

Make an easy transition for customers switching. Don’t mess this one up. The one place you can make a massive mistake, causing customers to flee back to their former love, is to make the transitioning to your service a nightmare. It’s imperative that the whole process is seamless and easy. If it’s not, you’ll likely lose those customers forever. 

Stop feeling bad about charging people. Not everyone wants nor expects the lowest price for a product or service. Often, I am deterred by the bargain busters offers. If you had to have life-saving heart surgery, would you be looking for the medical group offering 75% off? Not likely.

When it comes to pricing, the worst thing a business can do is be apologetic about its pricing. If your price is indeed too high, you will have no customers and will be forced to adjust and adapt. You also might not have customers if the pricing is too low since a low price can be perceived as lowest quality. For some, choosing a middle ground pricing might be the right strategy. 

People don’t want to work with you when you are perceived as insecure about your pricing. You need to totally and completely own your product and it’s pricing. You also want to beware against the tendency to heavily discount your price. If someone is able to get you to reduce your fees by 50%, you have in essence proven that your pricing is artificially high. You should charge what you are worth.

After our second year of our consulting business, we decided to double what we were charging for our creative and technology services. One would think that we would have half the customers. We actually doubled our client base and quadrupled our yearly revenues. 

We did one important thing when we raised our pricing. We justified it. We stopped apologizing for why our pricing was what it was and started justifying it all. We gave case studies, results and testimonials that showed our customers that our fee was worth every penny. Here is a rule of thumb regarding pricing: If your customer complains about high pricing, you have not convincingly communicated the value of your services. 

If there is one thing frustrating to me, it’s cookie-cutter, carbon-copy business idea that’s virtually identical to the competition. How many identical daily deal websites are there now lacking competitive advantage or increased value? How original is it to rip off someone else’s business, product or idea without any creative or innovative contributions added to the mix? 

People launch copy-cat startups to ride on the coat tails of another successful business. There are websites where you can download code and website files to make your own clone of youtube, facebook, search engine and more. Where’s the originality in that?

Google didn’t simply emerge on the market and copy Yahoo or MSN. Rather, they launched a search platform with a minimalist interface with the aim of providing a better search than the competition. They didn’t have email, personals, sports, news or other flashy bells and whistles. Nope, just a straightforward search function. But it had a different algorithm by providing a superior way of finding results you wanted and building upon the deliverables with additional value and service. After dominating the search market, they began adding complementary services that didn’t hurt their search business.

Apple has done a better job than almost any other business I know by being the leader in product innovation for which everyone else copies. As true innovators, they don’t copy or duplicate. Sure, they haven’t borrowed some good ideas, but its always in the context of a larger innovation in which they take an established standard and build upon it in truly wondrous ways. 

Your idea and business needs to be clearly different than your competitors. You can provide a similar product or service, but it must have merit on its own. The way to know if you have a copy-cat and otherwise unoriginal business is if you have to reference another business when describing yours. Such as, “We’re like facebook, but for athletes.” That doesn’t provide sufficient reason to go to your website instead. In fact, it completely acknowledges that there is no inherent value for your site beyond being like something else. 

Has that loving feeling started to drain from your venture? Do you find yourself re-checking your facebook every ten minutes to avoid your work tasks? Then it’s time to revamp how you work. 

I think it’s critical to understand what your exact strengths are, and more importantly, where they are not. I had a work epiphany when one of my business partners clearly defined the difference between us. I was the idea guy, a person who comes up with ideas out of nowhere, and he was the guy who loved to take ideas and expand on them to make them happen. We equally hated each other’s roles. So we decided to swap responsibilities and re-arrange how we spent our time working together. The result had us glued to our work and engaged through the entire time. Here is how you can do the same.

I want you to grab a piece of paper and make three lists. 

List # 1: Write a list of all the areas where you are the absolute best. What do you do better than anyone else? What areas of your venture are the most fun and enticing for you to work on? 

List #2: Write a list of all the areas where you are average or sub-par at. This list should include tasks and responsibilities that get in your way and steal momentum from your day. 

List #3: Write a list of tasks, jobs, and areas where that you dread every moment. These tasks are mundane, boring, and frustrating for you. Which parts of your day are your least favorite and why?

Now that you have made three exhaustive lists, here is how to keep engaged and effective in your work. 

Step 1: Do whatever it takes to make list # 1 your full time and sole responsibility. Your disdain for the work day shows that you are doing things that you are neither good at, nor engaged in. The goal is to get near your total time to be on what you do best and love. At the least, allocate your Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays to this role.

Step 2: Delegate or defer responsibilities from list #2. I found my business partner was great at what I was mediocre at. Chances are, there is someone whose passions are the things you are average at. I love writing, but am a slow and ineffective editor. Find ways to switch hats or change roles with someone whose strengths shine where you are so-so. Don’t think of their assistance as a crutch, see it rather as freeing you up to focus on the elements of business and talent where you truly excel.

Step 3: Subcontract or eliminate items from list #3. For years, I found myself doing our accounting, slaving in our office until the wee hours of the night reconciling bank statements. Not only would I procrastinate, but I was a lousy bookkeeper to boot! Each month, I smile as I write a check to an outside bookkeeping service and focus on making ideas.  

Perhaps your responsibilities don’t allow you to completely eliminate your weaknesses and focus on your strengths. In that case, consolidate any tasks from lists 2 and 3 to once a week. For example, I hate meetings. I try and consolidate my meetings to one day a week where all my meetings happen. 

When I meet with young business startups or entrepreneurs, I always ask why they want to start their business. Their outcome, and ultimately whether or not I choose to work with them, is based on the legitimacy of their motives. If they simply answer “money” I will not get involved. Profit is not a passion. It is an outcome of passion applied.

Seriously, enough with the money fetish already people. Your passion always needs to be greater than the sum of the potential earnings. Your drive for money is not enough to spur innovation and generate the resilience, which is required of you to be successful. The desire for the pursuit of money will die long before your passion does because the desire of money is quickly diminished by discouragement. 

The reason is that most startups will take years before you see profits. I co-founded a venture 6 years ago and yet to have seen a single dime from it. My passion for the technology and industry is what drives me. 

If your motive is purely money, get ready for a business or idea that won’t last very long.

Fortunately, a proven antidote for discouragement is passion. 

Beware of partnering with people whose passion is profit. These people can be bought for a price and easily lured away. Their loyalty is in their personal financial gain. I had an early business relationship, which seemed to be a match made in heaven and the road ahead seemed full of promise and potential. After several months, he was lured away by a hefty paycheck and left me holding the bag for the business liabilities. 

All the great businesses and enterprises are founded on passion. Your passion for your idea or business is driven by what it could be: passion to solve a problem, passion to see things change, passion to integrate, passion to optimize, passion to streamline, passion to invent, passion for industry, people, technology and others. Again, if your sole passion is to make as much money at any cost, you’ll end up chasing mirages. Sad but true: many people operating in this manner have wound up with a criminal record down the road. 

Don’t get me wrong. All successful businesses must have a profit motive but money should always be the cherry on top, not the body of the ice cream sundae. One year, I calculated that my average hourly wage between my ventures was less than $3 an hour. But I loved every moment of it.

This might seem a tad obvious, but knowing why you and your enterprise are even here is probably the single most overlooked ingredient to a successful business. 

First, you are not here to make a profit. Profits are a byproduct of your reason for being here. Your existence is for something far more legitimate: solving problems for the consumer. Every business at its core contributes to solving a problem, and you are no different.

Southwest Airlines doesn’t simply exist to sell transportation from Los Angeles to New York. They solve the problem of overpriced tickets with nickel and dime pricing. Apple doesn’t sell a computer or music player. Apple solves the problem of making technology simple and useable to millions of non technical people. Each of these great enterprises knows exactly why they exist. 

If you cannot explain in 15 seconds why someone should choose your business over a competing alternative, then you don’t know why you exist. Knowing why you exist and the problem you solve will separate you from the competition by the length of a football field and endear customers to you. 

Have you ever been in a business or restaurant and seen a business post its mission statement? I don’t think I have ever seen a mission statement that didn’t suck. They are almost all the same with such bull crap lines like, “to increase shareholder value” and other nonsense. Why would a customer care to know your mission is to create shareholder value? 

Even Apple’s mission statement sucks: “Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork, and professional software.” Isn’t that the most underwhelming mission ever? It’s a product listing, not a mission. 

If I consulted with Apple, I would change their mission statement to the following

“We believe anything is possible. We exist to challenge the status quo in everything we do. We invent technologies and services that are simple to use, beautiful to look at and enhance how you live life.” 

Everyone will know what you do, but not all people will know why. Your products and services simply prove what you believe and why you exist. Don’t let your mission statement suck by giving a product listing and making up meaningless platitudes. A mission statement should always be about the customer.

Here is how to make a killer mission statement that sticks:

Write in the fewest words possible, What You Believe. Sometimes your belief can be descriptive of a problem. An example would be, “we believe no child should be without clean water.”

Write in the fewest words possible, Why You Exist. Do you solve a problem? Do you make technology faster, better, or more efficient? Get to the deep root of WHY you exist. 

In the fewest words possible, State the Desired Outcome For Customers when using your product. Clearly and simply describe the intended benefit when your product is used.

I find a lot of inspiration in the story of Thomas Edison who is rumored to have had near 1000 unsuccessful tests in the invention of the light bulb before he had a breakthrough. Any normal human being would be discouraged after a few failed attempts, let alone 1000 failed attempts. 

Thomas Edison had a great attitude regarding his trial and error adventure. A journalist once asked him, “Were you ever disappointed after failing so many times?” to which Edison replied, “I never failed. I just know 999 ways not to make a light bulb.” 

Another fun example is the household product, WD-40. Ever wonder how that magical product found in nearly every garage got its name? The company was originally known as Rocket Chemical Company and was trying to develop a protectant that would prevent rust and corrosion by displacing water….hence WD for water displacement. It was on the 40th attempt where the engineers got the formula right. The process was memorialized in the name and WD-40 has become a multi-billion dollar success. 

We can learn a lot from these two lessons. 

Maintain a positive attitude: They say, ‘attitude is everything’ and will fuel your persistence in your endeavors. Every entrepreneur should have a firm belief that everything and anything is possible. Doubt will be cancer that will steal your motivation and discourage your team. Maintain an attitude that there is a right combination out there somewhere. 

Vision is a necessity: The light bulb and WD-40 were created from a vision of what could be. Don’t set out to create an idea for the sake of an idea. Have a vision for what could be and work to visualize it as much as possible. Seeing the end product in your mind will steer your efforts and attack plan to see it to fruition.

Time is your friend: The best ideas come to life over time and perseverance. Give your idea some time to breath. During challenges and setbacks, don’t be afraid to give yourself and your idea enough time to become perfect. Google was the last to arrive to the search industry but came out with a better product. The urgency of time can set your creativity back and depress your morale. Relax.

Caught up on the idea of success, individuals are sometimes in too great of hurry to get there. Rather than pursuing their own model of achievement, they are likely chasing someone else’s notion of what equals success. In my early business days, I got frustrated when people casually mentioned to me “One day when you’re successful…” Hearing this always got me ticked off because in my mind, I was already enjoying a pretty fair margin of accomplishment that most business owners would be jealous of: debt-free business, positive cash flow, and operating from a small office.

So wait, none of those things could be considered legitimate measures of success? Sure, where I was at couldn’t be considered on a level with a $100 million business, but I knew I wanted to avoid defining my success on such narrow terms and unrealistic terms.  

When starting out, multiple areas in which to fail, stumble and stall are laid out in front of you. But if you can continue making progress despite these obstacles, then you are succeeding. For example, if you survived a particularly bad month yet are able to make it to the next, that in itself is a good indicator success is running in your favor. 

Trying to focus on the 5 year benchmarks for success proved to be too intimidating for me and was useless for generating a plan for practical steps I could apply to the immediate future. Regardless of your business type, we should all be developing small ways to celebrate micro benchmarks instead of living for the eventual homerun. 

For example, you sit down and write out monthly goals and benchmarks for projects, business development and miscellaneous tasks. Some are going to be large while many are small. When you’re going down your list and checking them off, allow yourself to celebrate in small ways to remind yourself of the progress you’re making. 

Sometimes, it’s merely free Chipotle for the whole office or maybe you want to surprise everyone with loaded Starbucks cards. Not too long ago, we celebrated 3 years in business for one of our startups and everyone gathered in the conference room toasting each other and recounting some of our favorite memories. Celebrating these smaller victories gives us context and encouragement to press on in the face of difficulties associated with business expansion.

I have made a habit of writing out thirty day tasks for our projects and we work through them one by one. At the minimum, high-fives are given when we cross off each task. The way I see reality, reaching $100 Million in revenue is simply putting together enough 30 day task lists.

I only measure success one month at a time because there are simply too many factors for me to realistically project smooth sailing months ahead of schedule! If I am in business tomorrow, then I am succeeding, because that means that I am one step closer to my ultimate goals. 

There is a debilitating condition plaguing startups and small businesses everywhere. No, it’s not the black plague or a zombie virus. Rather, it’s procrastination disguising itself as analysis. Instead of moving forward with good ideas and furthering business aims, the procrastinator will first want to ask all the “what-if” questions. 

It might seem like a safe and sensible thing to do, but the reality is that there is a never-ending supply of “what-if” questions keeping you grounded, prohibiting great business ideas from ever taking off and soaring the skies of success.

Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t remain educated and aware regarding the decisions you're about to make, but beware of the trap of paralysis by analysis! 

If you are working on an idea, campaign, or strategy and come across a decision block, set a 15-minute timer to give you and your team a suitable window to map out some possible outcomes. At the end of the 15 minutes, you should clearly be able to know if a solution is possible or not. 

If at the end of 15 minutes you are still unclear, drop the subject and come back to it in a day or two. Trust me on this. I have seen the simplest of business management strategies take on a hideous life of their own, requiring a day’s worth of fruitless discussion to dissect and examine without any real resolution.

Know in your mind whatever you have done is good enough. The email you wrote to an investor? It’s good enough. That homepage design you’ve been working on? It’s good enough. Even the choice of catered food for the investor meeting…IT’S GOOD ENOUGH! Stop worrying about what every person in the world will think of your decisions already! Trust your gut because more often than not, it is likely to be right. 

And please, don’t put a disproportionate emphasis on details that you’ve blown up to the size of King Kong yet actually matter as much as a teacup poodle. For example, I’ve worked with people who spend hours obsessing on the font sizes and colors for web pages. Look, if your web traffic sucks, just change it already. Get your site launched now. Pleasing everyone in the world is impossible so you might as well stop trying to analyze ways to accomplish this because it’s not going to happen. Just get your idea launched and in front of real people as soon as possible. 

Many new entrepreneurs have developed profit anxiety: the fear that they are charging too much when in reality, they are charging too little.

Recently, I was talking with a family member who, between coaching sports camps and flying around the world for athletic competitions, is also a local tutor for struggling math students. Naturally, she is always in high demand so the schedule she has to follow is full to say the least. 

In any event, we were having a discussion regarding ways she could grow her business, while increasing revenue. She was running thin because of everything she was involved in and thus was looking for some ways to free up her time while adding more revenue.

She explained to me that in the process of building her tutoring business, she started offering services below the local average rate, a common strategy to enter a competitive market. Okay, for starters, it wasn’t too bad of a business strategy.

I then asked how busy she currently was with tutoring clients and her reply was that she had a waiting list to be seen! Ah ha! The problem bogging her down was suddenly very obvious. 

The outstanding talent she was offering at the current price was creating a demand she could not sustain nor fully satisfy. Boom, the answer to her issues comes from economics 101: she must increase her price to reduce demand. 

When I suggested she increase her rate by 25%, she acknowledged this rate would create enough profit to balance out her schedule and accommodate the financial commitments of travel and camps. But she felt a sense of acute profit anxiety, which was prohibiting her from considering this move.

Granted, this wasn’t exactly the solution she was looking for, but the reality could not be ignored. She was burning herself out and not generating enough revenue to compensate for it. Imagine the millions of people who'd sign up if Lebron James started to offer private basketball coaching for $10 an hour. 

Having too much demand for your product or service is one of the few positive business problems to have. But the common mistake people make when handling this issue is ignoring new customers while maintaining the same group of dedicated clients at the same rate. And you’re telling me you’re not going to burn yourself out? 

The smart approach is to incrementally increase your rates appropriately to where your demand reaches your capacity to serve people. Sure, some people may not be able to afford your services any longer, but consider the hundreds of additional people who want to use your services and cannot because you are unable to accommodate them due to your existing workload? Your existing customers aren’t happy, the potential ones aren’t happy, you’re not happy. Be okay with charging what you’re worth!

Ken Davis, a prominent authority on effective communication revealed a startling statistic recently revealing nearly 75% of audiences who just attended a speech had no idea what the main objective and purpose of it was. Even more shocking, 50% of the speakers could not, in one to two sentences, describe the purpose of their speech in a clear manner. 

Was it the pre-speech coffee or perhaps the lack of cherry Danishes? Sorry to break it to you but it’s more than likely your potential customers suffered from your, well, sucky communication skills 

Pondering Mr. Davis’ statistics, I began researching bounce rates on the web and found most websites on the web have a rate of 40%-80%. Basically, 40-80% of the people who come to a website, eyeball it for a few moments and then they’re on their way to their next destination on the web.

Think of yourself as having only 15 seconds of someone’s attention. What are you saying before they bounce and turn their attention elsewhere? How come they’re off and on their way before you have a chance to utter your third sentence? Have you stopped to think about whether your communication practices might be to blame?

Many businesses and entrepreneurs, in their desire to win over customers, overcompensate with over 200 words in their marketing and advertising messages when only 20 are necessary. Meaningless buzzwords, sensational verbs and unrealistic promises are jammed into every piece of business communication they release. 

This sort of bloat in business communication is why I can hardly read any business book past the seventy-fifth page. The content of the message is made clear early on and then is beaten into the ground through meaningless metaphors and examples…for the next 200 pages.

We must resist the temptation to fill time and space with filler communication as it effectively kills the reason for anyone to grant us his or her attention. We have obligation to give our communication purpose, direction and clarity to the public which exists in a modern world, where attention spans are fleeting.

I’ll admit I suffered from this temptation to overcompensate my communications when I started writing for my first startup. I would write enough business copy for our website to try and fill the page so it would be more aesthetically pleasing. After all, all that blank space, what could be more unprofessional right? Unfortunately, I had zero regard to whether the text made any sense to a customer or if it compelled them to take action. It didn’t.

Every piece of communication should be clear, brief and laser-focused. Each sentence should have a mission for why it is included and may include educating individuals on the problem you solve, persuading the value of your product or informing of the benefits, which come from using your service. If each and every sentence does not serve this mission, break out the axe and start chopping away. 

Stuck wondering why your business is struggling to acquire or keep customers? I too wondered about this at one point, and eventually I settled on four common reasons for this problem that can help you identify where the problem is.

First and foremost, your customers must believe and understand the problem your business solves. It's not enough for customers to know WHAT you do. They must know why you do it. Your enterprise, regardless of its focus, addresses and serves solutions to a specific need or problem. There must be no dispute on the need for your product or service in the minds of your customers. 

If you don’t have customers, consider whether people understand the problem you serve and if it is a legitimate concern in their minds. If I created a business making special Band-Aids for colorblind individuals, I would have difficulty convincing customers the typical Band Aid wasn’t adequate for a colorblind person. Unless I convinced them my band-aids were more practical, they’d just as soon buy the regular brand to meet their needs.

Takeway #1: Am I communicating the problem my business solves effectively? Do customers know only what I do or do they also know the central problem I solve?

Second, a potential customer must clearly believe your business is the best solution to address the problem. After a customer believes you serve a legitimate problem, they need to believe your business is the best solution for them. Pricing, availability, value, features and service amongst others are all factors in determining the “best option.” Your job is to communicate why the alternative solution is a bad idea and why you’re the superior choice. 

It is incredibly common for businesses to inform new customers for the need of their service, but lose the customer to another vendor. If this happens, it is because you did not adequately communicate why and how you are the best solution for your customers. 

Takeaway #2: Given the alternatives, do customers believe my pricing, features and value proposition is best for them? Do I have a convincing response to customers asking about competing companies or solutions?

Third, potential customers need to believe there is immediate concern. You need to instill in them the sense of immediate action. A customer might believe you’re the best solution for solving their problems, but do they believe your services are needed right here and now? If people believe there is no consequence in putting off their decision, don’t expect them to use your services until a later time. For example, you likely would have little success selling coffins and cemetery plots to college students. There is no immediate concern of making that decision regarding a coffin for someone in their twenties. 

Takeway #3: Are customers motivated by the immediacy of your solution? Are they incentivized to act now and not delay?

Finally, a potential customer must understand how to respond now. Many businesses and organizations do a great job on the first three principles I’ve listed, but inevitably complicate the process for fashioning an appropriate manner for response. This means you shouldn’t make anyone jump through any hoops if they can signup, donate or respond now. If you have to follow up in order to close the deal, you are losing valuable opportunities. You need to provide them with a clear avenue to take advantage of your services or products right then and there. Barriers will only discourage people and force them to seek out someone else who can quickly assist them without hassle.

Passionate entrepreneurs may find themselves working on holidays, but this isn’t always a bad thing. In fact, holidays are some of my favorite days to work.

The satisfaction I derive from it is not because I help so many clients out or I answer so many phone calls. During the holidays, you have the ability to focus and work on projects that you have been meaning to initiate or expand upon but haven’t had the opportunity or availability.

During the holidays when the office is dead quiet, you’re typically relaxed and rested with a full belly of some good food. Some of my greatest ideas and amazing strides in projects can be attributed to my “holiday productivity.” Believe it or not, I have had 3 hours of holiday work come out as productive as a full week’s worth. The lesson here is learning to develop days or times when you are more creative, more productive, and more motivated than any other.

Entrepreneurs will burn themselves out by overtaxing themselves and having too many persistent demands. It is critical to have bursts of creativity and clarity within your business. The way in which a timely reboot can restore a laptops speed and efficiency is the same way in which holiday work reinvigorates my workflow. It’s my own “reboot” allowing a return to normal office hours with laser focus on what needs to be done to continue the streak.

Coming in during the holidays is about deciding to make things happen, even if it means you sacrifice relaxation and quality time. If working holidays means you are in business the next week then there shouldn’t be any complaint on your part. It is simply what needs to be done on occasion. What’s more important, a drink by the fireplace with your feet up or making the moves to place you in the upper echelons of your industry?

Lack of information is consistently a top reason why entrepreneurs never get their business off the ground. Entrepreneurs have many questions which need to get answered before anything else can (supposedly) move forward.

Oddly the thought of typing in their question in Google rarely crosses their mind. More often than not, almost anything you’re looking for can be found on Google. It’s a strange phenomenon where people won’t take some 5 seconds to type it into Google and resign themselves to being afraid of what they don’t know.

Just yesterday, I got a phone call from a woman who had an idea for a business. She started asking all sorts of questions ranging from every detail of how to do manufacturing to discovering potential competitors. As we were talking, I would continually ask, “Where have you looked and what have you done to find these answers?” and she simply replied she wanted to call us first. Not the response I was looking for.

Through the remaining minutes of our conversation, I opened up a web browser and typed in various searches regarding her questions into Google. I also opened up an email and started pasting links to the searches. In less than 5 minutes, boom, I had answers to the majority of her questions and had even found several manufacturers that could produce her idea in as little as two weeks.

I find people grossly underestimate the amount of information which exists online. All it really takes is a few minutes of searching and you will find thousands of answers to your questions. Companies, blogs, links, articles, videos… it really is endless. I typically recieve dozens of emails from people I’ve never met who email me random questions instead of Googling their question first. Often times, I send back a link to Google as a response.

Out of all my years in business, I certainly can say I have and continue to make an honest dollar. However, there’s a minefield of schemes and business gimmicks out there tempting individuals with ubiquitous “get-rich-quick” business schemes and shady investment proposals.

Almost a decade ago I was just starting out in my first year of business, trying to make money just like everyone else and desperate to lose the beater auto I had from college. In my drive to make it big, I was tempted to join a multi-level-marketing business (MLM).

For those unfamiliar with the term, an MLM utilizes network marketing (selling friends, who sell their friends, who sell their friends) to recommend buying particular products and brands from a special wholesale source. MLM presentations are typically conducted by an oily professional who boasts working 5 hours a week yet generating $20,000 a month in income. Combine with some celebrity endorsements, pictures of big houses, promises of fancy cars and one can’t help but think “Well, maybe I SHOULD give this a try!”

I felt I was a sharp enough guy so I decided to join for $200. It was a fair investment on what I was sure to deliver vast returns. I was convinced I’d be placing an order on a solid gold bathtub within the next two months. Little did I know that MLMs make most of their money on collecting these start-up fees from millions of people.

Sadly, I had been duped and quickly discovered that my entrepreneurial ambitions were not welcome within the confines of such a sleazy business structure. I couldn’t create my own website (had to use theirs), couldn’t sell it retail, couldn’t do online meetings (they had to be in person) and on and on. I found out the MLM business model was costing me more time, headache and friendships than it was worth.

See, to get to that high level of monthly income, you need to have lots of people signing up and buying product. This made all your friends potential leads. Oh, and you can forget about maintaining a sense of respectable business ethics and personal morals.

After a few weeks of burning bridges with my friends who refused to answer my phone calls, I decided there was nothing better to do than run an honest business; a business where I call the shots, where I keep my friends and where I keep out of trouble.

It was a rough lesson but I emerged with the sense there is no free lunch. The rank and file individual recruited to do the footwork will never see the vast money beds promised by these snake oil salesmen.. The only people who are getting rich are the people at the top who prey upon the gullibility and dreams of people who only want a better life for themselves.