Why thinking of money will make you fail

I was recently following-up on a deadbeat client. In his blah blah blah about working on something that will bring in the big bucks “really soon”, he mentions this business he’s working on. I check it out and of course it’s MLM. As you may know, I’m not fond of MLM crap.

I call him out on it and say it will fail. His response:

Whoa, a little optimism is sometimes helpful. How legit was “google” when it first came out? Some partners and I are working together to launch the product.

The response was so typical and good that I had to write about it.

Google, Yahoo, Facebook and YouTube did it! Why can’t I?
One of the delusions people get in when starting a business (myself included) is comparing their venture to the greats that started out with humble beginnings. The problem with a lot of new business is that they don’t start off like that. The companies above were created out of a passion to solve a problem, not to make money. If you think about money right away and focus your energy on that instead of creating remarkable, it will fail.

2 examples

CDBaby started out because a frustrated musician who couldn’t get online retailers to sell his CD. He wrote a script to sell his CD on his website. Soon, he was selling his friends CDs then to others. The intention was to do away with the roadblock of getting your music online.

My Filipino Tattoo site started out because I wanted to see photos of Filipino Tattoos. As I posted some tattoo photos of the Filipino writing system, I also translated them. Soon, people started asking me to do translations for them. I did dozens a week for free and then started experimenting with pricing to see what the market would pay. I started a viable side-business when I didn’t mean to. It’s all about intention.

These stories are repeated again and again.

So if your thinking of starting a business, don’t think money at 1st. Think about what interests you (besides money). What would you do in your spare time on a Saturday afternoon? Make that your starting point.

5 reasons why GetTheBar.com will fail

Look out for invites to join the “Next Google” from your friends.

Be a Part of the NEXT GOOGLE! Get PAID NOW TO BE ON THE INTERNET!!!

Your friends are valuable to you… now make them priceless. Share FREE Membership with everyone you know. Share FREE Money with everyone you know. FREE Membership equals FREE Money. The more friends that Join the more money you ALL make. Finally, you all get compensated for your time on the web. Your friends will love you for life!

Sign up before one of your friends signs you up and make money now. It’s FREE! and you make money just from clicking. The toolbar shows you exactly how many friends you’ve signed on and how much money you are making real time!

1st of all, it’s not the next Google. They are not even in the same business.

1) There’s no such thing as FREE Money – Any business that screams FREE Money is suspect2

2) The business model has failed before – While this uses (Multi-Level Marketing) MLM, the business model isn’t very different from the defunct AllAdvantage and Agloco. I used AllAdvantage and made about at the most $20 after hours of trying to make money with the toolbar. From Wikipedia:

AllAdvantage is perhaps most remembered for its successful adaptation of the “viral marketing” concept, a term first coined by the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. In viral marketing, members of the service promote it to their friends and acquaintances, which AllAdvantage enhanced by adding a compensation component, rewarding users for the number of members they successfully referred.

A spin-off AllAdvantage, Agloco launched in 2006 and also shut down. Read about it here, here, and here. With advertising $$$ being the main revenue maker, it’s doomed. Online advertising has been hit hard with this recession. Companies are also advertising less to build their brand with a more targeted manner. The days of blanket advertising is over. Advertising is dead. Robert Stephens, founder of Geek Squad says “Advertising the the tax you pay for being unremarkable”. ‘Nuff said.

3) No transparency – The parent company Boloto Group, Inc, has no business information on bolotogroup.com. There’s no About us or contact information, just screenshots of their websites. Doing a whois on bolotogroup.com shows that it’s registered by Investorhelp, Inc who’s nowhere to be found online. Digging through Alexa, you see that they are a seller of an investing CD-ROM. Going to Investorhelper.com leads to GetTheBar.com. It’s a full circle of nothing. Who runs this business? It’s common practice of these get rich quick companies to not have company information. They setup a quick website, make money, and then shut it down.

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