MarkFord
Saturday, April 21, 2018
Delray Beach, FL – Your business is stuck. Or maybe it’s you. It needs something to get out of its rut and on to another level.
I am sometimes asked – and I don’t know why – what course of study I recommend for college students wishing to become successful in business. My answer usually provokes skepticism if not scorn. I recommend liberal arts.
In the age of the Internet and the new economy, specialized technical knowledge is revered. Most of those who ask my opinion figure I’m going to say something like “computer programming” or “communications engineering.” In fact, I think that type of education is the least likely to put you at the top of your field – either as an entrepreneur or as a corporate climber.
There are several reasons.
First, technical knowledge is temporary. The trendier the technology, the faster it changes. What you learn now will become less true as time goes on. Eventually, it will be obsolete.
Plus, technical majors take a lot of time. The typical engineering student – if he aims to get into a good graduate school – must use up most if not all of his credits on subjects that only a fellow techie would even begin to understand. All that specialization leaves little time for “softer” skills like reading, writing, and thinking. And virtually no time for hanging around and having fun.
But the main reason I advise against a technical major is that technical workers have secondary roles in business. In How to Become CEO, Jeffrey Fox distinguishes between “staff jobs” (which make a business work) and “line jobs” (which make a business profitable). He says that in most companies “most of the people are either in administration or field sales. Administrative people are not bad, or untalented, but they are not on the cutting edge. The company doesn’t depend on them.”
I made this point to FS just the other day. He had the idea that he would “do better” in business if he majored in computer sciences or some such “high-tech” major – even though he didn’t especially like that course of study.
From what I’ve seen in business, I told him, staff people (and I’d include all technical people in this category) are unfairly but often viewed as:
- Temporary: You need them only as long as you need technical know-how.
- Expensive: Because they fall onto the “expense” side of the P&L, keeping their compensation low seems to make good fiscal sense.
- Expendable: When sales slow down, all expenses are trimmed – including salaries for staff employees.
Good line employees, on the other hand, are seen as:
- Necessary: They create the sales, and sales are always needed.
- Worthwhile: Since most line positions are compensated at least partly on the basis of performance, the usual attitude is “The more we pay you, the more valuable you are.”
- Irreplaceable: People who create sales have a secret power that the company does not want to lose to its competition. Again, the more money you make, the more irreplaceable you become.
Now let’s look at the other side. What’s so good about liberal arts?
A liberal arts education teaches you three skills: to think well, to write well, and to speak well. And in the corporate world – and in the entrepreneurial world as well – wealth is created by analyzing problems, figuring out solutions, and selling those solutions. In other words, a liberal arts education is tailor-made to give you the skills you need to succeed in business. And not just to do well. I’m talking about going all the way to the top.
Businesses have one fundamental problem that presents itself endlessly in different disguises: how to sell products/services profitably. There are many, many solutions to this problem. Even in a specific situation on a specific day, there is always more than one. And the person who can regularly come up with solutions – and convince others that his solutions should be implemented – is the person who is going to get the rewards. The money. The power. The prestige.
Yes, you can improve your thinking, writing, and speaking skills while enrolled in a technical curriculum. But it will happen indirectly and additionally. It won’t be what you are mainly concerned with. With a liberal arts education, you ensure that you will spend most of your time learning and practicing the very skills you will use later to get your ideas and solutions sold.
I’m not criticizing technical people. They are very valuable. I’m simply saying that if your goal is to get to the top of any organization, public or private, you need to be a very good thinker, writer, and speaker. And a liberal arts education is designed to help you with that.
I’ve known very successful business leaders that did not have a liberal arts education. The CEO of Agora, a billion-dollar company I consult with, is one. He was educated in accounting and worked his way up to CFO. But he was smart enough to see that he had reached the end of that line. So he gradually moved his way into discussions about marketing and sales and product development. Eventually, he became a very good thinker and speaker on these issues. And when it came time to appoint a new CEO, he was the logical choice.
One Thing & Another
Word for the Wise
Preternatural (prih-tur-NATCH-uh-rul) – existing outside of nature; extraordinary. Example from George Will: “Beyond his preternatural affability, there is some acid and some steel.”
Champagne Trick
A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continually from the bottom of the glass to the top.
From My “Work-in-Progress” Basket
Principles of Wealth: #11 of 61
To acquire wealth, it is helpful to be able to define it. Fewer than one in ten people can. The answer is “stored value.”
That kid driving the red Ferrari? The doctor with the huge white house on the ocean? The attractive older woman wearing the Oscar de la Renta gown?
They look wealthy, but you can’t tell by their possessions. They might be poor. They might be worse then poor. They might be in debt.
What about your friend that is “pulling down two hundred G’s” a year selling hedge funds? Or that obnoxious kid you met in law school that charges $700 an hour for his services?
They may be rich. They may not be. Income can be an important factor in creating wealth but it is not a measure of it.
There is only one way to measure wealth – and that is the amount of value an individual has set aside for future use.
In financial terms (there are many forms of wealth), we generally refer to this as net worth: the difference between one’s assets and one’s liabilities. I prefer a more stringent definition: one’s net investible wealth. Net investible wealth is net worth minus any assets you plan to keep (and not sell) for the rest of your life.
Making big money and spending big money create the impression of wealth. But true wealth is only what you have put aside for future use.
Quick Marketing Idea: The Emotional Power of Repetition
Why is it that we never tire of hearing our favorite songs?
According Derek Thompson, writing in Hit Makers, it’s because our brains our wired for it. We respond to repetition when it follows certain patterns.
He cites a study on mice:
Exposed to the sound of a B note played repeatedly, the mouse will pay brief attention and then lose interest. But if a minor variation is added – say, the B note followed by a C note – the mouse’s attention will reengage. Not just that, but it will stay engaged for a good length of time even when the “tune” goes back to just a B note.
“A single variation is sufficient to break the mouse’s complacency and return its interest to the music,” the author posits.
Further tests suggested that the most effective pattern for keeping a rodent’s attention was: BBBBC-BBBC-BBC-BC-D. This, Thompson says, “is uncannily similar to the structure of successful pop songs that follow a pattern of verse-verse, chorus, verse-chorus, bridge.”
(It’s also similar to the rhyme structure of some poetry, like some sonnets.)
Advertisers (and propagandists) have long known about the emotional power of repetition. It makes the advertisement more memorable. And it makes it more believable as well. (See D. Trump.)
Suggestion: Lay this pattern over your next medium- to long-term promotional piece before you post it.
Look at This…
https://biggeekdad.com/2018/02/old-man-thinks-hes-younger/
The Virtue of Laziness
Speed Up Your Career by Indulging Your Lazy Gene
The unpaid bills are stacked next to the unwashed dishes. You’ve been short about $1,200 per month since the divorce.
You need something to fill that now-a-memory, two-income cash flow gap. Something that’s not a pipedream. Something that’s feasible, flexible, and powerful. Something capable of producing more dollars per hour than you’ve ever made in your life.
It can’t be a financial investment, because you’ve don’t have enough in the market to make a big difference. So what can you do?
Before shutting down your computer for the night, you check your email. You see an advertisement. But before you delete it, you notice something in the message about extra income. “What the hell,” you think.
You click on the link and it takes you to a landing page titled “The Extra Income Project.” It’s a promotion for a collection of two dozen lessons, each one a different way to make extra money by working part-time from home. The author is someone named Mark Ford, said to be a best-selling author and a self-made multimillionaire. You’ve never heard of him. Still…
You order the EIP program. It arrives immediately, and you spend the rest of the evening looking through the lessons. One of them – “Service Businesses” – is particularly interesting. “Compared to other side businesses, a service business has the lowest barrier of entry,” this Mark Ford character writes. “It can be started with the simplest marketing methods, requires little to no start-up capital, and is likely to put you into business faster than any other sort of enterprise. The one requirement: You must be capable of doing high quality work.”
“I can do that,” you think.
Ford then lists several dozen service businesses, each with a short but helpful description of its benefits and drawbacks and income potential. Under “Landscaping Business,” you read: “This is a great business for people that don’t mind waking up early, enjoy working outdoors, and don’t mind getting their hands dirty… at least for a while. The income potential begins at about $25 an hour and can increase to $100 or more once you have a customer list of a few dozen people. If you are good at managing schedules and workers and do great work, this can easily become a business that makes you six figures.”
“I can definitely do that!” you think.
The next day, you spend $23 to print 500 colorful flyers advertising your new business. You use a variation of one of the pitches suggested by Ford:
Landscaping With Love
I’ll Make Your Lawn the Best
In Your Neighborhood, Guaranteed
First Service Only $10!
The $10 offer is an advertising trick – a “loss leader,” to prove what you can do.
It works. You get six responses in week one and land two Saturday gigs. By week four, you have $380 worth of weekly contracts. Your Saturday is now a workday, but you’re making an extra $1,520 per month.
You do good work, so you start getting referrals. You can, if you want, make even more money by working Sundays. That’s money you could use to lease a new car and maybe buy some new clothes. You’d have some left over for saving.
But do you want to work seven days per week? Hell no. You’re 52, not 22. You want the money but not the work.
There is a “Recommended Reading” section of the EIP program that lists several books that promise to “take you to the next level.” One is called Ready, Fire, Aim. It’s by the same author. Mark Ford. You order the book.
To Hire or Not to Hire, That Is the Question
After reading the book, you think about your situation. You’re making an extra $1,520 per month by running your own part-time landscaping business on Saturdays. You’re tempted to expand it, but you aren’t willing to work seven days per week. The book has given you the obvious solution: Hire help.
But is it worth the cost and hassle?
Following the book’s guidelines on “analyzing growth opportunities,” you sit down with a pen and a sheet of paper and make two lists, one marked “plus” and one marked “minus.”
On the minus side, you include things like “the trouble of finding someone” and “managing people” and “figuring out the right compensation,” and so on.
The more you think about it, the longer the “minus” list grows. And yet you can’t think of anything to add to the “plus” list aside from “do less work” and “maybe make more money.”
You think, “This is exactly why I never wanted to have my own business. It’s just one long list of worries and concerns. Maybe this Ford guy is more smoke than fire.”
So you decide against hiring help. Instead, you accept a few jobs to do on Sunday mornings. You’ll make another couple hundred per week, and still have Sunday afternoon to relax.
A month later, you realize that you didn’t take into account rainy days and the occasional “Can you come back tomorrow?” You are making more money but working every sunlit hour of every weekend. It is wearing you down. It’s even affecting your performance at your weekday job.
You do the math. Doing everything yourself, you’re making about $50 per hour. You can hire someone to do the grunt work and pay him/her maybe $15 per hour. The difference, $35, would be your gross profit.
There would be some additional costs involved in growing your business, too. Taxes, for example. And you’d probably have to hire an accountant. But on an hourly basis, that couldn’t be more than, say, $5. That leaves you with a gross profit of $30 for each hour’s work.
That’s $20 less than you are making now. But overall, you’d be making about $1,800 per month instead of $1,500 while personally working the same number of hours.
It makes sense. But how do you make it happen? Where can you find a good worker?
One Thing & Another
Word for the Wise
Retrodict (ret-roh-DIKT) – to use present information to explain or reinterpret or revise knowledge of the past. Example from Jamie Whyte in The Wall Street Journal: “Many are impressed by the fact that climate models can ‘retrodict’ climatic change – that is, use past climatic data (say, from the 1860s) to predict climatic data from the less-distant past (say, from the 1920s). They should not be.”
Did You Know… ?
Top speed skaters can reach 37 miles per hour.
From My “Work-in-Progress” Basket
Principles of Wealth: #7 of 61
Every virtue has its opposite vice. The opposite of common sense is foolishness. The opposite of commitment is equivocation. The opposite of persistence is inconsistency.
In understanding what it takes to build wealth, it’s helpful to consider human habits in these terms.
You can make most business and investment decisions, for example, by applying a bit of common sense. Don’t act on facts you cannot verify. Don’t put all your trust in brokers and salespeople, even if they are trustworthy. Avoid investments you don’t completely understand – and if you ignore that rule, don’t invest more money than you are willing to lose. If you put all your money into buying a bridge in the desert and lose it all… well, that’s just foolish.
When it comes to investment strategies (in stocks or bonds or whatever), countless studies have shown that being consistent – sticking to a sensible strategy over a long period of time – is much more likely to make you rich than jumping from one strategy to another depending on what’s going on with the market or what’s going on in your head.
And when it comes to building wealth through a business enterprise or by developing a profession, getting to work early each morning and working steadily till the work is done – even in the face of challenges and disappointments – is not just important but essential.
From my book How to Speak Intelligently About Everything That Matters https://smile.amazon.com/Speak-Intelligently-About-Everything-Matters
In ancient Greece, plays were performed in huge, open-air theaters, and most people sat far away from the action. To help the audience keep track of what was going on onstage, actors wore masks with exaggerated facial expressions. That made it easier to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys, the masters from the slaves, and the male characters from the female characters. (Keep in mind that all the parts were played by men.) And when something about a character’s appearance or emotions changed (e.g., when Oedipus blinded himself), it could be quickly portrayed – even to the folks in the back row – by the actor donning a new mask.
This theatrical convention is represented today by two iconic images: the laughing mask of comedy and the weeping mask of tragedy.
Look at This…
https://biggeekdad.com/2018/01/hiking-continental-divide-trail/
Government or Business?
Just as you can’t trust businesspeople to put their customers first, you can’t trust politicians to put their constituents first.
Neither libertarians nor big-government advocates have a theoretical advantage in the argument over whether it is better for the government or for private businesses to hold power. But if you look at business versus government in terms of their major contributions to American history, you can see a difference.
Arthur Bloom, the award-winning television news director, said this about the government’s efforts to destroy the Bell Telephone Company:
There are two giant entities at work in our country, and they both have an amazing influence on our daily lives…. One has given us radar, sonar, stereo, teletype, the transistor, hearing aids, artificial larynxes, talking movies, and the telephone. The other has given us the Civil War, the Spanish American War, the First World War, the Second World War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, double-digit inflation, double-digit unemployment, the Great Depression, the gasoline crisis, and the Watergate fiasco. Guess which one is now trying to tell the other one how to run its business?
At the highest level of our economy we see big business working hand-in-hand with the government. That is because the government has always known it was in its best interest to align itself with the bankers and major business players. It is really only the entrepreneurial class that can be trusted to create more wealth for more people, but government rarely gives entrepreneurs more than a passing nod.
The First Step to Getting Funding for Your Business
One of the most commonly asked questions I get from would-be entrepreneurs is: “How do I get money for my business idea?”
I’ve answered it before, but it’s worth answering again because the question keeps coming up. Let’s start with a bit of harsh truth: It isn’t easy.
You may have heard the expression that if you build a better mousetrap the world will beat a path to your door. That implies that there is always lots of money looking around for good ideas.
On the contrary, money rarely chases after ideas. Most of the time, money chases money.
Take the business I am in: information publishing. Not a week goes by when I don’t hear a proposition from someone who has a “brilliant” idea for a publication. It might be a new investment newsletter or a magazine about retirement or a website on health and fitness. “I can’t tell you what the idea is,” they usually say, “but when you hear it you will realize how special it is and you’ll be happy to fund it.”
Sometimes people want me to sign non-disclosure agreements. Apparently they fear that I will “steal their idea” and not pay them for it.
In my 25+ years of listening to publishing ideas, I have signed only two or three such agreements. And they were done years ago, before I really understood what I was doing. Nowadays, I don’t sign them. Not because I want to steal the idea, but because I know there is a 99.9 percent chance that (a) I won’t like it or (b) I will already be working on something similar.
That second situation is quite common. When one person comes up with a clever idea, it’s very likely that other people – often people employed by companies I consult with – have come up with it too.
The reason for these “coincidences” is easy to understand if you’ve read Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point. Brand-new ideas seldom come to the market sprung from the thigh of Zeus. Usually, they have been percolating around the market’s periphery for years. Gradually, they reform themselves until one particular application of the idea catches fire.
Since the economy began to collapse in the middle of 2008, for example, every smart person in the investment advisory business had been busy thinking about new ways to make money in 2009. These individual thinkers talked to one another and made comments in e-letters and blogs. One specific idea spurred another. And, eventually, there was an outpouring of similar ideas. I saw a half-dozen new products related to income-oriented investment advisories. And another half-dozen for products that focused on short selling.
The people that came up with these ideas were not stealing from one another. They were individually mulling over the same problems. It’s a sort of collective consciousness that results in so many similar ideas, only a handful of which will go on to make money.
And that gets us to the main reason why I don’t sign non-disclosure agreements. Because I know that ideas themselves are not so important. What matters is the way they are articulated.
In How to Get Rich, Felix Dennis puts it like this:
It really does not matter who gives birth to any particular idea. This is borne out by the law relating to patents and inventions. You cannot patent an idea. You can only patent your own method for implementing an idea. …Ray Kroc did not invent the idea of fast food. …There were thousands of ‘fast food’ outlets in the USA at the time. …His genius was merely to recognize this fact and implement a simple five-point plan: Standardize the food and prices, franchise the outlets, produce the food swiftly in clean surroundings, offer value for money, and market the whole shebang relentlessly.
Yes, you need more than an idea to attract money. You need some unique selling proposition and, if possible, proof that the idea will work. You can have both things if – before looking for money – you build yourself a working model.
Let’s look at a few examples that define the difference between an idea and a working model.
Idea: a newsletter on short selling
Working Model: an e-letter that has been published for six months and has 100 paid subscribers
Idea: a retail jewelry store
Working Model: an operating business that has sold jewelry at flea markets profitably for a year
Idea: a musical comedy about Enron
Working Model: a script that has been performed to rave reviews at local theaters
The difference between an idea and a working model is significant – especially to a potential investor. The difference is two-fold:
- Ideas tend to be generalized, whereas working models are specific.
- Ideas are unproven, but working models show the potential for profits.
So that is the first and most important thing to do once you’ve come up with a “great” business idea. Turn it into a working model.
You don’t need to spend much money doing that if you are clever. By taking advantage of the Internet and using direct-marketing techniques, almost any business can be tested without a huge investment.
Almost any. Not every. You can’t create an inexpensive working model of a three-wheeled car, for example. Nor can you test out a new kind of luxury hotel idea on the cheap. But capital-intensive business ideas like those are best left to the larger businesses that occupy already dominant industries. For ordinary entrepreneurs, the good ideas are those that can be modeled cheaply.
Once you have a working model, you have a much better chance of getting the money you want. But where do you look?
Stop Selling When You Are Ahead
“I saw the most amazing movie last night. You’ve got to see it,” Jane says.
“Tell me more,” says Mary.
“Well, Ryan Gosling stars in it. And also Jennifer Lawrence.”
“My favorite actors,” says Mary.
“They have a hot romance going on in the movie…”
“Sounds great…”
“And there’s this scene where Ryan has his shirt off and…”
“Say no more,” says Mary. “I’m going!”
“And he takes his shirt off and all of a sudden this horrible thing pops out of his chest and…”
“What?”
“This creature from another dimension pops out…”
“What kind of movie is this?”
“Sort of science fiction/horror…”
“Ugh. Forget it. I hate horror movies.”
What’s wrong with this conversation?
In an attempt to persuade her friend Mary to see the movie, Jane made a big mistake – a mistake that is very common in the world of business: She continued to sell the product after the customer was already sold.
In their textbook Hospitality Sales: Selling Smarter, Judy A. Siguaw and David C. Bojanic said:
If you have made a good presentation and the prospects are satisfied that the benefits offered will improve their situation, and are believable, any further presentation is overselling. Overselling can create, in the mind of the prospects, a feeling of disbelief as to the validity of the owner benefits. It can also result in the loss of favorable attention because excessive repetition of benefits and use of other motivational tools can lead to boredom or confusion, which, in turn, causes an unfavorable emotional reaction.
In other words, “overselling” will kill your sale.
You can prevent this from happening by learning how to recognize the moment your customer is ready to buy. If you continue to sell beyond this point, her enthusiasm for the product is going to wane. Not only that, but you risk saying something – like Jane’s description of the creature bursting from Ryan Gosling’s chest – that will quash her interest in an instant.
In this regard, people who do their selling face to face have an advantage over those who do their selling via direct mail or the Internet. By paying close attention to the effect their words are having on their customers, they can custom tailor each sales presentation. If the customer looks doubtful, they can pile on proof of their claims. If the customer looks confused, they can clarify the point they’re trying to make by restating it – over and over again, if need be.
And when a customer begins giving signals that he is ready to buy, astute salespeople know the time is right to swoop in and close the sale.
These are the clues they look for in the customer:
- A relaxed position – arms open, facing the salesperson
- Excitement in the eyes
- Nodding the head
- Oral affirmations – saying “yes,” “right,” “uh huh”
When you are writing direct-mail or online sales copy, you don’t have signals like these to guide you. So you have to find another way to keep your sales message on track. To my knowledge, there isn’t any generally accepted way to do this. But I’ve experimented with a few techniques, and have hit upon one that works pretty well.
I’m talking about putting your copy through a peer review.
The process I recommend is the same one that many of my best clients use. Basically, here’s how it works:
You put together a group of five or six people – ideally, experienced marketers and copywriters. You ask them to rate the various parts of your copy – the headline, lead, body, and close – and give specific suggestions for improving them. You also ask your reviewers to indicate any sections that are boring, unbelievable, or confusing. And you ask them to highlight the point in the copy where they feel ready to buy.
That point should be about two-thirds to three-quarters of the way through the copy. If it comes much earlier, you know you have to delete some of the “overselling” you do after that point and move directly to the close. (If it doesn’t happen at all, you know you have to completely revamp the sales copy and make it stronger.)
Don’t make the mistake Jane made and “talk” yourself out of a sale. You’ll be blowing a perfectly good opportunity… and you’ll never know why.
The Unpleasant Truth About Asking for Favors
I recently intercepted a memo from a partner of mine. It appeared to be a nothing-much memo regarding a not-all-that-important request for a favor from a business associate – but I intervened because I thought it could ultimately be damaging.
Mutual back scratching, as I’ve often said, is a big part of good business. All the successful business relationships I know of – at least the ones that last – involve a lot of back and forth. I do such and such for John, and sometime in the future he will reciprocate. If he doesn’t, I cross him off my list. Unless I’ve done him a foolishly big favor in the first place, losing my good will costs him more than he gained from my initial service.
It’s all about give and take.
Smart businesspeople (those who think long-term) don’t demand an immediate quid pro quo. They are happy to let the credits add up by helping out where they can. But unless they are saint-like, they do keep a running tab in their heads. And when the time comes to ask for service in return, they expect it.
That’s the way it should be. And when businesspeople act that way, they prosper. Just as important, the products and services they offer tend to improve because of the exchange of information and technology. And this benefits their customers.
But not every businessperson is that smart. Many fall short when it comes to cooperation in general and favors in particular. If you randomly selected a dozen business owners and lined them up against a wall, you’d find a considerable range of enlightenment as far as cooperation is concerned.
And that’s why you have to be careful when you ask for favors. Because the person from whom you are requesting a service may not think of it the same way as you do. Such was the case with the favor my partner was about to ask in the memo I intercepted.
The favor was for the other company to do some printing and mailing for her – things she would have been happy to do for them. But what I think she failed to understand was the reaction her request was likely to cause. I happen to know the people who run that business. I’ve worked with them for years. And though they are good people, they have a tendency (in my view) to overvalue their work and undervalue that of others.
There was another factor, too, that she failed to take into consideration. My partner’s view of the favor she was asking was somewhat distorted. Because she runs a smaller business, it would have been fairly easy for her to personally manage the printing of a job for them. But since their operation is larger, a similar task would have involved several people … and required checks and double-checks… with no organized way to account for the work done.
Between my partner’s honest misunderstanding of what she was asking and the tendency of those she asked to overvalue their contribution, trouble was brewing. They would have done what she asked, but my partner would have incurred a big “You owe me.” A debt she wouldn’t recognize – which would have made matters worse.
My advice to her?
The Advantages of Running an Ethical Business
A year or two ago I got a letter from a small-business owner and “avid” reader of Early To Rise who was struggling with an ethical question.
This woman, whom I’ll call “Renee” to protect her identity, was successfully selling investment software to customers, but she had discovered that 85 percent of them were trading accounts of $10,000 or less. She said that she knew from previous experience as a broker that it was very difficult to make money with such a small capital base. She wanted to know how she could continue to sell the software, knowing that most of her customers “were not going to have a profitable experience because they are starting off too small.”
The answer is easy. Selling bad products to your customers (or good products to customers that can’t take advantage of them) is a very bad idea.
It may seem like a smart thing to do – if, that is, you have no scruples. But if you have a conscience, the shame of what you are doing will take its toll on you. And the expense of that toll will be far greater than whatever monetary compensation the business is likely to bring you.
And even if you don’t have a conscience, it is still not a good idea to sell products and services that can’t help your customers. In the long run, you will end up working harder and harder to make the same amount of money (whatever it is), because your customer base will be constantly slipping away – like sand running through a sieve.
There is, indeed, a sucker born every minute – but most suckers get wise after being cheated. And they will pay you back by badmouthing you to everyone they can, including regulators that have the power to put you out of business.
I understand Renee’s temptation to come up with a rationale to keep selling her software programs. They are well designed. The advertising isn’t false. And she isn’t holding a gun to her customers’ heads … they are choosing to buy from her.
The only problem is that the wrong kind of customer is buying the programs. In fact, most of the buyers are the wrong kind.