How To Lose A Kidney

Ken's Blog

Seth Godin, one of my favorite observers of the e-business scene, passed along an interesting video, Charlie The Unicorn, the other day. It's about Charlie and a very special mountain, a Candy Mountain.

Seth's interpretation of the video in his blog was interesting, but differs somewhat from mine...

Charlie and the Candy Mountain made me think back to my post about "Mooch Marketing." We all know that Mooch Marketing is false. Deep down, we know that it's just not possible to "get rich quick." It's so easy to fall for it, though, because we want to fall for it.

The "Candy Mountain" of Mooch Marketers develops a ton of noise through a well-orchestrated campaign. All this noise inevitably sucks many "Charlies" (who is originally and naturally doubtful in the video) into the false promise.

Extend this concept to the false promise of blogging itself. The noise around blogging is intense, but it's created by the exceptional few.

The Candy Mountain concept even applies to the "cheap-quick-easy" noise created by multi-million dollar ad campaigns of the large, "traditional Web hosts." Most small business people, even most Webmasters, are unable to convert conventional small business sites into genuine, long-term success.

So many people online, one way or another, are sucked into the Candy Mountain...

• Get Rich Quick? Everyone would be rich if it was true.
• Traditional Web hosting? The fatality/futility rate is near-total for small business.
• Blogging? Most people simply should not be blogging. It's a huge commitment (as my own infrequent personal blogs attest). And not many people have that much to say, nor can they phrase it as cleverly as Seth. Who makes real money at blogging? The exceptional 1%. The rest is just noise about blogging.

So what happens when you do get sucked into that cave of Candy Mountain? Watch the video and see for yourself...

You lose a kidney.

All the best,