Immature Thinking After All These Years

Ken's Blog

A while back, I wrote about how immature people are when it comes to how they think about "making money online."

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I use that phrase since few people think in terms of
building a "business" the way they do offline. They think
about "making money." Now, there's nothing wrong with that
-- no one's breaking any laws. But why not think bigger?
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Background

Let's allow that for the first few years of the Web, say until 2000, those of us who were around then were still feeling our way. It was OK for thinking to be "immature" since we were still trying to figure out the Web itself.

But in the past 10 years, what's the excuse for not considering the start-up of your own e-business every bit as seriously as starting up an offline business?...

Risk and Reward

The financial gain of starting your own e-business is as great as starting your own offline business. So why do folks not seem to take it as seriously?

True, there is a lot less financial risk. But there is still considerable "time risk" involved. We all value our time...

I can't accept that most people somehow feel that the absence of the "stick of failure" means that the "carrot of success" is not enough to cause one to start thinking seriously.

If Offline Business Thought the Same Way

To show you what I mean, let's take common online "business" concepts and translate them into the offline equivalent...

1) "Make Money Online... Now"

What offline business expects to be making money as soon as they start an offline business? Not only do you work for less than minimum wage when starting any business, you usually sink money into your offline business in the first year. In fact, one of the most common reasons for offline business failure is insufficient capitalization.

2) Focus on cheap rent

What offline business person would worry whether their "rent" is $10 or $20 more per month? Smart business people want to negotiate a good rent, of course. But they understand that you get what you pay for. And who would not read the fine print of a commercial lease, failing to miss that your rent will be raised substantially at the lessor's discretion if you become successful?

3) Flitting

Offline business people don't flit, first trying one thing, then another, until finally they've got 15 things on the go, none of them making money, let alone becoming a business. (They may, however, brag about how little it all costs them. )

4) Game-Playing

SEO (the manipulation of Search Engines to produce search results which rank their Web pages incorrectly high) is the biggest game. Do you know any serious offline business person who tries to manipulate clients into visiting their business at a location where it is not? Beside SEO, there is just so much short-term game-playing, instead of long-term business-building.

5) "Cheap-quick-easy"

It used to be that folks flocked to free sitebuilders and Web hosting. Now they flock to free blog-builders and Web hosting, as if the mere creation of a blog is enough for it to magically become a business.

They still love the idea of having 10 sites (blogs) for the price of 1, failing to realize that it takes time to build a single profitable online business, let alone 10. And if you ever did build 10 high-traffic sites, your friendly "no limit" Web host will suddenly not be so friendly, nor so "no limit."

So What's the Point?

I could go on and on, but it boils down to this... most people focus on making short-term dollars instead of serious, long-term, profitable businesses with equity. They focus on "make money online."

Sooner or later, folks are going to start thinking differently. They'll start planning and building and monetizing rationally. They'll understand that the snowball takes a while to get rolling, but as it does, its momentum earns you more and more, with less and less work.

And that all adds up to equity, business with value. A business that some other company values highly enough to buy it from you.

Until folks start getting beyond the "make money online" stage, they are merely treading water. Their feet may be paddling like crazy, but they basically remain in the same place.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Where does this weird type of thinking come from?  Did you ever suffer from it? If so, I'd love to hear more about what was going through your head at the time.

It fascinates me that after one serious decade, thinking on the subject by solo proprietors has simply not advanced.

All the best,