Get it right and strike it rich

The right wayNote that when the subject of expanding “The Facebook” to cover the world, Zuckerberg considers the idea respectfully, but demonstrates no particular interest in it.

Does that mean he wasn’t a “possibility thinker?” That he didn’t practice positive thinking? That he didn’t have the intelligence to see the value of what he had?

No, no, and no.

He was working on exactly what he was supposed to be working at: getting what was in front of his face right.

I’m all for creative, open-ended, blue sky thinking. It’s where many of our best ideas come from, but when it comes to putting boots on the ground and rubber on the road, fantasy doesn’t cut it.

Long-term success requires engineering and engineering, to be successful, has to be as precise as possible and rooted in the real world.

Another exampleIs this example of someone starting out with a definite but modest goal and step-by-step growing it into a massive success an anomaly?

Hardly.

Let’s look at the other 800 pound gorilla on the Internet, Google.

The founders of Google had a very simple original goal which was to improve what at the time was near- total and easy-to-manipulate crap (search engine results) into something reliable and worthwhile.

All they wanted to do was develop the technology and sell it to someone.

Had you known them and had you had $1 million back in 1997, you could’ve bought it from them because that was what they were willing to sell it for. The name of their product (in this case a set of algorithms)? “Backrub.” Yup, that was the original name that Google’s founders wanted to call their service.

They succeeded in the long term for the very same reason that every other major search service of the time is now in the financial toilet: Google focused  on getting it right while the other companies didn’t.

The owners of Alta Vista, Excite, Lycos, Infoseek, Hotbot, and many others were OK with the obviously substandard results they were returning to their users. They were making money and that’s all that mattered to them. End result: today they are out of business or operating in greatly reduced circumstances.

By the way, Larry Page and Sergey Brin offered that deal – all the Google patents for $1 million – to the CEOs of every one of those companies and not a single one considered it seriously.

Then there is the web itselfTim Berners-Lee, who wrote all the original code that the World Wide Web is based on, did it to solve a problem for a specific group of people.

In his case, his intended “market” was the community of particle physicists worldwide who needed a better way to keep up-to-date with experiments going on in their field. He focused on getting that right and happened to change the world in the process.

Then along came Marc Andreessen (co-founder of Netscape), who at the time was an undergraduate working for $6.85 an hour in the physics lab at the University of Illinois. All he wanted to do was put an easy-to-use graphical interface on the World Wide Web which he first came across on his job.

Marc got someone to help him do it, Eric Bina, and together they focused on doing it right. Then they created versions for other operating systems and did that right too. Then Andreessen personally supported users without charge for program that he gave away free. Within a year or so, Mosaic had 1 million users.

All this – Netscape, Google, Facebook and even the Web itself – happened because the people involved focused on getting it right.

If there’s a venture anywhere on earth, large or small, that’s lasted and had any other foundation, let me know.

Meanwhile…Tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people have been educated to believe that Internet marketing is finding a “hook”, generating a ton of hype (often in coordination with other hypesters), and jamming as many sales down people’s throats as possible until the market wakes up and burns out.

What a travesty.

And besides being unethical, it’s stupid.

Try to find anyone who has had more than a few years run without blowing themselves up using this approach.

The average life span of a “I’m in a rush to get rich” Internet marketing guru is about two years from the time they’re “famous” to the time they’re despised. And though through to the power of momentum they may continue to make money, even “great” money, for a while afterwards, it always ends the same: reduced reputation, reduced prospects, reduced income.

Peter Drucker, arguably the most highly regarded business advisor of the last 100 years, put it best:

“The purpose of business is to create customers and to innovate.”

Nowhere in that definition did he include making as much money as you possibly can with as little effort and as little concern for your customers as possible.

Even under the best of circumstances, doing business right is tough. It’s possible to do everything right and have a reversal that takes out the game. But one thing’s for sure: if your focus is anything other than getting it right – not with lip service, but in reality – then you’ll be building a foundation on sand.

The good news is that the number of so-called business people who understand this principle, let alone live it, are so few and far between that in most fields there is rarely any truly serious competition.

P.S. I don’t know what it’s going to take to drain the ethical swamp that Internet marketing (and many other industries) have descended into in the last several years.

Our recent contribution to the effort has been to bring to print a previously private manuscript by former Libertarian presidential candidate (1996 and 2000), author, publisher and business owner, the late Harry Browne.

Many know his classic book “How I Found Freedom In and Unfree World.”

Few people know that Browne also conducted trainings for business people as well. One of his most important works – on the real art of selling and business building – never made it into print.

Now it has and it’s worth a look.

Details: http://www.TheSecretofSellingAnything.com/

– Ken McCarthy

P.S. For over 25 years I’ve been sharing the simple but powerful things that matter in business with my clients.

If you’d like direction for your business that will work today, tomorrow and twenty years from now, visit us at the System Club.