Just had a conversation over dinner with my mom.
She’s just starting up this little eCommerce store, and was asking me about some different ways she could drive traffic to it, me being the family marketing nut.
We got to talking about Google Adwords, and I happened to mention how they’ve been banning accounts left and right recently… sometimes justified, and sometimes for completely irrational, stupid nonsense.
One of my marketing buddies who was spending $60k+ a year on Adwords, also running an eCommerce type store… had a mention in one of his product pages that people could “lose weight permanently”.
Google thought that was an unrealistic claim, so they banned his account.
No warnings or nuthin’.
Mom, of course thought this was extremely irresponsible from Google’s side.
Ole' Uncle Charlie Darwin, via Wikipedia
People make their livings there… it’s like a little society in and of itself. And Google should treat it accordingly. Families are ruined because of their shenanigans.
I agreed. Then I reminded her that… this is business. And in business, darwinism rules. Survival of the fittest.
Everyone who loses everything from a google ban, or a google slap, or a google anything… really only has himself to blame.
Diversification is the name of the game.
Building assets is the name of the game.
It’s certainly not Google.
Mom argued “Would you say that to everyone who’s just working their job, that they only have themselves to blame if they get fired?”
I thought about it for a minute.
“Yes.”
Maybe I wouldn’t say it to their faces… but I’d certainly think it.
Most people are far too comfortable in their meager existences to care enough… to do something for their future. To build something. To start living life on their own terms.
So they sit there, and stagnate in their own ignorance.
But they don’t have to.
If they just started poking around a little… they’d find a world of opportunity, greater opportunities than has ever existed.
Poke.
Most of the time when I talk about stuff like this… people end up hurt and insulted, and make me out as the villain. The party-pooper.
From where I’m sitting, I’m the most life-positive dude ever. And I do everything I can to nudge people in a different direction… that will take them to where they want to go (as opposed to where the status quo dictates they should).
I’m just your friendly-neighborhood poker. Sometimes I poke a bit hard, a bit roughly. But if you’re torturing yourself in your 9-5 dilbert cube every day… and you’re not on the hustle every single day trying to get out… I think a good round of ass-kicking would be more suitable than a gentle poke.
As much as you do try to get folks to wake the hell up… it’s more often than not an entirely futile practice.
Maybe they’ll reach their own conclusions one rainy day in the distant future… or be forced to, when an unexpected sharp stick pokes them in the eye and forces them to look at their own existences, and question if the path they’re on will take ‘em to where they want to go.
As Simon Black likes to say… There are two ways to sleep well at night… Be ignorant or be prepared.
Signing out…
- Linus
P.S. I’m working on something wicked cool for ya’ll… it’s a little something that might really help ya take your biz to the next level.
