“A lot of online business owners have the mentality of children”
Published: Sun, 08/30/20
The context:
He was perplexed by some of the weird billing games he sees customers try to get away with in the SaaS business. It can be like dealing with spoiled entitled children. Especially the ones who don’t read the upfront, clear-as-day-not-at-all-hidden-or-obscure terms of what they’re buying, and who haggle over every penny, even when getting ridiculously generous deals nobody else gets. These types of losers tend to get very creative about not paying for using the services they want, and expect the software publisher to give them special deals and breaks and extended deadlines... instead of getting their shyt together and behaving like responsible adults who vote and pay taxes.
This immaturity comes out in all kinds of other ways, too.
For example:
Last month, I wrote an email going into great detail about the outright contempt I have for anyone who tries to fraudulently sneak back into “Email Players” after they’ve been blocked. And yet, over the next few days afterwards, I had a record number of these exact types I was talking about trying to sneak back in.
I like to think they aren't outright illiterate, but, who knows.
Another example:
A guy had to cancel his Learnistic account.
His reason:
He loved it, and wished he could still use it, but his boss doesn’t want to pay the few bucks per day for it anymore.
Translation:
“mommy & daddy cut me off, and I can’t afford my own milk money”
Like I said:
These boys & ghouls essentially have the maturity of children.
10+ years of selling subscription newsletters — primarily to “online” businesses — and this is the norm with these types whether it’s informational or software. If anything, I sometimes catch myself being pleasantly shocked when I see online business owners act like responsible adults.
Which brings me to another point:
I have noticed friends who also focus on selling to “online businesses” exclusively tend to be very cynical about the market.
They have almost a love/hate relationship with it.
They love helping them.
But, they hate the child-like approach 95% of them display.
I admittedly used to let this sort of thing irk me to that degree at first several years ago too. Then, I started heavily curating who I allow to buy at all to both keep the trash out, and protect the integrity of the product, brand, and subscriber/customer base inside. The difference in the satisfaction I now get doing business has been, quite literally, as different as night and day. And when I see the nonsense, it mostly only mildly annoys me, and oftentimes amuses me. Especially since it simply reminds me of how there really is no “competition” for anyone with an online business if someone is (1) simply not a flake and (2) has an attention span greater than a fruit fly’s.
Notice, I am qualifying these people as “online” businesses.
Offline business people don’t behave the way online business people do.
They act like grownups if for no other reason than they have to.
They have rent, payroll, ordinances, taxes, fees, city councils, crooked county commissioners, skeevy state bureaucrats, hard costs, strangling local sales taxes, bad weather, road work blocking access, corrupt regulators on the take hounding them, recent government mandates to make people wear masks or they can be shut down, and a whole slew of other forces trying to take them down on a daily basis in some cases. The average online business boy or ghoul pounding their chest on Facebook about how they are such an “entrepreneur!” has no clue.
My mind quivers at the thought of it all.
We got it so easy online for now.
It won’t always be this way, but for now the internet is a very forgiving medium.
And that’s why 95% of online business owners have the mentality of children:
Because they can.
Doing business is essentially free.
But from what I hear tell… the bureaucrats, politicians, and lawyers have been busy prepping all kinds of business-stifling legislation & taxation schemes that’ll make the draconian EU laws look like a Libertarian’s free market paradise.
All of which brings me to the point:
If you are one of the above 95% with the business mentality of a child, enjoy it while you can. A year from now, certainly 5 years from now, you’ll be bunking in your mom’s basement again if you don’t get your act together.
Can’t say you weren’t warned…
All right, let’s do some business.
If you are one of the 5% of grownup online business owners out there, and if you want an even greater edge over any so-called competition using email especially, then the September “Email Players” issue can give you that edge and then some.
The kind of emails it teaches can be extremely engaging.
They can be extremely profitable, too.
And, they are especially useful if you are paranoid about your list thinking you are always selling to them, and don’t want to look like a greedy salesman just pitching them all the time, etc.
Something a lot of folks worry about, from the questions I get.
The deadline to get this issue is tomorrow.
If you want it, hit the jump below right away:
https://www.EmailPlayers.com
Ben Settle