The Zomby Self-Help Business Primer

An Introduction
In the book and magazine world, one of the most consistent ways to make money is to sell some version of self-help porn.

The big categories are diet/exercise, relationship, personal improvement, and business. They all grow from the same little seed. That seed is the reason I call the stuff porn: people like to look with lust on something that someone else has that they want and since most people just read the books without ever spending the time to really implement the suggestions it amounts to not much more than mental masturbation that fuels the industry.

If every diet or exercise book ever sold resulted in a healthy, slender person, the US would be a nation of David Hasselhoffs. Only most of us would probably be better actors.

The business world has its own self-help porn. It comes with titles like Zen and the Art of Firing Your Employee (okay, I made that one up, but if you're in the market, you know what I'm talking about). Managers that read those books are pretty much in the same shape as the hapless dieters, though. Most of them fail to implement (or, often, even understand the point) of the books and articles they read, so they rarely become better managers. They become obsessed with low-hanging fruit and moving cheese and crumbs from the pockets of the big guys, but they never realize the ultimate powerlessness of a catch phrase that isn't backed up by good business sense and planning.

So, again, reading the books becomes an exercise in mental masturbation--a whole lot of flopping about for not a whole lot of fulfillment. If you know what I mean.

Even better for the book publishers, all of the self-help porn is faddish. That is, people flock to buy the book when it becomes the "in" thing to do. The only really sure thing about any fad is that another one will follow along in a few years. The built in audience for the books is a great way for a bunch of writers and publishers to make money, but it really hasn't solved many of the world's problems.

Men are From Mars, and Women Can't Get There From Here may have sold millions of copies and may have raised the level of understanding between genders, but it sure hasn't stopped couples from arguing about things from toilet seats to cash flow. Sun Tzu's Art of Destroying Your Business Competitors hasn't resulted in the complete take-over of all businesses by one obsessed manager warrior, although it probably had a few good tips on positioning and strategic thinking. So the managers, the dieters, the co-dependent relationship junkies, and the just plain broken will move from book to book and article to article looking for that one big payoff that will miraculously change their lives. They all want that mythical self-help money shot.

I've worked for one dot-com start-up that failed, a small start-up that peaked a long time ago, and a trade-show house that had managers that were addicted to a never ending string of management philosophies (giving each of them about two months to make miraculous changes to the company before throwing implementation overboard and moving on to the next wonder drug). I am now in the process of spending a majority of my "free" time starting up two very different business ventures. There is a relationship between the two ventures, although the ultimate business model is a bit different. The potential for failure is there for both, although the cost of entry is pretty low and the payoff for success could be quite high.

Through all of this I've watched, participated, and learned a lot about business. I've seen what it takes to succeed in spite of yourself, how rare it is to have the vision to succeed, and how common it is to have the unfounded arrogance to fail. And now I get to test myself against those metrics and find out if I have the capacity to succeed.

In true self-help book and article tradition, I'm going to begin writing posts that amount to my own business self help book. I'm going to avoid the current buzzwords as much as possible and make the suggestions, ideas, and thoughts as straightforward as I can. I'm going to make it specific to start-up and small businesses, although many of the lessons I've learned have been from watching the bigger companies cycle through their own successes and failures.

Unlike all that other self-help porn, though, you'll get this for free, and my aim isn't to start some fad. I just want to share some lessons that I've learned, subject my thoughts to critique, and hope that everyone who's interested comes out with some good ideas that they can put to use in their own business dealings.

Anyone with thoughts and ideas on the subject should feel free to send them to me or simply write offshoots of the project. The ones that I feel are the best will be integrated into a map of links when the project is up and rolling.

Hopefully you'll enjoy the trip. And if you don't, I'm sure I'll hear about it...

[Note: If this post doesn't get me tagged by a bunch of business firewalls as "unacceptable" then nothing will.]

Posted by zombyboy at November 30, 2004 09:31 AM