As American As The Pet Rock
Friday, March 21st, 2008| Have you ever owned a pet rock? |
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My bet is no. So why is it that everyone in America has heard about the brilliance of the pet rock, but yet none of us has ever owned one? Why is the idea of the pet rock more American than apple pie? What you first have to understand is that American business culture is obsessed with the idea of quick and easy dollar. Whether that manifests itself as a cheap idea for growing a company that will cost little in dollars and resources or the idealistic small business entrepreneur who is looking for the one “brilliant” idea that will grant him/her early retirement, the point stands. We work to meet ends, but we play the lottery in hopes of millions - the belief in easy money is ingrained in the very heart of American culture. There is lot of historical precedent around this idea; I think it’s a core part of the idea of the American Dream. Some may say we are a hard working culture, but I honestly think we are more hopeful than hardworking. So what is the problem with this?The problem with the pet rock mentality of business making is two-fold:
As a search marketer for the past 7+ years, I am more concerned with the second point, but I will briefly speak to the first. The pet rock myth is highlighted (primarily) by my initial question “Have you ever owned a pet rock?” We speak so highly of the pet rock idea and how it made millions, yet the business was a fluke and ultimately not sustainable. A successful business should be built like a marriage or a family heritage, not like a one-night stand.But my bigger problem is with the second point. In the business culture, it is rare that we talk about quality; mostly we discuss pushing a half-ass product out the door at the lowest possible cost and highest possible margin. There is often little concern for customer feedback and long-term quality control. It simply boils down to a discussion of quantity vs quality. The conversation is not new to the pet rock methodology, nor is it new to this era of business, but in the days of overnight web-based success, it has become more prevalent. In the past 4 companies I have worked for, my stance has grown more and more steadfast and my ability to tolerate the easy way to make a buck vs the best way to make a product has weakened each year. Why? Why can’t we all just build pet rocks? Well, here is a word that you can put in arsenal - Sustainability. People love to say the word “scalable”, but nearly everyone forgets its brethren in the buzzword world, “sustainability.” Is your idea sustainable?; does it have legs? If you answer is “no” to either of these questions then do yourself, your customers and the children who will have to hear about your business (like the pet rock) a favor and go back to the drawing boards. Just because you have an idea to make money doesn’t mean that you should make money off that idea. In the search marketing world, I have to deal with a lot of clients and companies that are mesmerized by the “pump and dump” company - they may have heard stories about the 18 year old millionaire who retired before he left college and they want to recapture that magic. But like the pet rock story, the flip side of all this is the admission that there is no magic bullet, there are a million millionaires enjoying retirement. Gary Dahl (pet rock inventor) is still hard at work and so are all the other people who you have heard that made a quick and easy million. Unlike Dahl and these stories, CEOs who have legions of employees looking to them for ends to meet can’t afford to think in these terms. They need to start thinking about quality and the longevity of a sound business. In an upcoming post, I’ll address the principles of quality vs “pump and dump” and look at what indicators you as an entrepreneur (or employee) can identify to steer you product successfully while it is still in the ideation stage. |