From the article: Polish recommended that Thompson document how he had created his web business in a course. Thompson took his advice. When he spoke the following year, he ended up selling $35,000 worth of his courses. Bingo!
Bingo indeed. It does make me wonder... is the "best" way to make a quick million to sell courses that purport to teach people how to make a quick million?
A few years ago I was really into the idea of starting a lifestyle business and began listening to a few podcasts about this. All of the podcasts I listened to ended up creating some sort of business related to podcasting.
I bought a book years ago called The Art of Self-Promotion for Musicians, written by someone who quit being a musician to....advise other musicians how to make $. Actually it seemed good, although it didn't have much effect.[0] But even 'better' was a one-day course in my city on how to make $ as a musician, only $10. Unfortunately I didn't have $10.
[0] Well, the "Remarkably" game came from that, I think. The book says: to find your image, find a few things you are remarkably, e.g. remarkably good looking, remarkably silly etc. Which I made into a wacky multiplayer pen + paper game - make columns for the names of all people present, then write down lots of things they are remarkably, the stranger the better. It's like one-word poetry. Can be extremely funny.
You can see a lot of this in the VC-funded economy as well. Most B2B VC-funded startups just cater to other VC-funded startups and nobody without VC money could ever afford their services.
Even most B2C VC-funded companies need customers making VC-funded salaries to be able to survive those crucial first few years before they can figure out a pricing model that works outside SFBA.
It boils down to entrepreneurs solving problems they have and understand. Whichever community you're in, those are the problems you end up solving.
This is what happened in the gold rush. From retrospect, if you wanted to get rich you'd do a lot better selling hammers, pans and jeans than actually searching for gold.
The key thing about picks, shovels, and subscriber-only podcasts is that the customer pays upfront. So whether or not they work, you get paid.
And if they don't work for a particular customer, well, that's probably user error, right?
You only need one or two great stories to power your marketing. If you sell 10,000 shovels and one person gets rich... put that person in your ads and sell 10,000 more shovels. A lot of businesses depend on this marketing model... lotteries, casinos, app stores, college basketball, college football, etc.
Even if they did, your chances of succeeding are slim.
If success is gold, those podcasts are really hammers and pickaxes. Whereas to get any sure-fire success, you'd need someone to sell you a ground-penetrating radar and some drilling machines.
Bingo indeed. It does make me wonder... is the "best" way to make a quick million to sell courses that purport to teach people how to make a quick million?