At MyMindshare.NET I have created Websites for Non-Techies, which is a simple web site service for those who are technically challenged.

If you know anybody who needs a web site, but doesn’t know how to go about it, send them to MyMindshare.net.

So as I lift my head up out of code and enter the world to market MyMindshare, I am finding many strange places and events. One of those places/events is called “network marketing.” Thanks to my membership in Meetup.com, I am getting plenty of invites to network marketing meetings.

I have been to two such meetings. The first was in a swank hotel conference room, and the second was at the Beverly Hills Country Club, which is not in Beverly Hills, and would be better described as a tennis club. But I digress.

The second meeting was put on by CEO Space, and the main reason that I am writing this is to give a link to this review of CEO Space, which sounds like a fair assessment.

Here is what I’m learning about network marketing, so far:

1. The purpose of the meeting is to sell a product/service, not just to do networking.
2. That’s OK, since they have gone to the trouble of organizing the meeting, including booking the space and providing refreshments.
3. The people who found the organization that is the subject of the meeting are VERY slick/suave/charismatic. The followers/members less so.
4. The product/service is of dubious value.
5. I have learned how to network at these meetings.

I look forward to going to more of these meetings. For some reason I find them interesting. The key is to leave my wallet at home. Please stop me if I ever come back from one of these meetings all glassy-eyed and enthusiastic. That would be the kiss of death.

Homage to Craigslist:

This video comes via Seth’s Blog, and it is a terrific illustration of network effects, power laws and cascades.

It is a perfect illustration of where MyMindshare is currently at — the crazy shirtless guy. Seth says the important guy is the third guy that joins the dance. The third guy is the tipping point between a bunch a crazy guys dancing to a whole crowd of dancers.

Help us find our third guy.

When you incorporate your business, it’s a little like shouting out your email address at a spammers convention. You end up on a lot of sordid mailing lists.

One of those sordid lists is the “Office of the Compliance Recorder” which appears to be an official government agency, but it is not.

When you are incorporated, there are a variety of fees that have to be paid to various federal, state and local government agencies — so many that it is very easy to lose track of who and what you are supposed to pay. Then when you get an invoice or some notice to pay, it takes time and effort to figure out what it is and what it is for. The folks at the “Office of the Compliance Recorder” try to take advantage of naivete and bureaucratic exhaustion by sending a very official-looking form to corporations (which more often than not fall in the mom-and-pop category of businesses) that says you should comply with the law and, by the way, send them $150.00.

This scam is probably best documented on an obscure blog called Hinessite (based on my cursory Google search. I really don’t want to spend a lot of time on this).

I’m taking the time to post about this because it looks like Hinessite is getting dated, and people need to know about this.

UPDATE: There is better documentation of the scam at a site called Tipstrs. Their scam is in Colorado, but the form is nearly identical. Here is what the state of Colorado has to say on the subject: http://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/business/update01_29_09.htm

Here are the details of the document they sent me:

Office of the Compliance Recorder
P.O. Box 91240
Los Angeles, CA 90009-1240

Annual Minutes Disclosure Statement
Control Number: 101825
Customer Service Unit: 1-888-325-1414

UPDATE:

I called the “Customer Service Unit” and someone in a call center did answer, but he couldn’t give me any information. I encourage anyone/everyone to call them to get more info about their business practices.

When you start a business, a brand or a project, there’s a lot of work to be done. You must tell a story, build credibility and a permission asset. People don’t trust you or believe you and you must earn their attention and trust. On top of that, you need skills, systems, machines and a team that works.

via Seth’s Blog: Harvesting.

“Build credibility and a permission asset” is the key term. MyMindshare’s problem right now is not a technical problem; it’s a social problem. You can’t code for credibility and permission.

I think the primo problem currently for MyMindshare is credibility, or what I call social referencing. People need other people to tell them that this is OK.

I recently discovered that Google Gears is responsible for breaking both WordPress and Netflix.

Gears is a browser add-on that is supposed to facilitate working offline, I think. I never figured out what it was doing for me.

I added it to my Firefox browser probably a few weeks ago, and then recently I started getting a javascript error while managing my Netflix queue. At the time I didn’t make the connection to Gears. The error on Netflix was work-aroundable.

But just within the last week, WordPress started crashing Firefox. It first happened when I tried installing a plug-in, and then it happened when uploading images for blog posts. That I couldn’t work around.

A Google search turned up this at WordPress:

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/267278

which led me to the Gears culprit.

Solution: disable Gears in the browser.

There is something suspicious, however, about the timing of these errors. I suspect that there was an update either of Firefox or Gears (I’m leaning toward Gears) that caused the breakage.

Hope this helps anyone else who is encountering this problem.

Over the last four years of developing MyMindshare, I would periodically think that this would be a lot easier if I could hire somebody else with genuine expertise to do some of the work. Most recently, I think that I need to raise funds to hire a marketing team.

When I start thinking like that, the next step is to write a business plan. Naturally, potential investors want to know how much money I need, how it is going to be spent, and how money will be made, or an “exit strategy.”

Bullshit. To raise funding from outside investors, I need bullshit to put into a business plan. Not too much bullshit, but just enough bullshit.

Because if I knew enough to write a business plan with no bullshit, I wouldn’t need outside investment.

The function of a business plan is to demonstrate skill at bullshitting. Not just any form of bullshitting, mind you, but the specific form of bullshitting in which venture capitalists like to root around. There is a hierarchy based on the quality of bullshit that venture capitalists stick their nose into. I suspect that the highest quality bullshit is produced by Stanford MBAs backed by Stanford Ph.Ds and their truffles are a delicacy most appreciated by the connoisseurs on Sand Hill Road.

But I’m not complaining. Bullshit is better than nothing, and good bullshit is better than bad bullshit if you are in the investment crap shoot.

I’m just not a very good bullshitter, and this is a good thing for MyMindshare. Because I suck at bullshitting, I have to innovate. If I had received any significant funding to solve my perceived problems prior to now (and into the foreseeable future), innovation would have ceased. MyMindshare would have been turned over to the experts in conventional wisdom because there is no such thing as an expert in innovation. By the time you reach expert status in anything, it is no longer innovative.

That’s why you have to bullshit in your business plan when you are innovating. You have to claim expertise on a foundation that is entirely self-referential, or make disingenuous references to conventional wisdom. People who are good at that write business plans. I’m not good at that.

Note on the subtitle:

“The best truffles grow in purple cow dung” is an homage to Seth Godin, who wrote The Purple Cow, All Marketers are Liars, and The Bootstrapper’s Bible.

The following was composed for an email to a colleague. I like it so much, I decided to share it with everyone!

I am taking the focus off of the money part, and putting it on the utility of the site as a marketing platform and a sorting tool for the web. The money part is, of course, integral to the functioning of the site, but I find resistance to it, usually in one of these forms:

1. too good to be true
2. must be some sort of scam
3. amounts are so small as to be insignificant
4. people are turned off by money motivation

All the above is erroneous when it comes to MyMindshare, but it can’t be avoided when we are dealing with preconceptions.

I have come up with this “elevator” pitch:

“MyMindshare is an online marketing system that effectively dis-intermediates advertisers and consumers. Our slogan is “Find your audience, find your fans.” If you want to find people to visit your web site, page, or blog, then MyMindshare can help you.”

I am directing the marketing of MyMindshare at the advertiser side of the equation for a couple of reasons.

1. If you explain what MyMindshare does to a consumer, and then ask the consumer, “Does this solve a current problem for you?” the answer is likely “no.”

2. If you explain what MyMindshare does to an advertiser, and then ask the advertiser, “Does this solve a current problem for you?” the answer is likely “yes.”

3. Every advertiser is also a consumer; not every consumer is also an advertiser.

4. The activity of advertisers at MyMindshare creates incentives for consumers. That is the beauty of MyMindshare.

The primary objection for advertisers is the lack of consumers at MyMindshare. There is only one way to overcome this objection:

Convince advertisers that their participation in MyMindshare will attract consumers. This is a straight-forward selling job.