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.

So yesterday I went to a Biznik networking meeting in Marina Del Rey, hosted by Colleen Wainwright and Heather Parlato.

Sounds like the first line of a joke.

And boy are my arms tired! Hyuk hyuk hyuk.

Here’s the thing: I am not social. The reason I am not social is partly by disposition (the lifestyle of a hermit appeals to me), and partly due to domestic bliss that I enjoy with my wife. Basically I have about zero internal social needs. I’m socially sated.

So my “social” motivation isn’t really social; it’s business, which is why I went to this networking get-together.

Normally I find networking meetings of this type gawd-awful boring, and after debriefing yesterday’s meeting, I have figured out why. It is because I bore myself. I hate hearing me talk about me.

On the other hand, I find other people interesting. It’s the journalist/voyeur aspect of me that enjoys sussing what other people do and why.

At yesterday’s meeting I found three people interesting. Or I should say, I had three conversations that I found interesting. Everyone is interesting, but I only really interacted with three people.

The first is Collen Wainwright, with whom I have traded a few emails prior to the meeting and have gotten to know through her somewhat revealing blog.

There wasn’t any new information gleaned from my interaction with Colleen, but meeting and talking with her in person, regardless of the content, is informative on an entirely different level than on mediated levels. I don’t know what it is (something psychic? spiritual? imagined?) about in-person communication, but it is qualitatively different than communicating via some technology.

The second interaction was noteworthy because it revealed just how much I bore myself and why I normally hate networking meetings/events. This was with Dyana Valentine, who struck me as a networking pro because the first thing she did was ask me a question about me. It went down hill from there.

Note to self: whenever I am the subject of conversation, make every effort to change the subject.

The third interaction was the pay-off for the evening. Paul Scarzo sells whole-house water filtration systems for a company called LifeSource. At first, it seemed like he was at the wrong meeting. Biznik is by and for people who generally fall in the category of “solopreneurs” — usually singe-person service providers or freelancers. Most of the people at the meeting were self-employed graphic designers.

When Dyana asked Paul what his “passion” was, Paul answered, “to make as much money as possible before I die.” That pretty much killed Dyana’s conversation-opening gambit. I thought it was a funny answer because it was kind of inappropriate. Even though at some level everyone is there to make money, it’s crass to come out a say so. Of course Paul was being sardonic, but poor Dyana was caught flat-footed because he delivered his answer entirely straight. And of course, it was probably ultimately the true answer, at a certain level.

It turns out that Paul has been selling whole-house water filtration systems only for the last 5 months. For 15 years he was an animator, having worked for Hanna Barbera, Disney, Saban, and a host of other projects/companies. After seeing his work as an animator out-sourced and off-shored, his priority is making a living, while trying to make something of 15 years of experience, training and talent in animation production.

It took a while to get that out of Paul. He’s not a networking pro like Dyana — he doesn’t have an elevator pitch for his life and “career,” which is probably why I found him interesting right away. I probably interpreted his sardonic signaling like a “Danger: No Trespassing” sign. Such signs are just invitations to see what is going on over there.

As a recovering critic, I didn’t want to say anything, so I was glad to see Chris Guillebeau’s post, “Why People Hate Marketers.” He has enough standing and success to criticize what almost rises to the level of an industry, namely online marketing of online marketing.

Call me old school, but I am of the opinion that marketing is a function that serves a product, and there is something wrong when marketing solely serves itself — marketing in order to do more marketing, or pre-marketing for a product to be determined later. That is part of what is wrong with muti-level marketing.

The point of marketing is to move product. I am very suspicious of any pitch that doesn’t get to that bottom line, because ultimately, that is the bottom line: something is for sale.

Chris Guillebeau is actually in a gray area, but he makes a conscious, concerted effort to demark the black and white. He often makes an “anti-marketing” statement, where he says explicitly that he is not selling something, and he makes it clear when and where he is selling something. That is a very important distinction, and it is very important that he makes it.

Whenever I am reading a blog post that mentions a book title with a hyperlink to Amazon, I have gotten into the habit if checking to see if the link is an affiliate link, indicating that the writer will profit if I buy the book after visiting the link. Right or wrong, that colors my perception of the writer. It tells me this person is in the book selling business, and what I’m reading may be compromised. It’s one of those petty little corruptions that is pervasive in the blogosphere.

And guess what… MyMindshare has a referral program that specifically enables people to profit from making referrals to MyMindshare. I am guilty of creating yet another one of those petty corruptions, and I would like nothing more than bloggers to take advantage of it.

Hypocrisy self-administered.

Blogs and bloggers are a perfect fit for MyMindshare, so to stimulate participation in MyMindshare, I have created the “100 Blogs Target Marketing Challenge”.

The challenge for me is to get 100 bloggers to participate. The challenge for the bloggers is to get as high as possible on the Target Marketing Challenge Leader Board.

The top ten bloggers on the leader board will be listed here:
Top 10 Blogs in the Target Marketing Challenge

I will write a profile here on the MyMindshare Blog about every blogger who enters the top 10. If you qualify for the profile, please let me know if I don’t contact you myself.

In the coming weeks I will be posting tips and tricks to assist bloggers in finding their audience and their fans. It all starts by joining MyMindshare.

Here are the rules for the Target Marketing Challenge, which can be modified at any time as needed:

1. Bloggers are encouraged to exhort their followers to join MyMindshare to lift their score.

2. Bloggers are also encouraged to take advantage of the referral program ($5 credit for good standing members referred).

3. Everyone is encouraged to figure out ways to cheat. Special praise will be given to successful cheaters if you tell me how you cheated. Anyone who exposes how someone else is cheating will be hailed as a conquering hero.

Feel free to contact me at any time if you have questions, complaints, suggestions or criticisms.

There is a lot of rhetoric in marketing circles about making your customers into friends. It’s not bad advice to treat your customers like friends, and it certainly is helpful when your customer treats you like a friend, but I think it is a mistake to confuse customers with friends, and vice versa.

To borrow terminology from database development, marketing is about creating and managing one-to-many relationships. One-to-many relationships are by definition asymmetrical. The One in the relationship experiences it very differently than the Many. Think about your relationship with a movie star. We get into trouble when we think that we share a special bond with a celebrity. I may have a special bond with Tom Cruise because of his performance in Magnolia, but we don’t share it.

My relationship with my bartender, Thomas, is qualitatively different than my relationship with Jose Cuervo, and it would be a big mistake for either me or Jose to think otherwise.

It takes skill to manage one-to-many relationships and I’m not sure they are the same skills one employs in social settings.