Friday, April 17, 2009

Douchebag-Watch: Joel Bauer

The guy from this terrible Flash based website:
http://www.infotainer.com/events/

Can also be seen here: Your business card is CRAP!


Which will obviously remind you of the business card scene from American Psycho here (no embedding available at the moment):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoIvd3zzu4Y

And maybe even this one from Glengarry Glen Ross too:


Let me tell you why this guy is crap.

There are no "silver bullets" for success. You sell a good or service that represents quality and value to your client. You get the word out through advertising. And that's about all you can do.

We've all seen it a thousand times before if you use cheap used car lot tricks or equate your product with sex appeal or personal power. You would probably do better to equate your good or service with its own intrinsic worth. People want something that's real. Not a sales pitch. Be real. Be assertive. And the rest follows or it doesn't. That's the luck factor.

One guy's store fails. Across town some dude with the exact same idea is making bank.

No one knows why...

A lot of people are scratching their heads right now wondering how Starbuck's ever got anyone to part with $4-5 for a latte. There's no real business model for how that made sense. Once it stopped making sense people moved away from it. The hype was over. We all discovered that coffee is almost never worth $5 in a paper cup. Sure, maybe it was successful for a short while; then the marks wised up and the con game was done.

Joel Bauer is a cold Starbuck's latte in a soggy paper cup. His ideas are hackneyed and spent. We all thought guys like him were douchebags 30 years ago. Now he's a dinosaur.

Game over. Next...