There have been a few times over the years I’ve been tempted to do something with little or no value to anyone simply because there was quite a bit of money to be had.

While I have made 100% good on this promise, one of the simple rules I’ve made for myself is this:

Never do something solely because of money.

I remember once when I was experimenting with Twitter apps, and I built an little experimental tool that worked amazingly well at growing followers but, most importantly, generating traffic. One night I did the math, read Twitter’s policy, and realized that if I spun up an army of these bots I could make an amount of money that I hadn’t even fathomed and maybe not get noticed by Twitter.

Luckily, I snapped out of it and realized that I was not only considering breaking the rules solely to make money, but these apps would deliver virtually no value to the users it engaged with.

Following the Dr Suess theme from my day job journal entry, it reminds me of a character from The Sneetches named Sylvester McMonkey McBean that comes to mind in these situations.

Sylvester builds two machines – one to put stars on the bellies of Sneetches, one to take them off – and then plays to their insecurities and price to milk them of every last dollar they have while delivering nothing in return.

One of the things I love most about SendView, is that our users love it. It solves a problem they have. They get pumped on the time is saves them and the things they learn. It’s helping them do their jobs better, to become better marketers, and send better emails at a time that you’ve really gotta nail your message.

I don’t know if SendView will every be a big success financially, but I do feel good that we’re doing it right and helping people instead of taking advantage of them.

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