The Dark Side Of Business

In this article, I’m going to talk about the dark side of business. I know many people, in many industries who run a business, and have many motives to do so: there are as many motives as people almost.

There’s one train of thought in business, and that is you need to make money no matter what. You need to get into a business, you don’t necessarily have to like, you just need to get into a business where you can get cash, and get rich to a level where you don’t have to worry about it anymore.

Only then do you actually switch to a business which benefits the world. In fact there’s a whole plethora of businesses out there, which are completely catered towards getting people addicted to their product: where they don’t have control over their finances any more, for example.

I’ll just give you a random example, you can buy video games on the phone. They’re designed to get you to buy into it a little bit, and then you buy in a little bit more. There are a certain small percentage of people, who will get addicted to the video game, and when they get addicted to it, they end up spending like four hundred dollars, per day, on the game, on in game purchases (there’s even a South Park episode about it, that explains it very well).

There’s a whole range of products and services like this. You can start all the way back when they invented cigarettes. The people who started these companies, knew that this stuff killed people, they had discovered this many decades ago, and they are still sell cigarettes to this day. It doesn’t really matter to them, if they benefit the world or not, it’s just about the cash.

That’s one way of looking at the world of business, and I’ll be honest, I know plenty of entrepreneurs who at least started like this (you may know them as well). They started in the dark side of business, with the attitude of: ‘I need to make sure I’m not worried about cash, and that I have the capital’. Then they invest in something that’s better for humanity, they build a business that actually helps people, they build a higher level business with a higher level purpose.

I don’t necessarily agree with this view, but I also don’t want to do it myself. I don’t disagree with it, because all is fair in business, love and war (that’s just the way it is right now). For me, I’ve made the choice not to do this, and I would encourage you to make the same choice. I would encourage you to not go to the dark side of the business, but stay on the light side, because it’s still perfectly possible, without tricking and manipulating people, just to build a business.

Some entrepreneurs will tell you that this view is naive, and business doesn’t work like that. They’ll tell you: ‘you’re just not there yet, you’ll get it someday.’ It could be true someday, where I say screw it, I just want to make cash no matter what, and then I’ll do it.

I don’t see any real satisfaction down that path. I know people that make seven figures, and they’re completely lost. They’re fumbling around, and they don’t know what to do with their life. They have plenty of cash: so much that they could literally site on their yachts, and smoke weed every day.

I guess it’s fun to do that for an hour or two, but after that, you don’t get the hustle, the progression, and the satisfaction from seeing you change someone’s life for the better. I personally don’t buy into the dark side of the business, I buy into actually making a positive change in the world, and getting people to a higher place than they already are. I do this through teaching people how to start their own business.

If you’re starting a business, you have that choice, of taking the slightly easier road, where you don’t actually improve peoples’ lives. You just do whatever it takes to get the sale, you do whatever it takes to make money: even if you sell something that’s completely useless long term for people.

There’s always going to be businesses who are on the dark side, and there’s also going to be businesses who do stuff in your best interest. That’s just the way it is, it’s not going to change, and I can guarantee that much (It’s always easy to hide your true motives).

There’s no way to prevent it, there’s no law that will make entrepreneurship impossible. In fact I’m against laws like that. I’m more for having people vote with their money. So it’s up to you, the entrepreneur, to make your decision, because the consumer will buy it, if you sell it well enough. They will buy it if they perceive the value to be high enough. It’s up to you, it’s your responsibility as the entrepreneur, to make it work for them, and make it worthwhile for them.

I hope the information I provided was valuable, and if you have any questions, please message me, or comment below.