Bouris Con-son

Mike Winnet (a pseudonym) coined the phrase “contreprenuer” to describe those who flog snake oil on social media, such as Creepbook for Business.

Examples we’ve touched on previously include Brigette and Oleg.

Australians have a few home-grown versions too, such as the very scarily-toothed Adam Hudson and our all-time favourite, Mark Bouris.

Here’s one from Mark that popped up on my timeline this morning:

So, in summary Mark, you’re flying somewhere on the weekend to flog your special brand of inspirational speaking and it became obvious that you’d get a bigger audience if the event was scheduled outside of regular working hours because…… good question, because why, Mark?

Bill’s Opinion
The reason Mark’s inspirational speaking has a bigger audience on a weekend than during regular working hours is because the people who attend aren’t entrepreneurs slogging away at their own business, they are office drones, salary slaves and the sort of people who believe that paying to hear Mark parrot out context-free quotations such as “work smart, not hard” is somehow going to be the inspiration and advice they need to make it on their own and become Australia’s Jeff Bezos.

This is the equivalent of the morbidly-obese and indolent signing up for a gym membership. It’s not the unavailability of exercise equipment that keeps you fat, it’s your innate flaws. There is no quick fix to systemic problems.

As Winnet points out, most of these snake oil salesmen have no credible track record to emulate other than an ability to trick people in to paying $197 (the fee always ends in a 7) to attend an event and receive a free “Amazon best-selling” book.

To be fair to Bouris, he has made a load of money in the past. However, if he were to be really honest about the secret to his success, it would be summed up in the following advice to others:

“Firstly, be a ruthless broker between cheap global money and greedy investors during the biggest real estate bubble Australia has ever witnessed. Secondly, take your company public just as the bubble bursts”.

Right plebs, now conquer your fear and break that wooden block with a karate chop and walk barefoot across these barbeque briquettes.

In the words of Mike Winnet,

You have the same number of hours in the day as the world’s most successful people. What you lack is their drive, work ethic and talent. That’s why they are more successful than you.