I had a tweet today about what to learn from the rebranding of Twitter to X.
I want to dive a little bit deeper into the topic of ‘Control’, when it comes to business, because this is a crucial part that can ruin you and destroy you business.
There was a lot of talk on Twitter/X lately about if it was a good or bad idea to rebrand a running business like Twitter. Lots of jokes and blah blah.
But people missed the lesson in there.
It’s not ‘their’ business they are talking about.
It’s Elon’s.
He/they can change the conditions at any time.
He announced to make huge changes to Twitter/X. Making it a financial service for example.
Imagine the financial part of Twitter/X grows so big that he decides to mainly focus on that and drop the whole social media part.
You can’t reach your followers anymore. All your ‘content’, gone. Actually, your whole business, gone.
Nothing that hasn’t happened before. Think of MySpace, think of Google+.
This applies to many ‘business models’ nowadays.
Think of YouTube. If they don’t like your content, you are banned.
Think of Google Adsense or any affiliate program or network. They dictate the the commissions and the payouts. They don’t like your content anymore, you are gone.
The large companies from Silicon Valley provide the platforms. They are empty. You fill it with content. If they don’t like you anymore, they can remove you at any time.
Running SEO is the same. One Google update and your ‘passive income’ is gone. That’s not a business. That’s something built on sand.
To make it extreme, you aren’t working for yourself, you are working for someone else. Twitter, YouTube, Google, they are your boss now and dictate the rules.
It’s crucial that you understand you could be wiped out at any time when dealing with those companies.
That’s the complete opposite of control.
You have to bring yourself and your business into a position where you have as much control as possible.
You are already giving away enough of control.
You have little to no control over the market. You can barely control if the market will like your product or will continue to like it.
You have little to no control over your competition.
It’s not about having 100% control over everything. That’s not possible.
It’s about being aware of the risk you have. Doing your business with a calculated risk.
Twitter, YouTube, Google, SEO, they are all great opportunities and you shouldn’t miss them. But always be aware of who is in control, and over how much of your business.
MJ DeMarco wrote a lot about it in his great book ‘The Millionaire Fastlane’. If you haven’t read it, I can’t recommend it enough, go and read it!
Agree, best to diversify as I did when I had 60+ sites running a long time ago (none now). But I’ve heard most successful people say over the years that their most valuable asset in online marketing is their email list, that can’t be easily taken away. Having said that, people that go too far can put themselves and/or their loved ones at risk causing them to be wiped out, I think that’s what stops them taking action really. Nice site!
Today I think it’s about the value you are able to give and the amount of control you have over its distribution. Hard to fail that way. But we are often looking for short cuts… me included =)