“Free online investment tips at xxx. Just register yourself at the site and pay RM 1 in order to gain access to all the information” — this message was sent to me few months ago by 1 of my blog’s visitors. If you’re into marketing and business stuff…or you have common sense like most customers do, you would’ve noticed the problem in that message.

It’s the RM 1.

The offer does sound to be quite OKAY. Not to say too bad or too good and since I didn’t really read any of those ‘tips’, I will remain neutral. So being neutral, the next thing that I, as a potential customer, will think is the process required in order to gain access to these ‘tips’. If it’s just a free registration with my email address, that’s okay. I might give it a try.

But here, it needs RM 1. So how are you going to give RM 1? Maybank2u? Paypal? Cash on delivery? Bank draft?

The more I think about it, the more troublesome it gets. So I gave up. From the moment I saw the message to the point I gave up, it only took me 1 minute.

In the end, the person who sent the message was creating such a big barrier for potential customers and also for his business. Big barrier = discourages people to join = poor response = failure.

And this does not apply to businesses only. Most of the time, we like to give excuses and limitations to ourselves. This behavior of ours actually creates a very big barrier for ourselves. We won’t see as many opportunities, and the opportunities will find it harder to reach us. Opportunities here can be business/job opportunities, friends, colleagues, romantic thingy, etc. It’s just like you are blocking the world and hiding yourselves in a sphere.

That’s why sometimes, I really wonder if those people who say things like “oh no, it’s not for me”, “i’m not that type”, “i’m too old to start a business”, “i’m too young to start a business”, “i just don’t feel like it” etc… should really change their mindset?

Perhaps people should try to open up to the world. Open up to more things and stop creating unnecessary barriers for yourselves (as long as you don’t bring harm to others). There are more things to try in this world than you could possibly imagine.

p/s… if you have some very strong principles as not to do certain things, then it’s fine. But whether those principles are limiting you, you should know better. So before you close yourselves off from something, think whether it is against your principles. If not, then don’t create the useless barrier. Stop giving excuses.