I always find it interesting to see who is advertising on television.  Everyday, I dial in one or two cable news channels to determine if the world has exploded.  In the past, I would use these services to learn what is actually happening around the globe.  However, the days of quality news reporting on television are long gone.  The really big stuff hits the headlines at the beginning of the show and the program quickly spins downward to political drivel. If something big happens, like a massive natural disaster or an imminent shortage of fried chicken, it will hit the airwaves when the show opens.  I turn on the liberal channel or the conservative channel at the top of the hour.  Within two minutes, I know if something big happened.

Very often, I get to the station a few minutes before the top of the hour.  This is prime time for advertising.  Who advertises on cable news? 

Personal injury lawyers for one.  “Marciano and Marciano will fight for you.  We have successfully garnered billions in settlements for our clients.  We will get you every dollar you deserve.”  I am sure that there is a lot of money at stake because many of these firms offer services all around the United States.  I see the same ads, for the same firms, in Jacksonville Florida, Ann Arbor Michigan and Los Angeles.  Maintaining a cadre of lawyers all around the country has to be expensive.  Advertising on the number one rated news show in the nation can’t be cheap.  It certainly appears that large personal injury law firms are highly profitable.

Second, a lot of ads come from Pharmaceutical companies.  “Wonder Drugs Unlimited is proud to announce the release of Euphoria 4U.  This revolutionary anti depressant would turn Eeyore into Mary Poppins.  Ask your Doctor about this magnificent drug and kiss the blues goodbye.  Side effects may include constipation, cessation of heart beat and exploding temples.  Do not take Euphoria 4U if you are allergic to it.”  (I have always wondered how you can determine if you are allergic to something if you have never taken it.)  Again, very high stakes on the line here.  Pharmaceuticals can carry a big price tag.  My physician recommended an anti-inflammatory for an arthritic disease that would cost me $62,000 a year, out of my own pocket. Big Pharma rolls huge numbers.  Incredible development costs but astronomical payoffs for successful drugs.       

A third huge advertiser on cable news are supplementary health products.  There seems to be an endless supply of pills, elixers, powders, pads, braces, exercise devices and ointments that will solve every physical challenge of mankind.  You can irradicate memory loss, speed up and clarify your thinking processes, eliminate joint and muscle pain, restore and enhance your sexual capabilities, drop your blood sugar levels, lower your blood pressure, improve your eyesight, reverse hair loss, eliminate wrinkles, shrink your prostate, minimize the effects of incontinence, and restore feeling to your extremities.  At eighty years of age, you can reconsider a career in professional football regardless of whether you are a man or a woman.  All of this can be accomplished with drugs, topical ointments, or pads that have the following disclaimer regarding their advertisement. “This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.”  

Wow!  As the nightly news turns to nonsense at 6:03, I see an opportunity.  Three types of businesses dominate advertising around prime time news.  Clearly all three generate such large returns that they can support the massive advertising budgets.  Two of them are very difficult and costly to establish and they have lengthy time periods to initiate.  Starting a national legal firm requires extensive expertise, cash, and legal acumen that I will never have.  Big Pharma is equally challenging.  They literally spend billions in scientific research to ensure that the pharmaceuticals they market are actually effective.  Certainly, not all of them ultimately have efficacy.  It would require many, many years, incredible medical and scientific expertise and billions of dollars just to get a foot in the door.  But the third alternative is fraught with opportunity to amass substantial wealth.

I can offer a product that claims to have the possibility of improving your life.  I can present witnesses that have been paid to extoll the incredible healing powers of my drug. These witnesses may have name tags that say “Dr. Jane Doe” or “John Smith, Senior Vice President of Medical Research”.  Dr. Doe may have an PhD in Music and play poker with me twice a month  but she still carries the title of “Dr.”   John Smith may be my lawn man but I could appoint him to head medical research.  The elixir we develop may have absolutely no provable health impact.  It doesn’t matter because we tell you at the end of the commercial that the FDA has not reviewed our statement and that the product is not intended to treat, cure or prevent anything.                     

Here are the high points of our business plan. 

First, we need to target a malady that is experienced by a high percentage of people around the world.  It will help if the condition is not a well defined medical condition.  We don’t want to claim that we have an effective treatment for hypertension.  That is a very definable problem  and it is very easy for our customers to measure the results with and without our product.  So the malady we will address is frequent frustration and very negative thought patterns.  Who doesn’t have these problems?  Anyone who turns on a computer, adds an App to their mobile device or drives a smart car has plenty of frustration.  Anyone who is interested in politics has off the charts negativity.  It isn’t one side or the other.  It’s both sides.  Conservatives seethe about the way blue cities and states run their communities.  Liberals are apoplectic with any actions taken by their red state counterparts.  This is a huge potential market.

Our product will be a pill because they are easy and inexpensive to produce and distribute.  We will use the same formula as the Placebo tablets used by Big Pharma.  They are proven to be harmless to those who take them.  We will call this miracle mood altering drug Serpens Oleum, an impressive Latin term.

In our drug profile, we will claim that Serpens Oleum is totally comprised of naturally recurring substances.  No fabrication here.  Everything in the universe is natural.  A key scientific law (Conservation of Mass) states that matter cannot be created or destroyed.  It can only be transformed.  Ergo, all matter in the universe is natural.           

We will embark on a significant research campaign.  We will solicit 25 to 30 friends to test the new drug.  We will explain that we have found a compound that should substantially elevate the mood of patients who take a tablet every morning and every evening.  Frustration with the foibles of daily life should be diminished and thought patterns that particularly focus on negative outcomes will be replaced by positive thoughts.  Those of you who find that the supplement has such an impact will be asked to provide testimony to that effect in commercials with five figure monetary compensation.         

Assuming we have very positive results from the extensive scientific research effort, we begin to market Serpens Oleum online.  There are hundreds of vendors who will help us reach the optimal audience through the web. 

We carefully stockpile profits, build a robust sales history and compile a stellar group of user references.  In a year or so we step up to the big leagues and kick off our advertising campaign on the cable news outlets. 

Serpens Oleum will become household words.  Everyone will sing the praises of our homeopathic cure for mood disorder.  Our financial target will be annual bottom line profits of ten to twenty million in four years and fifty to a hundred million in seven years.

As you can see with the business plan, selling supplements has incredible upside potential.  There are very few business ventures that require no measurable value from the end product or accuracy in advertising.  All that is required is positive hype.  After we maximize penetration of the mood elevation market we can move on to another of the seemingly endless health challenges of the Western World.  Move over Mr. Bezos and Mr. Musk.  We are going to join the club.     

I know this flies in the face of the old axiom “If it is easy anyone could do it.”  But I have a hard time seeing how this could possibly fail.