Recently I’ve been going through hundreds of YouTube videos about world’s most successfull businessmen. I’ve decided to start with the ones that came to my mind first: Jeff Bezos, John D. Rockefeller, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs. Anyone at least partially connected to the real world knows these guys were or are excellent in their area. That’s why they’ve been so successful after all. You don’t really see them brag about what they’ve achieved. I haven’t found a single video of Mr. Bezos or Mr. Jobs posing next to a yacht or his brand new Lamborghini. Humble people despite being super successful.
As you probably know, after watching a video, YouTube comes up with a list of suggestions. That’s how I was led to a plethora of videos titled: “How to become a millionaire”, “How to become financially independent”, how to “this” and “that”. Wouldn’t I want to make millions? – Nah. Why would I? Mhmm. Maybe..
Given how many views those videos have, it seems there is no shortage of people interested in making extra few millions. Maybe billions if you work a little harder but not too hard. It can’t appear to be too difficult at first glance. So, I start with the first one that came up as YT “watch next” suggestion. It begins with a story about how someone was poor, how his life sucked, how he couldn’t pay for an apartment, food, car, clothes and stuff like that. I understand. Don’t we all struggle with those each month? I see a connection already! Then, we move on to their job description. It’s either super boring or a low paid one. Something that you’d never want to do and get ouf of as quickly as possible. Just like all of us, right? What a coincidence! Getting up to work early morning every day for 5, 10 or 30 years sounds like something nobody sane would ever want to do. We are all ambitious and no job ever pays enough to live a life of our idols. Every day in TV and on the Internet we are bombarded with lifestyles of TV superstars, musicians, actors, flying their private jets, driving luxury sports cars and wearing plenty of expensive jewelry, while we work our asses off for a monthly check that’s barely enough to pay for public transport and a burger. What’s more – we don’t even see how we could break out of that misery. That’s where hordes of mentors, coaches and experts come in handy! They are going to save you. They will provide information how to finally get rich and forget about your pathethic past! Of course you cannot trust anyone at school or at work to ever teach you that. Why would they? Everyone wants to keep you dumb and poor for their own benefit. It’s a different story with our YouTube stars though. If you watch them for as long as I did, which was approximately 100 hours you will get to hear a lot of stories and see plenty of wealth on display. You wouldn’t trust an advice of a poor fella but you’d definitely believe someone filming themselves in a Lambo and a Rolex on his hand, or in a luxury penthouse with a great view. After so many hours you might even get to know all the Lambo colors out there, some helicopter and private jet brands, perhaps even see some yachts. But, back to the point. We want to get rich and our YouTube preachers will teach us how to do that soon-ish!
What comes next? Ah, after finding basic commonalities between them and you, they move on to.. the steps how to become.. rich? Nope. They want you to hold off a little longer. Just a little bit! You need to hear them out. Properly. They need to tell you some success stories first, as if all that wealth they’ve showed off with wasn’t enough to prove their magic system works. You get to hear how Joe went from being dead broke to buying a $30M penthouse within a couple of months or Jenny achieving financial freedom, being able to do whatever she wants, wherever she wants, as long as she wants. She gets to help her parents now. Not just giving them a few bucks but buying them a brand new house – just because she can. You don’t get to criticise her for anything because she’s now a successful person. She doesn’t need to take shit from anyone anymore! Just like – say – a few dozen of other people that have applied the advice from the video. So the longer you watch it the more pumped up you are. You’ve already learnt they’ve been in your situation. You know they’ve got out of it once and for all and there are dozens of living, walking proofs that the system works. You want to finally hear what *you* have to do to get rich. What is it? Oh, right. You need to take *action*! I mean it – you need to take action! No shit Sherlock. Who would have expected that?! It’s not like you could just listen to your mentor – yes, that’s how they mostly want you to call them – a mentor. You need to take action. Wow. Do I? Sometimes it’s something simple like writing “+1”, “yes” or “shit” on a dumb, fully automated chat nobody ever reads. Or, perhaps they do read it. Just to find out how many potential sheep, err, leads they’ve got. The other times it’s.. well, who the hell knows? You spend an hour, two or eight watching a video and you don’t get to hear what is it that you should do to get rich. You just need to do *something*. Well, at least not all of the videos leave you empty handed , providing no juice. I wouldn’t be fair if I said that was the case. Sometimes “the action” is clearly defined. It means – “we’ve got this great offer to help you become a master of the universe. We’ve worked twenty years on that system, we’ve put hundreds of thousands of dollars developing it but finally it’s here! The whole package consists of Course A, Course B, Course C… Z. The cost of each of them varies between $1k and $10k but because you’re so special and we are on a mission to:
Now you might wonder. Who are all these people? Did you do your own research to find out HOW THEY got rich? You should understand what is the product or the service they sell. They need to be selling something. Eventually it’s how one gets rich, right? You don’t mug people on the street, you sell something. What do they sell? What is their product? It is.. YOU. Yep. Let me say it again – YOU are the product. They sell you. Just think about it. Most of their income comes from the people like you, paying for their “elite” courses where they teach “secrets” how to get rich. They claim it’s proven and works 100% and if it doesn’t.. well, it’s your own fault. You didn’t take it seriously or you didn’t put enough effort. It’s never the system to blame. It’s always you.
It reminds me of certain financial advisors or sales people trying to sell me a stock, a house or another method how to get rich. If they are in possession of such a valuable information, why would they give it to someone else? You would expect they would just keep it to themselves and profit off it. It’s like the kind of people that pushed certain stocks down your throat saying you should buy now because it’s guaranteed they will go up. If they are so sure of it, why do they tell you? Why don’t they profit from it themselves? If I knew how to make a large amount of money on a given deal, I’d just go and do it myself. Why would I give it up and instead hand it over to random people on the Internet? What am I, Mother Teresa? But, let’s assume I’m one of those evil capitalistic pigs. If those “mentors”, “experts” and “coaches” are so filthy rich already off something they’ve built or done, and they tell the truth they only want to help people as they claim, why do they charge $3k or $5k for that? They emphasise they don’t do that for money. They swear they do that because they are “on a mission”. I think they are on a mission to slaughter some dumb sheep hoping for get rich quick stuff. They want to (and often do) profit off hard working peoples’ dreams of changing their lives by signing up for a magical course, learning a secret system and getting a script they can just follow step by step to get rich. In the end – the only ones getting rich are the ones selling the hopium.