“Gurus” want Your money
aidas | March 16, 2023
Not that long ago I decided to learn more about investing, financial freedom, marketing and similar topics. These fields were new to me, so I felt huge interest and motivation. I wanted to learn a lot of great stuff and even apply it in real life. But where to start?
As I didn’t know anything about these fields, Google was my best advisor. I searched for some great books and top courses on the topics and quickly ended up with new material on my todo list.
Time went on as I was satisfying my curiosity. With each new book I felt I learned more. I started to grasp how some financial things work. Sometimes I even came up with an idea or two on what I could do or improve in real life. I was very grateful for the books I was reading, as the advice which they gave seemed so helpful and enlightening. I admired their authors.
But I didn’t know there was the other side of the dime.
One day as I was watching some videos on sales techniques, I came across a link, which contained word scam in it.
I clicked on it and the dime started turning its other side.
The article analyzed one financial guru’s activity. It was pointing out some mismatches between what the guru was claiming and real world facts. It contained some investigation which the authors performed. It included the feedback of the people, who attended guru’s courses. The courses which cost thousands of dollars and which were worthless to them.
I went back to Google, I wanted to check more people whom I was calling my financial teachers.
Hours went by, I was clicking link after link, reading page after page. Oh, did I find the other side of the dime? You bet! I was staring right at its greedy filthy ass!
What shocked me the most wasn’t the idea that there is such a thing as a scam. I knew it. We all do. The most shocking thing was that the people, whom I was googling, were those who had millions of subscribers, sold millions of books. They are known worldwide and still there might be a possibility that it’s a scam.
Let me note might here. I personally don’t know those people, I didn’t conduct any investigation on them, I haven’t attended any of their paid courses (I did watch the free ones though, but I’d rather call them long ads). So I’m trying to be objective here and open minded.
My aim is not to point fingers at anyone or to try to give somebody a bad name. My aim is to raise awareness for everyone, who’s interested in similar topics. To bring attention that there might be some scam artists, people who might try to trick You. And their popularity, the number of subscribers they have, the number of books they sold might not be scam-proof. Let me stress this even more:
Guru’s popularity, the number of subscribers they have, the number of books they sold might not be scam-proof.
I could finish it here: I said what I wanted, message delivered (I hope). But what if someone wants to know more? What if someone’s looking with disbelief?
My way was simple - I googled it. Google and you’ll end up with the same links as I did. <name> <surname> scam - as simple as that. Let me give you just a few examples of what one could find in the wild:
Dan Lok
https://www.nomadsmd.com/dan-lok/
Robert Kiyosaki:
https://thecollegeinvestor.com/4726/ultimate-hypocrite-robert-kiyosaki-companys-bankruptcy/
https://wealthydiligence.com/robert-kiyosaki-fraud/
https://www.reddit.com/r/business/comments/ppejm/the_fraud_that_is_robert_kiyosaki_please_stop/
Tony Robbins
https://okdork.com/why-i-walked-out-on-tony-robbins/
I don’t claim that the references above are 100% reliable. That’s what google spit out for me and it can do the same for you too. But I guess we’d agree that these opinions are interesting. Reading through them was enough to trigger a red light for me and raise my alertness.
This is just a reminder to always keep one’s critical thinking at hand.
No comments yet