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How deep does this "FAKE GURU" market actually go?

ChrisR

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I still have no clue why but I just can't get into Gary Vee. Something about him comes across as unauthentic to me. Some of his videos just seem staged, I've seen vids of people asking him questions that legit seem like actors. And it seems so odd that someone is always recording him at every turn and he's pretending like he doesn't know the camera is there. Maybe I am just being a hater lol.

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I'm with ya, I can't stand this guy. He just seems totally inauthentic and acts totally different depending on who's interviewing him.
 
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Lex DeVille

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Some things I consider before buying a course:

#1 - Are they selling a business system or a specific skill I need (or want) for my own business?

#2 - After reading over their website or whatever else, what does my gut tell me?

#3 - What do past students say? If it's bad, how bad? If it's good, how specifically is it good?

#4 - Am I prepared to lose X amount of dollars on this course? Can I afford to lose it?

#5 - If they claim accreditation, is the accrediting organization legit or is it bullshit?

These pretty much apply to anything you buy. Do they claim to solve your problem? Do you believe they can solve your problem? Do people say they solve that problem? Can you afford to have them solve that problem? Are their sources of credibility legit?
 

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new-racket.jpg

You're right that people absolutely do pay to be told exactly what they want to hear, the problem with that is, they should be paying for people to tell them what they don't want to hear.

Very much agree.

I came to this forum to help people. Hopefully, that helps you because I can see now that it is a big waste of my time to post here.

So 1 or 2 people don't agree with you and the 1000 of other entrepreneurs (many who DO agree with you) suddenly aren't worthy? Isn't that like quitting your business because one customer said your product sucks?

Your reaction makes no sense. Please don't disparage an entire community because of 1 or 2 people.
 

Nik@16

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The thing is that it's very hard for a person to become rich from written content. You can become famous but it becomes really hard to become wealthy. A writer makes 33 cents for a copy .Even Big writers like George R. R Martin are making money equivalent to an ivy league law school, ivy league MBA , or Ivy league Doctor , etcetra . This is the reason people start selling premium services, whether it's a writing gig or a seminar which increases their income 2_3, times. People are gullible enough to buy stupid shit. Snake oil has a demand in itself. We give too much fuss about being righteous in welfare state but in a pure laissez free economy , if you're poor , the only way to make money is to steal it or to scam it
 
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MTF

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Even Big writers like George R. R Martin are making money equivalent to an ivy league law school, ivy league MBA , or Ivy league Doctor , etcetra .

Since when Ivy League alumni make $25 mm a year?

banking an estimated $15 million per year off HBO royalties and another $10 million in book royalties

source: Despite Earning $25+ Million Per Year, George R.R. Martin Still Lives A Surprisingly Simple And Frugal Lifestyle

George R. R. Martin is on another level. He's making way more than the median CEO pay for the 100 largest companies (which is $15.7 mm), and all of that as essentially a solopreneur.
 

Nik@16

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Since when Ivy League alumni make $25 mm a year?



source: Despite Earning $25+ Million Per Year, George R.R. Martin Still Lives A Surprisingly Simple And Frugal Lifestyle

George R. R. Martin is on another level. He's making way more than the median CEO pay for the 100 largest companies (which is $15.7 mm), and all of that as essentially a solopreneur.
I mistakingly wrote GRRM. I wanted to write about John Green. He sold 25 million books and made 10 million which an Harvard MBA and Harvard law grad can easily reach if they want it.
GRRM Martin is 70YO. His royalties came when he was 65 YO. In 40 years before his fame he made around 25 million after taxes. I don't think book royalties and HBO royalties figures are quite right. Most ivy league MBAs can make 5-7 million till they are 65 . A very few also reach 12-18 million too. Note , that I was talking about making money through written content and not TV-shows.80% life is sucked out of a person when he is 65. There is no comparison between a Harvard -MBA and one of the best and most famous writers in the world.
 
Last edited:

ellepro

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Hey All,

Just a bit of a rant/curious what peoples opinions are. How do you all gauge business courses, business gurus/personalities online, advice, etc? Who do you like, and what do you like about them? Or do you avoid the whole online business guru/advice/courses market all together?

I know MJ had a section on this but I've noticed how difficult it is to tell if people are legit. IE: I looked up to guys like Daymond John and watched all his interviews, but then I noticed he's licensing out his name to do online webinars on "making money" in my city. I was just watching Shark Tank and he was blatant doing product placement for a phone. Why would someone so successful bother? Same with Grant Cardone - seemed legit at first but why are these guys charging $4000 for seminars on sales? You don't seem to ever see guys like Mark Cuban or Elon Musk selling courses or doing product placement for an extra buck.

Is the internet an unreliable place to find these podcasts,courses,advice, etc? All one big upsell?
If they're trying to *promote* themselves and brag about their products or put their competition down, I avoid them. If there's someone who gives good advice and content without trying to promote or sell too much - even if they do have products, then I'll follow them. Example- Brian Dean
 
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mom

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people pay hedge fund managers $500,000+ per annum to lose money....

Or $1m+ on a diamond worth 20% of that....

Or the governent 50% of their hard earned money...

Plastic surgeons charge $25,000 for tummy tucks etc..

Dentists.. i am sure they rip us off.

And don't get me started on that f***8 plumber...

But let's all complain about the guru
 

mom

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If they're trying to *promote* themselves and brag about their products or put their competition down, I avoid them. If there's someone who gives good advice and content without trying to promote or sell too much - even if they do have products, then I'll follow them. Example- Brian Dean
how do you know you are getting the best advice/information though based on this?
 

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TreyAllDay

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May I know the meaning of the BS detector? Sorry I am new and my Question might sound ridiculous.

Bullshit detector. Basically just means when you think something sounds wrong or too good to believe, it usually is.
 
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shubham525

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One of the recent examples I came across is Tai Lopez.

Running courses like 5 minute daily advice for $50.

-----------------------------------------------------------
Best Table Fans in India
 

blueoceanblues

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Sam Ovens is the best.

He started as a practitioner; PPC for service businesses, acquired clients using unique direct mail strategies. People reached out to him for his acquisition strategies and he started to just coach people online with Skype and a drop box link to some scattered resources.

More and more people keep asking for his strategies, so he bottled it up in a course to help people get local business clients.

His model is essentially -> Be a practitioner -> Get results -> Bottle your experience in a course where someone can replicate your results with reasonable success if they follow your blueprint.
 

Neville Medhora

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I think an easy rule is to check if the person is teaching a TANGIBLE skills like engineering, programming, video making etc....

If there's an actual skill being learned through their materials, I give them a pass.

If the thing being taught is all wishy-washy like "Learn to be your authentic self" then I always raise an eyebrow.

A lot of life coaches do this:
momentum-through-stillness.jpg

It's just a bunch of nonsense feel-good advice that has no result in the real world:
sad-life-coach.jpg

Or other advice that does nothing like:
turn-away-from-negativity.gif

In code your BS Detector program would be:

Code:
if (Teaches_Real_World_Skill){
Pass;
}

else {
Be_Wary;
}
 
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Bryan James

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If the content/material being sold is true and genuine it will often be challenging or non-glamorous. The truth is always generally a tough pill to swallow. If it's vague, impractical and all too reassuring, I'd be twice as skeptical.
 

TreyAllDay

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Sam Ovens is the best.

He started as a practitioner; PPC for service businesses, acquired clients using unique direct mail strategies. People reached out to him for his acquisition strategies and he started to just coach people online with Skype and a drop box link to some scattered resources.

More and more people keep asking for his strategies, so he bottled it up in a course to help people get local business clients.

His model is essentially -> Be a practitioner -> Get results -> Bottle your experience in a course where someone can replicate your results with reasonable success if they follow your blueprint.
Which is cool - my problem is why does he play the "Look at my newyork penthouse and all my stuff". Nobody gets rich or frees up their time being a consultant, it's like a job at a higher rate. It's certainly not how he got rich. Am I missing something?

Sent from my SM-A520W using Tapatalk
 

PersistentlyHungry

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Can anybody vouch for Bruce Whipple? Bruce Whipple - Acquisition and Growth Strategist
Trying to figure out if this guy has merit.
He's supposed to be a multi-millionaire if he had followed his own advice,
which brings up the question: Why does he need to sell those courses?
 
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Bryan James

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Can anybody vouch for Bruce Whipple? Bruce Whipple - Acquisition and Growth Strategist
Trying to figure out if this guy has merit.
He's supposed to be a multi-millionaire if he had followed his own advice,
which brings up the question: Why does he need to sell those courses?

He was on YouTube a few years ago making weight-loss videos with very few views, now he's selling a course on how to make money? Seems fishy to me.
 
G

Guest12120

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I think the biggest issue with online marketing gurus is that they create a "fake reality" where to achieve financial success ALL you have to do is follow their courses. And if you don't succeed there must be something wrong with you (usually mindset).

You want to drive a Lambo (exactly like in their videos), buy a $997 course and sell aliexpress crap with cocaine-like margins.

They conveniently exclude the fact that it takes time and hard work to succeed.

If you are a member of one of many FB Ads groups created by gurus (as I was), you will only see carefully picked screenshots of their most successful campaigns (or fakes).

It seems like they have a magic touch and 100% of their campaigns make 5X your ad spend. They just can't fail!

All you see is amazing ROAS, even more amazing strategies and super amazing exclusives masterminds.

Then people buy these courses, try online business for a month or two, and fail. They decide entrepreneurship is not for them and they go back to their 9-5. Forever.

I went through countless FB Ads/Shopify courses myself in search for some unique content and found out that...

ALL OF THESE COURSES WERE THE SAME!

The same content over and over and over again.

I even worked with a couple of the Facebook famous FB Ads whisperers, just to see with my own eyes that their main skill was creating communities of raving fans and selling courses/mentorships/masterminds.

The business they started failed quickly but they won't tell your that.
 
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PureDirect

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I'd like to add my own experience and thoughts about Ramit Sethi and Tim Ferriss.

Ramit Sethi:

I found Ramit through Ferriss some point in late 2013 and signed up to his newsletter back then. Bought his $2000 course Zero to Launch back when it first came out in April 2014 and used it to launch a course that has since made me about $120,000 (over 4 years mind you). Later I also bought his Call to Action course on copy writing and another one on "Mental Mastery".

His material has provided me with a ton of value, but I still unsubscribed from his list earlier this year because:

  • He was selling/pushing a new course almost every month, which in itself isn't bad, but the new courses were on topics already covered by previous courses. Why do I need a course on creating sales pages when that's already part of the Call to Action course?
  • The last course I bought was Mental Mastery ... $297 for about a dozen short videos that had nothing but common sense advice (I asked for and received a refund for this). His advice for mental issues were things such as:
    - Topic: "From Lazy to Driven: The Secret to Hard Work..." Solution: Just do hard work. Make working hard a challenge.
    - Topic: "Effortless Discipline" Solution: Imagine how you'd act if you already had
    discipline
    - Topic: "How to be more confident" Solution: Pretend to be someone more confident
    Other course participants were swooning about how oh so awesome and life-changing the course was to them.
  • His ever increasing list of courses made me question whether he's really someone to listen to on that topic (he has courses on Fitness and eating for example) or whether he just keeps pushing out courses to maximize profit
  • Many of the testimonials he uses to sell his courses are from people that have either already had a successful business before or a successful career. Those were the folks making 5-figures or more per month. They certainly didn't start from Zero.
And the final reason is something that was mentioned throughout the guru-thread by Lex: Ramit owes his success to his book fame, but he makes it seem like anyone buying his courses can get the same results without a NYT best seller and industry connections (to people like Tim Ferriss). Ramit's first big course launch was after his book had brought him (inter)national attention so if he were to genuinely teach people how to copy his success he'd do courses on how to game the best seller lists.

The main benefit I received from taking his courses was the major push in having to take my business seriously after spending so much on the Zero to Launch course (I have yet to find unbiased reviews of it online).

Someone that has already gone through their FTE à la UNSCRIPTED will already have more than enough motivation and can get the same information I paid $3000 for either in books for less than $300 or maybe even for free in this forum somewhere.

Tim Ferriss:

I read 4HWW way back in 2009 and to put it in MJ's terms, it planted a virus that slowly began eating away at the SCRIPTED mentality. I still think it's a useful book, but the shortcut-mentality did hold me back for many of the years that followed.

I later learned that Tim seems to have used a whole bunch of shady/manipulative tricks to market his book before launch (Google "5 Time management tricks I learned from years of hating Tim Ferriss" by Penelope Trunk if you care to learn more). Integrity is very high on my value list, which is why reading about this behind the scenes F*ckery was disappointing. In summary:

  • Tim made his first money selling useless supplements to unsuspecting students and later athletes (to the tune of 30k / month) ... again, integrity?
  • Tim researched the heck out of needs/wants/burning pains the 9-5 crowd had and came up with a book idea, then did travelling and a whole bunch of (questionable/unsubstantiated) stunts like kickboxing champion and tango champion to show how awesome this muse-idea can be
  • Tim then promoted the heck out of his book using questionable methods. Knowing this guy it's probably no exaggeration to say he nearly killed himself with the effort put into the promotion.
  • Now he's set up for life.
I ultimately stopped listing to his podcasts because it became intellectual entertainment. I wanted to focus more on action and less on consumption. His frequent name-dropping ("My good friend [insert famous person here] always says that ...") as a means to borrow prestige also became annoying.

If there are any questions about either of the two or the courses I mentioned, let me know.
 

MJ DeMarco

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I'd like to add my own experience and thoughts about Ramit Sethi and Tim Ferriss.

Ramit Sethi:

I found Ramit through Ferriss some point in late 2013 and signed up to his newsletter back then. Bought his $2000 course Zero to Launch back when it first came out in April 2014 and used it to launch a course that has since made me about $120,000 (over 4 years mind you). Later I also bought his Call to Action course on copy writing and another one on "Mental Mastery".

His material has provided me with a ton of value, but I still unsubscribed from his list earlier this year because:

  • He was selling/pushing a new course almost every month, which in itself isn't bad, but the new courses were on topics already covered by previous courses. Why do I need a course on creating sales pages when that's already part of the Call to Action course?
  • The last course I bought was Mental Mastery ... $297 for about a dozen short videos that had nothing but common sense advice (I asked for and received a refund for this). His advice for mental issues were things such as:
    - Topic: "From Lazy to Driven: The Secret to Hard Work..." Solution: Just do hard work. Make working hard a challenge.
    - Topic: "Effortless Discipline" Solution: Imagine how you'd act if you already had
    discipline
    - Topic: "How to be more confident" Solution: Pretend to be someone more confident
    Other course participants were swooning about how oh so awesome and life-changing the course was to them.
  • His ever increasing list of courses made me question whether he's really someone to listen to on that topic (he has courses on Fitness and eating for example) or whether he just keeps pushing out courses to maximize profit
  • Many of the testimonials he uses to sell his courses are from people that have either already had a successful business before or a successful career. Those were the folks making 5-figures or more per month. They certainly didn't start from Zero.
And the final reason is something that was mentioned throughout the guru-thread by Lex: Ramit owes his success to his book fame, but he makes it seem like anyone buying his courses can get the same results without a NYT best seller and industry connections (to people like Tim Ferriss). Ramit's first big course launch was after his book had brought him (inter)national attention so if he were to genuinely teach people how to copy his success he'd do courses on how to game the best seller lists.

The main benefit I received from taking his courses was the major push in having to take my business seriously after spending so much on the Zero to Launch course (I have yet to find unbiased reviews of it online).

Someone that has already gone through their FTE à la UNSCRIPTED will already have more than enough motivation and can get the same information I paid $3000 for either in books for less than $300 or maybe even for free in this forum somewhere.

Tim Ferriss:

I read 4HWW way back in 2009 and to put it in MJ's terms, it planted a virus that slowly began eating away at the SCRIPTED mentality. I still think it's a useful book, but the shortcut-mentality did hold me back for many of the years that followed.

I later learned that Tim seems to have used a whole bunch of shady/manipulative tricks to market his book before launch (Google "5 Time management tricks I learned from years of hating Tim Ferriss" by Penelope Trunk if you care to learn more). Integrity is very high on my value list, which is why reading about this behind the scenes f*ckery was disappointing. In summary:

  • Tim made his first money selling useless supplements to unsuspecting students and later athletes (to the tune of 30k / month) ... again, integrity?
  • Tim researched the heck out of needs/wants/burning pains the 9-5 crowd had and came up with a book idea, then did travelling and a whole bunch of (questionable/unsubstantiated) stunts like kickboxing champion and tango champion to show how awesome this muse-idea can be
  • Tim then promoted the heck out of his book using questionable methods. Knowing this guy it's probably no exaggeration to say he nearly killed himself with the effort put into the promotion.
  • Now he's set up for life.
I ultimately stopped listing to his podcasts because it became intellectual entertainment. I wanted to focus more on action and less on consumption. His frequent name-dropping ("My good friend [insert famous person here] always says that ...") as a means to borrow prestige also became annoying.

If there are any questions about either of the two or the courses I mentioned, let me know.

Thank you for sharing your in-depth experience and review from a consumer perspective. Means a lot considering you actually consumed their info/products etc as opposed to someone who hasn't and is just looking through the window.
 

Lionhearted

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My "gurus" or mentors are books. MJ is certainly in this category in a very good way for me. The nice thing I find is that all the "gurus" have books too. I buy them from Ebay used as they are very cheap and I don't feel bad highlighting the crap out of them if they are good. I find many of the "gurus" tell you which books they read that were influential to their success (I STUDY those as well). I don't read, I study books. BTW I think Tony Robbins early work was worth reading. Tony's mentor was Jim Rohn and that guy was amazing. Jim's stuff is available on Youtube for free (a lot of Tony's stuff is too).
If you think education is expensivetry ignorance. — Derek Bok, president of Harvard University.
 
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blueoceanblues

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I think the biggest issue with online marketing gurus is that they create a "fake reality" where to achieve financial success ALL you have to do is follow their courses. And if you don't succeed there must be something wrong with you (usually mindset).

You want to drive a Lambo (exactly like in their videos), buy a $997 course and sell aliexpress crap with cocaine-like margins.

They conveniently exclude the fact that it takes time and hard work to succeed.

If you are a member of one of many FB Ads groups created by gurus (as I was), you will only see carefully picked screenshots of their most successful campaigns (or fakes).

It seems like they have a magic touch and 100% of their campaigns make 5X your ad spend. They just can't fail!

All you see is amazing ROAS, even more amazing strategies and super amazing exclusives masterminds.

Then people buy these courses, try online business for a month or two, and fail. They decide entrepreneurship is not for them and they go back to their 9-5. Forever.

I went through countless FB Ads/Shopify courses myself in search for some unique content and found out that...

ALL OF THESE COURSES WERE THE SAME!

The same content over and over and over again.

I even worked with a couple of the Facebook famous FB Ads whisperers, just to see with my own eyes that their main skill was creating communities of raving fans and selling courses/mentorships/masterminds.

The business they started failed quickly but they won't tell your that.


Points for "FB Ad whisperers" lol. There are "FB AD GURUS" who are no longer in the niches they're teaching you to create ads AND when they did have a client, they lost them in 3 months because they don't focus on retention or client satisfaction. You can find a few just by googling "FB Ads for real estate agents" -- RE has some of the hardest client retention rates but you can sell em on services like hotcakes.

When FB opened up the "Info and Ads" section, I used it to quietly expose the gold from dross. How? Take one of these 'gurus' who slips and shows one of their clients and see if they're still running ads for their clients. Nope.

But they're running ads for you. :)

It seems scaling businesses with paid traffic is only a launchpad to teaching courses.

Why?

We're all adults here....

Lets face it. The wantrapreneur is the easiest person to sell. Want proof?

Look at real estate agents. Every day agents are sold a new shiny object; ringless voicemail, predictive analytics that discover zipcodes with the most likely sellers, paid ads, referral generation programs, 10,000CRMs, social media marketing, video marketing, iDX websites, AI/Chatbots, magazine subscriptions, direct mail packages, gift ideas for closings, and don't forget coaches and masterminds -- hell I was on a sales call with an agent who bought a kiosk -- said he only got real estate agent calls from it -- no buyers/sellers lol.

Meanwhile the stats show that tens upon tens of thousands of agents fall out of the business in the first year and scores more fall out in 3 years.

Yet the big coaches, training programs, 'masterminds', tech companies, website companies and more -- are all larger than ever.

I agree with you about the 'fake realty' / step-by-step deception.

What's happening there is the same thing that College promised; "if you check all these boxes you will become a valuable employee and make 100k/yr."

But what checkboxes and standardized process do you follow to become Jeff Bezos?

Where is the Jeff Bezos course?
 

Brad S

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But what checkboxes and standardized process do you follow to become Jeff Bezos?

Where is the Jeff Bezos course?

Those are the most important questions of this whole thread.

Can you imagine Jeff Bezos having a paid mastermind group or running Facebook ads for his udemy course?

The people that do this shit are jokes.

It's the dumb exploiting the dumber.

They aren't entrepreneurs or businessmen.

They are conmen clowns.

Read the bios of everyone on the forbes 400 list.

Now you have your mastermind group.
 

Brad S

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I'd like to add my own experience and thoughts about Ramit Sethi and Tim Ferriss.

Ramit Sethi:

I found Ramit through Ferriss some point in late 2013 and signed up to his newsletter back then. Bought his $2000 course Zero to Launch back when it first came out in April 2014 and used it to launch a course that has since made me about $120,000 (over 4 years mind you). Later I also bought his Call to Action course on copy writing and another one on "Mental Mastery".

His material has provided me with a ton of value, but I still unsubscribed from his list earlier this year because:

  • He was selling/pushing a new course almost every month, which in itself isn't bad, but the new courses were on topics already covered by previous courses. Why do I need a course on creating sales pages when that's already part of the Call to Action course?
  • The last course I bought was Mental Mastery ... $297 for about a dozen short videos that had nothing but common sense advice (I asked for and received a refund for this). His advice for mental issues were things such as:
    - Topic: "From Lazy to Driven: The Secret to Hard Work..." Solution: Just do hard work. Make working hard a challenge.
    - Topic: "Effortless Discipline" Solution: Imagine how you'd act if you already had
    discipline
    - Topic: "How to be more confident" Solution: Pretend to be someone more confident
    Other course participants were swooning about how oh so awesome and life-changing the course was to them.
  • His ever increasing list of courses made me question whether he's really someone to listen to on that topic (he has courses on Fitness and eating for example) or whether he just keeps pushing out courses to maximize profit
  • Many of the testimonials he uses to sell his courses are from people that have either already had a successful business before or a successful career. Those were the folks making 5-figures or more per month. They certainly didn't start from Zero.
And the final reason is something that was mentioned throughout the guru-thread by Lex: Ramit owes his success to his book fame, but he makes it seem like anyone buying his courses can get the same results without a NYT best seller and industry connections (to people like Tim Ferriss). Ramit's first big course launch was after his book had brought him (inter)national attention so if he were to genuinely teach people how to copy his success he'd do courses on how to game the best seller lists.

The main benefit I received from taking his courses was the major push in having to take my business seriously after spending so much on the Zero to Launch course (I have yet to find unbiased reviews of it online).

Someone that has already gone through their FTE à la UNSCRIPTED will already have more than enough motivation and can get the same information I paid $3000 for either in books for less than $300 or maybe even for free in this forum somewhere.

Tim Ferriss:

I read 4HWW way back in 2009 and to put it in MJ's terms, it planted a virus that slowly began eating away at the SCRIPTED mentality. I still think it's a useful book, but the shortcut-mentality did hold me back for many of the years that followed.

I later learned that Tim seems to have used a whole bunch of shady/manipulative tricks to market his book before launch (Google "5 Time management tricks I learned from years of hating Tim Ferriss" by Penelope Trunk if you care to learn more). Integrity is very high on my value list, which is why reading about this behind the scenes f*ckery was disappointing. In summary:

  • Tim made his first money selling useless supplements to unsuspecting students and later athletes (to the tune of 30k / month) ... again, integrity?
  • Tim researched the heck out of needs/wants/burning pains the 9-5 crowd had and came up with a book idea, then did travelling and a whole bunch of (questionable/unsubstantiated) stunts like kickboxing champion and tango champion to show how awesome this muse-idea can be
  • Tim then promoted the heck out of his book using questionable methods. Knowing this guy it's probably no exaggeration to say he nearly killed himself with the effort put into the promotion.
  • Now he's set up for life.
I ultimately stopped listing to his podcasts because it became intellectual entertainment. I wanted to focus more on action and less on consumption. His frequent name-dropping ("My good friend [insert famous person here] always says that ...") as a means to borrow prestige also became annoying.

If there are any questions about either of the two or the courses I mentioned, let me know.


It's good someone finally brought these 2 up.

I'm VERY familiar with both.

I could say alot but I'll keep this quick.

These 2 are NO different than any other Internet marketers, info product and course sellers.

No different than Tai Lopez.

Same shit different package.
 
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