Why Finance 'Gurus' Want You To Hate Them - How Money Works

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Financial charlatans promising people the secrets to getting rich quick have been around for as long as capitalism itself.

These people will present themselves as wildly successful before offering up the secrets to their success for a steep price.

The modern incarnation of scummy business model got it’s start with cheesy so called “financial Gurus” who would pay for ad spots on late night TV infomercials. Today the practice has become more popular with social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok giving these men direct access to millions of potential victims.

But if these men are trying to convince people of their supposed financial brilliance, why don’t they present a more professional image?
Financial charlatans promising people the secrets to getting rich quick have been around for as long as capitalism itself.

These people will present themselves as wildly successful before offering up the secrets to their success for a steep price.

The modern incarnation of scummy business model got it’s start with cheesy so called “financial Gurus” who would pay for ad spots on late night TV infomercials. Today the practice has become more popular with social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok giving these men direct access to millions of potential victims.

But if these men are trying to convince people of their supposed financial brilliance, why don’t they present a more professional image?

#howmoneyworks

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Music by Epidemic Sound

Stock footage by Storyblocks

[denniss]

YouTube has given these guys even more power by removing the thumb down counter

[WildkatPhoto]

I had an economics professor who was reasonably famous in the economics world. Famous enough that he got a lot of pitches for get rich quick schemes that wanted him to endorse and of course back with real money. He had a simple response was - "If this is so good home come you are telling me about it? How come it only works with my money?"

[maywalker]

With the rapid rise in inflation and the cost of living in society, I'm certain that these "financial guru's" will proliferate and profit even more as not only will people increasingly look towards alternative ways to make money, but in an age of uncertainty, those who appear confident about what they're doing can have extra allure.

[InvestorCenter]

I remember hearing Grant Cardone say something along the lines of “I don’t care if people hate me, at least they are thinking of me”

[aquasouleon]

Another reason for misspellings in scam emails is to bypass filters that would flag the email.

[frankjennings]

A sales funnel that generated 4, 000 new auto customers from 1 million ad impressions would be the greatest sales funnel of this century.

[TheOneWhoMightBe]

I once attended a marketing scam introduction with my partner. I forget exactly what the product being sold was, but it was one of those totally-not-a-pyramid-scheme things where you buy the course and that gives you the right to sell it to other people. The leech hosting it was going on about facebook marketing and who to target. I asked why you would try to sell a course to people who had already bought other courses which failed, and his answer was basically 'because they're stupid'. He said this in a room full of people who had previously bought similar courses.
Some still signed up for the 2-day $5000 'personal tuition' at the end of it, so I guess he was right.

[TF-Times]

“I’m so rich. That’s why I sell classes for $500.” 🤡

[llydrsn]

It's not just finance gurus who do this. A lot of internet personalities resort to controversial takes (a lot are even more absurd that the last one) to generate engagement on their social media pages or channels. Even legimitate, mainstream media does this now which explains why a lot of news and sports channels have this always-angry-always-shouting type of anchor on their channel. Heck, even clickbait articles could be likened to this. Now the thing is just to generate engagement, regardless of the substance of the content.

[draneym]

Man, having a conscience is expensive.

[dresher]

I love how you explained a sales funnel in less than 30 secs but ppl would gladly pay £thousands to learn about it in 5 days

[SorFig]

8:50 - Glad you used the email analogy. As a programmer, I was thinking this the whole time I was listening to your analysis. Very true, and very effective.

[JustinJohnson-gttr]

So, they pretty much use the same playbook as prosperity preachers like Joel Osteen and Kenneth Copeland except they are preaching finance over social media and Youtube instead of Jesus on TV instead.

[austinrush]

One thing I’d note is that many salespeople have a high level of expertise in their field. Oftentimes, you have to have a high level of technical knowledge around the products and services you sell.

Just having great sales skills isn’t necessarily enough. You need to understand the needs of your client, the product you are selling, and the competition. In something like tech or finance, that can take a lot of education.

[thetake-geopolitics]

If someone has the formula on how to make money, they’re not going to tell you for free

[Planetbustard]

"How I earn 25k a month working from home telling other people how they can make 25k a month working from home"

[ImageBears]

I got pretty mentally invested in these sides of things for like 2 years and it really ruined some of my relationships with friends because i started to think of myself as "better".

The sooner you realize life is more about relationships and things of that nature than money and wordly success, the more this stuff doesn't make sense.

[maywalker]

All the best scams start with confidence.

These guru's might have little-to-no credibility but their performance is top notch, from their costume to their mannerisms. It's interesting how much "monkey brain" psychology is at work here too; a muscular physique doesn't make someone a more savvy investor and yet our minds have been so strongly evolutionarily & socially primed to associate muscles with dominance, better leadership and greater authority, that we're still liable to being drawn towards those with good bodies even over matters regarding our finances (and you will note that these guru's tend to spend a lot of time hitting the gym, especially focusing on building up their upper bodies).

I've noticed there is increasingly often a whole lifestyle culture connected with and promoted alongside all the money success sales pitching, resulting in this sort of hybrid "rise & grind" culture which combines self help book advice and "alpha male" thinking, workout & lifestyle regimens, designer products, to spirituality and a whole workaholic culture rolled into formulas which promise people great success in life if you simply follow them. The advice is not always bad, but often a lot of it is totally irrelevant to making money and more importantly, many people don't seem to realise that the people pitching this stuff make their primary income from promoting the lifestyles. It's often targeted towards young men/teenage guys (although the whole "girl boss" movement also has it's fair share of it) and some people take the culture very seriously, practically following it religiously.

I feel like stuff like this has probably always existed in some form or another for each era in time, but social media has acted like steroids for these semi-scams and sales pitchers, giving them unlimited power to reach and proliferate. I wonder in the future how people will look back on this era?

[majorfallacy]

I have yet to find a salesman who doesn't think they are more important than the developers and engineers who make the actual product, and I also have yet to find a salesman who actually contributes anything significant of value to society. I'm not at all surprised that they're the main target audience of scams like that.

[silicalnz]

I love the ones that are just
"I'm rich cause I figured out how to not pay taxes".
"I'm rich cause I'm millions in debt"