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Is This For Real?
By JLP | November 8, 2006
A couple of months ago I was in Barnes & Noble, hanging around in the business section, when I came across a book with an interesting title: Automatic Wealth For Grads
If the product or idea was THAT GREAT and MADE tons of money for them, then WHY do they need to sell the idea to other people? I mean isn’t the idea good enough that they don’t have to bother with selling their secrets? My guess is that they make more money selling their secrets than they do from actually USING their secrets. If I found a way to make $100,000,000 per year, doing something that anybody can do, I SURE AS HECK wouldn’t be telling other people about it.
So, what are your thoughts? Is this stuff a waste of time or have you had a good experience with stuff like this?
Topics: Miscellaneous | 12 Comments »
November 8th, 2006 at 11:19 am
Undecided. But here’s how Kiyosaki and Robert Allen etc did it.
1 Get “rich” by any means 2 Write a book (good or bad it doesnt matter) 3 Get famous 4 Sell the book, seminars, speeches, internet subscriptions etc
Read Robert Allen’s book Multiple Streams of Internet Income. If you pay attention enough he basically says he’s a fraud.
Nevertheless, a rich fraud.
November 8th, 2006 at 11:22 am
I’m not familiar with that book, but from your description it sounds like some of the multi-level marketing programs out there. Those seem to be pretty popular in this part of the country. The multi-level people spend more time and energy recruiting other people to sell products rather than selling them themselves. If the products are such a great deal, then why to they have to convince someone else to sell them?
It also reminds me of the signs I see nailed to power poles advertizing “Earn $20-50k per month”. If you could really reliably earn that much per month, every month, they wouldn’t need to advertize on telephone poles.
November 8th, 2006 at 12:08 pm
I figure that most of these things are basically fraud and the real secret to millions is really “in” the books.
On the other side, people are greedy and maybe the idea makes a lot of money, but they know that they can make even more buy selling their idea to others.
November 8th, 2006 at 12:09 pm
I’m with MoneyFwd – actually doing whatever it is is much harder than they tell you it is. Selling the books and newsletters is easy and you can hire other people to do it for you.
November 8th, 2006 at 12:13 pm
You know, after thinking about it, maybe there is an inate desire to have BOTH fame and fortune. Maybe people NEED to have other people KNOW just how smart they really are.
November 8th, 2006 at 1:55 pm
Like John said above, it is similar to the people like Robert G. Allen. I’ve haven’t read the multiple streams of internet income, but I have read the original multiple streams of income and the information in that book is not by any means rocket science.
It starts out talking about money and how compounding works over time, and where your money goes. Then it talks about different streams of income, such as through investments, real estate, and where these people make their money, through network marketing and infopreneuring as he likes to call it.
He makes it clear that by using a success story such as his, putting it into a book, seminars, audio tapes, and websites, he can continue to build wealth, and encourages others to do something similar.
There is no groundbreaking information in these types of materials, whether it is a book about multiple streams of income, becoming an automatic millionaire, or automatic wealth for grads. It is simply someone compiling some basic and common sense finance ideas, a catchy title, and excellent marketing.
There will never be a shortage of people who are looking for an easy answer to wealth, so they will continue to sell hundreds of thousands of books, sell out auditoriums to give seminars on the material, and every few years write a new book rehashing the same ideas.
I’m not going to say it is right or wrong, but these people have simply identified a need, and fulfilled the need by providing products people want. This does NOT include the pyramid schemes or the true get rich quick ideas where you spend a bunch of money on some scam. I’m just talking about people who speak about how to generate wealth, even if they do make it seem easy, because honestly, with some common sense and sound finance principles, it can be.
November 8th, 2006 at 6:06 pm
Always here to point out, though, that sometimes these books are worth their weight in providing motivation or stimulating thinking. It sounds like the Automatic Wealth for Grads might be a little more schemish than inspirational, but haven’t read it so probably shouldn’t comment.
I’ll give you that Multiple Streams of Income is common sense and that some of the things they want you to do are not easy AT ALL (like, tax liens — did tons of research on that one before I figured out that it wasn’t easy, AT ALL) — but the framework is useful.
I remember listening to the Allen book and mapping out a diagram later to help me brainstorm through all of the income streams I felt enough expertise in to pursue — I even put some pie-in-sky-someday ideas in the column for re-sale of intellectual capital. Gotta keep the brain moving on this stuff all the time and there IS a huge market out there.
To me, being entrepreneurial and not depending just on the job, coupons, and traditional investments is a huge part of the personal finance domain.
November 8th, 2006 at 10:17 pm
JLP I’m going to respectfully disagree with you on this one.
Early to Rise isn’t get-rich-quick snake oil. His book, Automatic Wealth, is very good, one of the better ones. It’s not short on details the way Kiyosaki’s stuff can be. Not that I don’t like Kiyosaki, but it’s better for the epiphany factor (“OH! Being an employee isn’t the way to get wealthy!”) than for actually doing anything.
Masterson’s stuff is not GRQ at all. It’s Get Rich A Little Sooner.
November 9th, 2006 at 2:28 am
“If I found a way to make $100,000,000 per year, doing something that anybody can do, I SURE AS HECK wouldn’t be telling other people about it.”
Exactly, which is why virtually all of those “earn 700%” web sites are full of crap.
I was actually skimming through Automatic Wealth for Grads at the bookstore the other day. It seemed like a pretty good book with mostly good advice.
November 9th, 2006 at 3:33 pm
I read this book about six months ago in the B&N and while reading it, I got the sense the author was a greasy guy, then I looked at his cover on the dust jacket and yup. Gross. The book is long on motivation but short on practical ideas. Very few employees are in a position to go into their workplace and tell their boss that he needs to triple their pay and hope the investment will pay off. There were a few good things about the book, but I wasn’t going to pay $25 for it.
November 9th, 2006 at 5:31 pm
Carlton Sheets pulled this one a few years back. He supposedly made gobs of money doing real estate investing and claimed that he would share his secrets with you through is $200 program. A buddy of mine ate up the infomercial and purchased the program. After he finished with it, I gave it a run.
Here’s the deal, Carlton had some great ideas. I’m sure he made money doing it. The problem is that his information is all outdated. That’s why he’s selling it. It wasn’t working for him anymore so he had to find a new way to monetize it.
November 12th, 2006 at 5:53 am
I’ve got to imagine that 99% of the people who even claim to be millionaires and selling ebooks, infomercials, etc. are actually millionaires. Sure, they might become millionaires once people buy into their schemes but no one (to my knowledge) is doing background checks on these characters. They are just saying they’re rich. I’ve been watching these infomercials for as long as I can remember.. from Don Lapre to Carlton Sheets to Robert Kiyosaki. What all of them have in common is that they could be lying about who they are and still pretending to be authorities and people would eat this stuff up. It’s all about appearances, so I would say 99% of these people are frauds. That does not mean that 1% aren’t being altruistic with their information, even if it’s not 100% altruism.