I saw a gentleman one time who brought in several of his many business ideas. He showed me a letter he received from “retired attorney, Phillip A. Brown.” Mr. Brown carefully explained how he had been shown this wonderful system for success. All he did was mail out 200 copies of this same coffee-stained crooked page and he had precise records of earnings that totaled $968,494.00!! And the letter says clearly “YOU WILL RECEIVE OVER $800,000 GUARANTEED!!! Yes, in all caps and with the exclamation marks. And “This is 100% legal service.”
This was one of those where you have three listed addresses with instructions to send one $5 bill to the person at the top of the list, then delete that address and move the other two addresses up, and finally add your name to the bottom of the list. The letter goes on to state that you would receive several thousand dollars in five dollar bills within two weeks if you sent the letter out with your name at the bottom of the three-address list.
So my client decided (prior to seeing me) that he wouldn’t be greedy but at least $100,000 would be kinda nice – and it all seemed very logical. So he made his own copies, invested his $300 and waited for the mail. He was afraid the mailman may be upset at having to deliver so many new letters with checks in them.
Well, after his period of waiting, he counted up his cash. So far, it totals $5.00. After I picked myself up off the floor from laughing we started to look for some better ideas. Yes, it’s the old “chain letter.” It does sound logical but – it just doesn’t work. It’s based on people’s stupidity – and contrary to observation, there’s not that many of them out there.
I share this to say I would rather work with someone who lost $295 in a mail scam, or who ordered a guaranteed roach killer for $29.95 only to receive two small boards with instructions to place the roach on one board and hit it with the other, or someone who invested $300 in vitamins with a network marketing company and still has $295 worth – than with someone who always played it safe and never lost a penny.
It’s by risking out of our comfort zone that we “find” new opportunities. You can be safe and your life will be the same 5 years from now. Or you can explore, experiment, plan, try and act your way to your own unique success story. Ask me about my hot cashew vending machines (I lost $1800 I had gotten as grant money for college as an 18-yr-old). Did I hang my head in shame and vow to never again risk an investment – nope. Today our 48 Days Personality Profiles are delivered through an electronic vending system – people put money in and out pops their profile. It continues to be our most popular and profitable product.
What “scams” have you invested in? What important lessons did you learn?
Not so much scams… but I have spent many thousands on tools and opportunities that did not return on investment. I also for eg made tens of thousands from watching a free webby and reverse engineering it. Lol. Lesson? Nothing will change if you don’t jump in and get your hands dirty.
Dan, what a great way of looking at it! Love your perspective of wanting to work with someone who may feel not so great about getting duped into something. What a great story!!! That you both could laugh about it is the best.
Was approached by a fellow just a few years ago that ask me if I would be interested in having access to thousands of named brand products at a fraction of the price they would cost in Wal-Mart etc. Obviously I said yes. After attending the very first meeting at the Holiday Inn in Nashville, almost at the end of the talk the guy (up line fellow that organized the seminars/meetings) finally threw the name Amway in there. SO, even though I was turned off by the name Amway, still I loved the idea of having access to all those other named brand products. But as it turned out, there wasn’t a lot of money to made off of those, but rather the Amway products. Long story short, since we had already invested the time to check it out, Gloria and I set a goal to do the business for a year and if we didn’t start seeing some good profit being made, we would shut it down and move on. And that’s what we did, exactly a year from our start date. DISCLAIMER: I am not knocking Amway, they have good products, they are just priced pretty high if you are not in the club. I’m just not cut out for Multi-level Marketing, it isn’t in my DISC profile (Thanks Dan for making those available. Those things are AMAZING)). However, during that year I did make some good friends. Till this day the fellow that approached me with that business and I still keep in close contact. And by the way, he is a member here at 48 Days.net. He’s not active, but is a member. And with all that said Gloria and I have tried several MLM businesses, but we’ve finally come to the realization that we are NOT wired for that, and so life goes on. 🙂
Myself and three buddies “invested” $5,000 each in the early 90’s on one of those pyramid schemes. We even went to the house of the people who were running it. We had a wonderful evening, dinner and drinks, at their beautiful house. The four of us went to Cancun on spring break, and each of us told the stories of what we were going to do with the money once we became “President”It went like this..You invested $5,000 (cash, of course!) , and were the Secretary. Once you got someone else in, you were Treasurer. With more recruits, next was Vice President. And with another recruit you were President, and cashed in! I think it was something like $100,000 we’d receive once we were President.
I’m still waiting for that $100,000. That $5,000 bought me a good story and a heck of a lesson.