The Internet landscape is saturated with claims of easy, automatic, guaranteed, wealth-building packages and lucrative startup systems that anyone can do with minimal effort and wild success.
These offers often seem so "right" for the novice just starting out in business because of their supposed ease of setup, lack of real work, and mega-profits that are "guaranteed."
But I will tell you: don't waste your money or your time on these products, and above all, don't get discouraged that you're getting left behind if you don't hit the "buy now" button before 12 o'clock midnight when the offer goes away!
The self-proclaimed wealth "gurus" that produce these products can't guarantee you anything.
It's so easy to get hooked on their outrageous claims of mega bucks for little or no effort.
Advertising that "pulls you in" to the lie about easy online wealth is meant to appeal to the greed, laziness, and impatience in all of us (the masses).
Come on, who wouldn't enjoy becoming filthy rich without lifting a finger? They say they did it and there's no reason you can't do it too.
If someone can sell me the easy and affordable solution to all my money problems, I'd be a fool not to grab my wallet in a heartbeat . . . right?
The problem is . . . such a solution just doesn't exist. Period!
My friend Jeff called awhile back, a former co-worker and a family man whom I'd chatted with several months earlier about a business idea he was trying to develop.
Jeff has a relatively good job but decided he'd better develop a second income to help meet the growing expenses of his three teenagers and some hefty college bills he'd be facing in a few years.
Like many of us, he'd put off saving for his kids' post high school education.
Jeff told me he'd tried three different business creation "systems" or turn-key packages over the past few months that had initially sounded like they were exactly the solution he needed to profit from his business idea.
But for various reasons, none of the systems had given him even one dollar of revenue to date.
Jeff was pretty discouraged and about to give up on his dream to own his own business and put away some money for the future needs he saw coming.
I had warned Jeff that this was probably going to happen and suggested that he take a more sensible and realistic approach to starting an online business.
Well, he didn't.
He confessed he'd wanted to start making money faster than what I was suggesting it would take. He was understandably impatient to get earning something extra.
I guess the lure of only working a few hours a week (like each of these solutions had promised) sounded just too enticing to Jeff.
He wanted very badly to believe the ads he had responded to with his hard-earned money.
He trusted each of these products to be the solution he just had to have.
I can't tell you the number of times I've heard this same sad story retold by aspiring entrepreneurs looking for an easy way to get started in business.
Well, Jeff and I spent the next half hour discussing the contents of his purchases, what he had done with each, and why none of his wealth-building products were really the answer he was hoping to find.
I asked him to describe for me how much time, effort, and money he had "invested" in starting his business so far (a far better word than "invested" in this case is "wasted" - but I wasn't going to rub Jeff's nose in his mistake).
Stick with me and I'll tell you more later.
