Unpopular Opinion: Why “fake guru” isn’t as fake as most people think pt. 1
Most of us would have come across ads about a guru who looks successful with some fancy car and background of floor to ceiling glass window trying to promote a limited exclusive free course that teaches you how to be successful in something and become rich by doing that. In most cases, if this guru is relatively successful and famous, you can look him up on Google or Youtube and the chances that you see a title like “XXX — Charlatan or Authentic”, “XXX is a Scam” or “Here’s how I get scammed for $10,000 by XXX” is extremely high. So, this article is about how I disagree with many of them.
In this article, I will be separating it into 3 parts. In the first part, I will be discussing what people misunderstood about online gurus. In the second part, I will be answering some of the counter-argument. In the third part, I will be discussing the criteria of what I consider as a fake guru.
What people misunderstood about online gurus
1. Value
Here is the most common misunderstanding about the online guru, which is the value they are providing. I am sure if you come across any of those articles or video, you will hear something similar to as below.
“The course cost X dollar (eg: $2,000) but it teaches you information that can be easily obtained from books. There is nothing new or exclusive that are from that guru.”
This is perhaps the most common argument, which argues on the value those gurus are providing versus the cost that it will be involved. The biggest problem here, in my opinion, is the method of measuring value.
If the value is measured with only the information that they are providing, the chances that it will not be on par with the cost it involves are very high. It is equivalent to measuring the value of a watch against how well it can perform timekeeping. Entry-level $100 quartz movement watch can easily stay accurate to 10 seconds per month, which is equivalent to 0.33 seconds per day, but your more expensive $5,000 mechanical movement watch is looking at the accuracy of 2 seconds per day, which is a lot less accurate. The main reason the $5,000 cost that much despite its inaccuracy in timekeeping is mainly due to value from other aspects of the watch, such as the material used, water-resistant rating, craftsmanship, great finishing of movement parts, etc.
The same thing applies to online guru. Their value does not only come from the information they provide in a course. It also comes from a lot of other places, which I will be listing them below.
Opening up a new opportunity
First, due to the nature of the target audience of these online gurus, they are very likely to be opening a new opportunity which would not even be possible otherwise to a lot of people. Consider how many people actually read these days. If they read, how many of them do read non-fiction? How many of them rather spend their time on social media than self-improvement? People who convert are most likely the groups of people who have the intention to improve themselves but will not do so on their own in the first place. These people came across those guru ads and get motivated by their ads to sign up and started their journey of self-improvement.
Often time, it is after they sign up to these online courses that they have their mindset changed, and they only started with more self-learning on their own. Here, I might be assuming the worst of people, which they will never perform any self-learning, but let us assume that they will at a later stage of their life after some life experience, the point still stands, because you can only perform self-learning on a subject you know they exist at all. Take a course about affiliate marketing, for example, those people might not even know the existence of it, hence when they reach the life stages that they will start to practice self-learning, they will also never learn about affiliate marketing due to one cannot learn something that they do not know exists. This brings me to the next point, which is “mindset”.
Mindset
During COVID-19, we will see 2 types of people, the people who looking for opportunity during the pandemic and try to grow their business, and also people who complain about the situation without doing anything about it. What separates them is the mindset.
If you had come across any video or article about those gurus, you will know mindset is a big part of their course. Oftentimes, you will also see that mindset is exactly what people criticize those gurus about. They criticize that despite the course if about X subject, but Y% of the course is all about mindset. However, I think the mindset is exactly where one of the biggest source of value for some of the people.
Since we had understood their target audience, it is safe to assume that most people who sign up are people who might not equip with the right mindset for success. Mindset is not a sufficient condition for success, but the mindset is one of the necessary condition for success. With being exposed to a mindset from these gurus (it is safe to assume that most of these gurus are extremely opportunistic and a doer at the same time), they will be exposed to the type of mindset which is nothing like most of the people around them. This could change them in a lot of ways, which include a different way of seeing things, becoming more a doer than a complainer, becoming more hardworking, becoming more opportunistic, etc. Unlike the information from the course, this can be transferred to other aspects of their life in the event where what the person learn from the course does not work out for him (not able to earn a sustainable income from affiliate marketing, amazon E-commerce with FBA, etc).
However, the mindset change does not only come from what the guru teaches in the course, but it also comes from somewhere else, which brings me to my next point, the people.
People
These courses are by no mean cheap. A lot of these courses also have a close group, be it a Whatsapp group, Facebook group, or etc. Dan Lok for example, has a group on Facebook call High-Ticket Closer Family™ Group where every member inside the group is paid members of Dan Lok course. These people can be used to advantage if know-how. They are people who at least had the commitment to self-improvement, people who could possibly be coming from a career with a reasonable result and wishing to grow more, or people from a wealthy family with a wide network from their family background.
By being in these group alone, of course, does no good to anyone. One who wishes to benefit from it require to actively interact with the people, perform sharing experience, asking for help, as well as looking for connections. What one learn from the course might be theory from some book without actual experience, but one can seek for the experience some of those who have actual experience in the group. One can also benefit from the connections inside, which could potentially open up a new career opportunity to one due to the connection he/she obtain. Of course, from the last point, the exposure to the mindset of those who are coming from a reasonably wealthy background as well. One does not become wealthy by luck alone, and by talking to these people, one can wish to find the reason behind their wealth, and could potentially benefit them.
2. Marketing
The second point is marketing. Most of the people who “expose” fake guru usually point out their false advertising. So, what do these gurus do that makes them think of false advertising?
Often time, those videos/article has a problem with the advertisement promising to deliver 6-figure income to the student if they sign up. However, that is far from the truth. In the above example, it is only portraying that he is delivering a method that had helped him to earn 6-figure income and could potentially help anyone to earn it as well. That is very different from guaranteeing a 6-figure income. Let us look at another example:
Again, another example where the guru promises to deliver a method that had works for him to achieve a high income. These marketing are in my opinion far from false advertising. They only promise to deliver a method which works for them, and they do deliver the method in the course. They are merely pointing out that there is such a possibility in the method that could potentially help their student to achieve high income.
Since we had established that they are far from false advertising, assume those who “expose” fake guru do not really have a problem with that, rather they have a problem with portraying possibilities which most people will not be able to achieve, then they should also have a problem with basically most of the marketing.
Above is an advertisement of a fried chicken company which portrays the possibilities that eating fried chicken with family could improve your family relationship. However, we all know that most of the time it does not improve a family relationship. There is even evidence showing that eating fried chicken every day hoping that it will improve your family relationship would also introduce you to the possibilities of heart diseases and many other diseases.
There is a lot of other examples. For instance, the shampoo company that portray the possibilities that using their shampoo could help you to attain smooth hair just like their model. In reality, there is a lot more care from the model that had put into taking care of her hair. With just the shampoo, it is close to impossible to achieve it.
Another example would be a phone company that shows the possibilities to take a high-quality cinematic video from their phone. However, will most of the phone user able to take such high-quality video with it? Unfortunately, the answer is no. The video you see in the ads which were taken from the phone is basically taken with the help of a lot of other equipment such as studio continuously lighting, light diffuser, light umbrella, tripod, gimbal, shotgun microphone, boom pole, light reflector, camera shoulder rig with a phone mount, etc. These are simply the amount of equipment that cost thousands of dollar each and is just not attainable for most of the people who is going to buy their phone.
It is just a part of marketing, to sell you a possibility. The possibility by itself is not wrong or right. If they argue against guru on their marketing, the same can be done to a lot of commercials. Why when we buy fried chicken, we do not expect to strengthen our family relationship from it, when we buy the phone, we do not expect to take highest-quality of cinematic video like the one which shows in commercial, but people expect to earn 6 figure from an online course just because it posses such possibility. In my opinion, if they are against the online guru, for this reason, they have to against any form of marketing that is also based on selling a possibility/dream.
3. Expertise
Expertise is the last point in the first section of this article. To understand this point, we have to understand the background of a lot of these gurus.
There is a large number of these gurus who is only successful after they start their guru career. However, these gurus often portray themselves as someone who is successful before when they started their guru career. This is where a lot of those who call them out has a problem with them. They will often claim that they do not have enough prior experience to what they are teaching or they are not an expert in that field. They even say that these guru proof that anyone can be an expert.
Here is where I think differently from a lot of people. They may argue that those gurus do not have enough years of experience in that field to start a course on that subject. However, my question is who decides who many years one require to practice in one field before becoming a guru? These days, we had seen people with 1 year of working experience becoming a lead developer simply because he is very good at what he is doing. This person only has 1 year of working experience, does it mean that he should not be qualified to be a lead developer? Same goes to these gurus, they might only be in an industry for a short period of time, does it immediately mean they are not qualified to teach a subject?
Let’s take Dan Lok for example. Dan Lok claims to have started a copywriting company with millions of revenue and running it for several years. Although he does not have 20 years of experience in copywriting, however, I think by him running a successful copywriting company qualified him to teach a copywriting course because, at the end of the day, it’s about how successful you can be in copywriting industry, not how good you are in copywriting skills.
Now, you might say that he also has a course called High Ticket Closer, which he teaches how to close high ticket sales but it is commonly believed that he does not have any sales experience. However, let’s not forget that to run a successful copywriting company, he needs to close a lot of high tickets copywriting prospect in order to achieve that. On top of that, he is also making a lot of sales from the previous high ticket online course he releases, which is also a form of high ticket sales. The question here is there is a lot of form of sales, and one technique that works in one form of sales might not work in the others, yet a lot of people criticize Dan Lok for his sales advice not realizing that his advice is actually working for him.
I will end this section with everyone is an expert in something. All you need to do is just 1 step ahead of everyone else and you can be considered an expert in that particular subject. Especially with things move around so fast these days, who can call themselves an expert in social media when social media had only been around 10 years? What matters here is how much further ahead you are from most people, and that alone makes you an expert.
Ending Note
This is my 3 main points of why I think online gurus are providing more value than a lot of people think they are, more so than people who call them out as “fake guru”. In the next part, I will be answering the counter argument to the points I had given here. If you do not agree with any of my points, please comment down below and let me know, so I can answer that in my next part as well.
