What makes a fake guru a fake guru pt.2
A while ago, I had written the part 1 of this article, and if you had not read it yet, it is about what a lot of people misunderstood about what value does a guru provide. In summary, the values that a guru provides are opening up a new opportunity, mindset, and connection. In this article, I will be discussing what makes a fake guru, a fake guru in relation to the value that they provide.
Definition of fake guru
To spot a fake guru, we first need to have a clear definition of what is a fake guru. There is a lot of different definition out there, or rather they do not even have a clear definition in the first place. Without a clear definition of a fake guru, the process of spotting a fake guru would not be consistent. So, here is my definition of a fake guru.
A fake guru is one who pretends to be an influential teacher or popular expert without having any expertise, nor do they provide value that is on par with the promises they made.
Now, with this definition, we can list out the criteria that make a fake guru, a fake guru.
Expertise
I had discussed expertise in the last article. Expertise is a difficult subject to discuss. Not only does it involve how do you see expertise, what constitutes an expert, as well as the method to measure a person’s expertise.
In the last article, I talked about how the experience should not be taken as the sole criteria in measuring a person’s expertise. One might have great expertise in a particular subject without having a lot of experience (in term of time) simply due to a large amount of effort within a short amount of time. A programmer with 1-year experience is not necessary worst than a programmer with 3-year experience given the programmer with shorter experience has greater passion as well as willing to put in a lot more effort.
Besides, I had also mentioned that expertise is relative. Anyone born today can be a person with great expertise in the field of science if he would have to go back 500 years ago while remaining his current knowledge. As long as a guru proves more expertise than the majority, that guru would not be considered a fake guru.
So, the problem with expertise should lie in the method used to measure a guru’s expertise.
Case study: Dan Lok
Let’s take Dan Lok, the same guru which I used in my last article for this point as an example, Dan Lok is making sales/marketing-related course, and his course is doing well thanks to his sales technique and marketing technique, this would simply mean that he has a certain amount of expertise in the field as compared to most people.
Case study: Kevin Zhang
Unfortunately, Kevin Zhang does not pass this test. Who is Kevin Zhang? Kevin Zhang is a guru who teaches branded drop shipping E-commerce store. Now, the question is can Kevin Zhang prove that he is well equipped with the skills
Do Kevin Zhang has a “branded E-commerce store”?
Yes, he does. In fact, he has several of them, which include Dixon leather, Longhorn Leather, Troy Gold Shop, etc.
Is his E-commerce store successful?
Yes. In fact, his store even reaches 7 digit income in several months.
So, why does it still not makes him an expert in running a branded E-commerce store?
Unfortunately, the “branded E-commerce store” is a scam store rather than an actual dropshipping store, nor will they pass the FTA investigation if there is one being carried out. Take Dixon Leather as an example, the stores claim “Leather jacket, no bullshit”, but actually selling polymers jacket rather than an actual leather jacket. The store even claims to existed since the forties while it only existed for months. It is a scam store that tricked people into thinking that they can get a genuine leather jacket from a long-lasting leather jacket company that is running out of business at a great bargain but only leave them with cheap low-quality polymers jacket. Ability to run a successful scam store simply does not prove one ability in running an actual dropshipping store due to how much easier is it with running a scam store. A scam store has a much higher margin, which simply translates into the ability to spend a lot more on marketing and still makes profits in the end. Meanwhile, running a dropshipping store requires one to operate a store in a much stringent environment where almost the majority of the store will lose money simply due to the extremely low margin and highly competitive market.
Promise vs Return
In part 1 of this article, I had mentioned that in their marketing, showing the possibilities does not equate to promise, but the promise they made can make them a fake guru. What do I mean by the promise they made?
A guru show possibilities, and promise to sell the tools which can potentially provide those possibilities. For example, a Python programmer potentially able to earn up to 5 digits per month, which depending on one effort, he might or might not be able to achieve 5 digits per month. A guru cannot promise 5 digit income as it hugely depends on the student effort, but the said guru will promise Python knowledge by the end of the course.
So, since we had distinguished the differences between possibilities and promise, a fake guru is one who does not provide value that sufficient to be able to carry out the promises he made. Let’s take a car as an example, a car should be a tool that at least sufficiently enough to be able to carry a person from one place to another. A car without the driver seat is not sufficient to bring anyone from one place to another despite theoretically, given if there is a way to control the car, the car is able to travel from one places to another. If you sell a car and deliver a car without a driver seat and require the buyer to purchase it separately, that is not delivering value on par with the promises as the car is not able to carry out the job it is supposed to.
Let’s take an example where a guru teaches you how to be a Python programmer. If all the guru teaches is how to perform a “print” statement, that is nowhere near sufficient to be a Python programmer and even perform any of the most basic tasks as a Python Programmer. The guru that promise you to be a Python programmer by the end of the course should teach you at least sufficient Python knowledge to be able to carry out a task that a Python Intern is required to perform, or at least with sufficient knowledge for them to be able to breakdown the problem and perform self-learning.
You might think this is common sense and why would an online guru not teaching you sufficient knowledge to carry out tasks of whatever they had promised, the main motivation behind is mainly to upsell you another course by the end of the course as that you get caught in the “sunk cost fallacy” as well as hoping that by the end of next course it is going to be life-changing.
Case study: John Crestani
While John Crestani shows you the possibilities of earning 5 digits a month by doing what he teach, he never promises the 5 digit earning. However, his promises are his referral marketing method, which if anyone knows anything about referral marketing, it is essentially promoting other people’s product in hope for monetary return.
In his course, he teaches people how to promote his course which in turn they can get a monetary return if they made a sales, which basically mean he had fulfilled the promise. Otherwise, his student would not be equipped with the skills and he would not have enough sales army that “work” for him. In his case, it is actually in his best interest to equip his student with the skills he promised.
Case Study: Dan Lok
It is Dan Lok again. Dan Lok is the guru that passes any of the previous tests but is going to fail this test, at least according to the review of him online. Dan Lok is most famous for his High Ticket Closer (HTC from here on) and High Income Copywriting (HIC from here on). Unfortunately, his course is also known to have a lot of level of upselling. Let’s take a look at HTC.
HTC is a 7 weeks online program. There will be a different topic each week, such as customer psychology, your mindset, etc. After the 7 week courses, chances that you still stuck with your sales milestone is very high. Now, if you try to ask Dan Lok about what did you not did right in your job, he would ask you if you had joined “Closer in Black”, and once you joined that and the same thing happens, he will ask you if you had joined the “Inner Circle”. The whole thing is just structured in a way that after the course, you will still not get sufficient enough knowledge out of it so that he can upsell you another one, and another one, and another one.
Case Study: Kevin Zhang
Let us take a look at the last case study in this section, which is Kevin Zhang. Aside from Kevin Zhang promise on helping you to become a drop shipper, he also promises to reply personally to the problem you face starting an E-commerce with his knowledge and experience of drop shipping. It had already been established that he knows nothing about actual drop shipping but only running a scam store, so we can conclude that his advice is not as valuable as it seems to be before revealing of the fact.
If you think it ends there, not really. Aside from that, he also does not reply to those messages personally. Instead, he trains someone from his course to impersonate him to answer those questions. People who he train has no little to none e-commerce experience.
Ending Note
Above is the main criteria of how I personally measure if someone is a fake guru. If anyone is interested in any of these courses, I would suggest one exercise great caution when it comes to selecting which course to buy, because none of these courses is cheap, and they cost somewhere from hundreds of dollar to thousand. Further, one might be in need of this money especially in a dire situation like the current COVID-19.
