It’s Easier to Scam People Than to be Legit and That Sucks

You can easily make $1000 today. Get a bucket and grab your little brother, nephew, or cousin (preferably age 3-6) and take him to the closest nursing home. Hand him the bucket and tell him to go up to the seniors and ask for money for your sick mother. Walk out with $1000. 99.999% of you won’t do this. Why? Because it’s a despicable business plan. It preys on the weak. It manipulates with emotion. It’s flat out stealing. But it’s a really easy way to make money. Most of us won’t do it because it’s clearly unethical, but ethics is a funny thing. There are no black and white answers. Ethics has infinite shades of gray.

What about stealing from a large corporation?

When Wal-Mart first installed the self-checkouts, I found a loophole in the weighting system. I could basically steal anything and not get caught. But I didn’t do it. Why? Because of how I was raised. It was against my ethics.

As a part-time eBay seller, I can tell you how messed up the system is. eBay and PayPal favor the buyer so much that if I wanted to, I could easily rip off sellers for thousands of dollars today. And I could do it in a way that would barely be noticeable. Even Amazon’s return policy is easily exploited.

COMPANIES SCAM US ALL THE TIME

Someone who steals from granny is a thief, but a corporation isn’t? Bank of America illegally foreclosed on homes during the housing crisis and received a measly fine. Wells Fargo just got caught stealing billions and setting up fake accounts. Pharmaceuticals raised the price of Epipen and other life-saving drugs, basically extorting billions from people who had no choice but to pay. How is this not stealing?

BUT CAPITALISM

Land of the free. Buyers make their own choices. Free market. Blah, blah, blah. To me it’s all BS. Companies use psychological manipulation to sell us things we don’t need at ridiculous prices or force us to pay for things that are basic necessities or life-saving needs. Bottled water is over 1000% price increase for tap water just for a little convenience. Supplements are a billion dollar industry built on incredibly faulty science. The list goes on. There’s thousands of examples.

SO WHAT IS OKAY?

Some people are flat out scammers and know it. Some people simply believe the crap they are pushing. And there’s everything in between. You have a decision to make. Where are you going to sit on the line of ethics?

There’s no right answer for this. I can’t and won’t make any judgements on you. You have to decide what’s best for you. But it’s easier to make money if you scam people. It just is. However, there are ways to succeed if you want to hold onto your ethics.

USE SHORTCUTS

I use shortcuts. I believe in the power of shortcuts. This is where my ethics lie. It’s a choice I had to make. I believe in doing what’s best for the customer. I believe in providing a solution. And sometimes that involves lying, misleading, or deception. It involves shortcuts.

Buying 1000 twitter followers is a shortcut. It makes your account look legitimate and gives you the initial boost you need to gain real followers. It’s a lie, but does it really hurt anyone? If it gets you noticed by customers that really need your solution, then isn’t it all worth it?

Automating email responses is a shortcut. If the information gets to the student, is it less genuine if you don’t type each email by hand?

If you get caught in the lie, then it sucks, but it’s not really hurting anyone. Some of you might not want to do this. That is fine. But it takes longer to build and continue to grow a real following. It takes longer to type one email at a time. It just does. You want to be real and straightforward, but sometimes you might need to take shortcuts to get that initial momentum or automate in order to scale or free up your time. Maybe buying twitter followers doesn’t work anymore, but that’s not the point.

“I use shortcuts. I believe in the power of shortcuts. This is where my ethics lie. It’s a choice I had to make. I believe in doing what’s best for the customer.”

When you really dig into the big players and popular accounts on any platform, you will find that they all buy SOMETHING. They might buy exposure or connections or whatever. There’s always some falsehood. Some white lie hiding just below the surface. Big boobs or fake hair. Rented fancy cars and mansions. A carefully crafted fake image. That’s how the game works.

A lot of shortcuts involve paying for automation and data tracking, which are genuine game changers that don’t involve image crafting or deception.

At the end of the day, what really matters is what you are offering. If you are offering a REAL solution to your customer, then you are legit. If you are over-promising and under-delivering or not delivering at all, then you are a scammer. It’s as simple as that.

I want to teach you the shortcuts, not the scams. But I want to teach you to be genuine as well. It is possible to be both.

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Comment below on a shortcut you’ve taken and the value you got from it.