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Comment by isoprophlex | Hacker News Reader

Whoa, that's thorough. Damning, easily replicable, overwhelming evidence that this guy is indeed a fraud.

> He runs the Self Publishing Formula course and podcast, he talks at the 20BooksTo50K conference in Vegas, and he’s part of a new initiative called Fuse Publishing. He’s a pretty big deal in self-publishing, so what he does reflects on self-publishing as a whole.

Like instagram "buy my course to learn how I got rich" finance-influencers, the same old quip seemingly applies to self-publishing..: don't trust the success of anyone who talks a lot about how successful they are.

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>"don't trust the success of anyone who talks a lot about how successful they are"

Always good advice. Someone sent me one of those day trader Bros that constantly shows their Lambo and I immediately saw warning lights. I had to tell my buddy that he didn't get the Lambo trading...he got it off suckers who think there's a magical formula for average Joe to make millions with nearly zero risk.

He could have also potentially got it off trading, since he'd have to show his Lambo first before getting suckers who think there's a magical formula for the average Joe to make millions.

Or, hypothetically, he could have rented it for cheaper and then bought an actual one with the money from the suckers.

Or more likely he rents/leases or otherwise borrows it to make the social posts and it will be repossessed at some point, always a good possibility.

It's amazing how some people can pull a long con.

A fair point and one I didn't even think of. At this point in my life I prefer more family time to anything like a luxury car. My old car gets me around town just fine.

It's how Tai Lopez got wealthy. Rented a house and lambo for his infamous "knowledge" video [0]. He seems to be a good marketeer though :)

Fake it till you make it.

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[0]: https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=tai+lop...

Today's "otherwise borrows" is AI-generated

Even worse, probably rented the Lambo for a day for a photo shoot because he knows that’s what suckers will go. Cars, penthouses and watches - like flies to poop, as they say.

When I used to watch more YouTube they constantly had ads where some trading bro is offering to share the secret to making money.

Why not just use it on himself instead? This guy has paid money out of the kindness of his heart to make sure the public knows about this bulletproof money making technique.

This is a huge issue in self publishing. Sure, some people got lucky and can churn out a book a month and make decent money. But so many more sell books/courses on 'how to make money'.

Some will show you their revenue, "I'm a six figure author!" But frequently hide how much they spend on ads or editing. Or try to hide that they're making ~$50k on courses/affiliate sales and their net is... ~$50k. Writing is a net zero income for them and most of it is just used to sell courses/products.

Oh these guys are so exhausting. My favorite was Grant Cardone — the real estate mogul who’s said he’d be ashamed if he made 400k a year. All of them and his ilk peddling this you can get rich fast stuff are disgusting.

    This isn’t one of those get-rich-quick schemes. But guess what? I did!

(An old TV ad that is etched into my memory)

Hilariously, he's right in the strict sense of the word. For the average Joe, a get-rich-quick scheme doesn't get them rich quickly..!

Aren't some of these schemes actually possible but only if you are a scumbags? It's somehow always get a ballon mortgage to buy multi-family housing and raise the rents by 100%, or buy dilapidated shacks and get section 8 money while putting nothing in to improve squalid conditions.

Exactly. And especially with real estate and landording the quickest schemes are the most immoral / shady.

I thought that Section 8 housing has to meet some minimum standards. Are they really that minimal?

I don't have a fantastic recollection of the article I saw, but either the standards were or the enforcement was all but nonexistent.

I’ve a single condo rental in Portland. It’s the home my wife and I bought when we got married but rent out now cuz we’re in Germany. It’s rented at less than market because of many reasons none having to do with the state of the home — it’s the nicest place I’ve ever seen — but mostly my ignorance in being a landlord. That being said we try to be the best landlords we can. We fix things ASAP and try to make it like we’d like it if we were renting there.

From what I remember the city of Portland at least had such a dirth of units being offered for section 8 due to many landlords having had their units trashed or otherwise fearful of the general bad press about section 8 tenants that there’s not a lot landlords willing to participate in the program leading to a lack of supply.

The upside for landlords though is that the govt pays the rent and it’s often a higher amount than one might get otherwise. There are of course downsides.

I didn’t know about him, I couldn’t find a wikipedia page for him but I found this: https://medium.com/@grantcardone/wikipedia-has-alternative-f...

Seems an awful lot like he’s trying to give himself a better image by editing his own wikipedia page! Smells conman

There's a lot of reliance on people's basic inabilities to do math.

My mother-in-law wanted us to go with her to a seminar hosted/ sponsored/ affiliated with one of the house flippers on TV.

They of course talked about their course on how to do it.

And they talked about how "nearly 8,000 people have done this!" and that if you did, too, you'd have access to their financing which, "has given our members over $100M to buy houses to flip! Some of them have flipped 20+ homes with us!" Cue oohs and ahhs.

Because $100M seems a lot. Until you're talking houses. Because in most areas in the country, even a workable flipper house is still going to be $100K, at a minimum. And $100M only buys you 1,000 houses.

Hmm. 8,000 people have paid $5,999 to do your course. And you've flipped 1,000 houses, some people doing 20+ each. That means that realistically, less than one-in-ten of the people who paid for your course ever flip a house.

So yeah, they made a not shabby amount on the costs and interests of those loans...

... and $48M "teaching" people to get rich by flipping homes.

Yeah … such courses should be illegal. Though they wouldn’t have to be made illegal if some people had some sense of shame or any moral compasses. Instead they prey on the uninformed and the gullible

>don't trust the success of anyone who talks a lot about how successful they are.

What bothers me most is that promotion is so important for solo entrepreneurs, that some people will placate the grifters in return for exposure. It's hard to call people out. We end up in a place where everyone is selling to everyone else.

I think in a court of law it may be more of a charge of plagiarism than outright fraud, but I get your point. And like you said, anyone who makes a career out of "how to be rich and successful at doing whatever", would probably be better off heeding their own advice and become rich and successful at doing whatever rather than yakking unendingly about it.

Plagiarism is not a legal thing. Copyright infringement is, but that’s a different beast.

Different but overlapping.

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