by: Geoff Ficke

For the past several years I have been amazed at the continual bombardment of radio, television and print advertisements offering people the supposed opportunity to work, profit, succeed and be independent with little pain or effort required. Every night there are numerous 30 minute long form infomercials touting real estate, multi-level marketing, foreclosure, stock trading schemes, warehouse purchasing, and more, all aimed at inducing the viewer to take part, make an investment, buy a course and sit back as success falls into their laps. I wish that it could be so!

Obviously these shameless pitches are working. Commercial time and print advertising are very expensive, even at 3:00 in the morning on the Home and Garden Channel. Gullible people have always found the con irresistible, and con artists are only too happy to grease the inevitable human hope that riches can be easily attained.

The Italian immigrant Charles Ponzi created the scam for which his name is so nefariously linked: the Ponzi Scheme. Mr. Ponzi was not the first, just the first to be caught and publicized, as a seller of goods he did not own. The first purchasers of these products seem to realize an excellent return on their investment. The Ponzists’s then proceed to tout this return to many other investors creating a feeding frenzy, greed being the principal motivator, with the last sets of participants owning deeds, warrants or contracts worth nothing. Money gone, hope shattered, trust gone, the losers in these schemes would seem to be a cautionary trial horse for everyone seeking to become involved in the chimera of something great to be gained for very little risk. Nevertheless, human nature being what it is, many of us will suspend our disbelief and good judgement and join the frenzy.

The Dutch experienced an infamous spin of the Ponzi Scheme in the 1700’s: The Tulip Craze. A tulip mania was created by promoters that lured thousands of unsuspecting of Dutch families into converting their savings and land into tulip farms. The theory was that worldwide demand for tulips was so great and commercial farming capacity so limited, that planting the crop would yield huge profits. Bulb stocks became hot commodity investment vehicles. As prices soared the mania quickened. Alas, the reality was that hugely inflated, mature tulip crops had no greater market outlets than in prior years. The winners were the fad promoters. Well, at least the tulip is a beautiful flower, and Holland must have been very fragrant and colorful during the craze.

A more contemporary example of a whole society losing their minds over what now seems to be lunacy was the 1980’s craze over Cleopatra’s Secret. A South African promoter created the myth that a milk culture was the miracle ingredient in a skin cream called Cleopatra’s Secret. The cream was supposedly uniquely formulated with a key ingredient derived from aging milk cultures in petree dishes placed in strategically determined climactic conditions. This was the reputed secret of the legendary Egyptian queen’s beauty.

During periods of the 1980’s virtually every house in South Africa seemed to have milk cultures sitting in sunny windows, smelling up the dwelling. The South African Stock Exchange had a booming listing for the company that was purportedly selling the milk culture kits that were ultimately to be harvested: on a regular basis to produce the miracle cream.

Oops, a funny thing happened on the way to thousands of housewives cashing in on the Cleo mania: the promoter shut down, there was no after-market for milk culture. Unfortunately for South Africa, the country was not as fragrant or lovely as Holland awash in tulips. Milk cultures stink!

Today the scam artists pitches are smoother, more believable and so tantalizing to so many people hoping to take a shortcut to comfort, profit and freedom from boring toil. The opportunity to work from home, at your pace and leisure and profit based on your needs is intoxicating to millions. No money down, just follow the time-tested template lesson plan, we have eliminated all of the pitfalls from the fool proof program, and so many similar spiels are targeted to make the consumer feel almost foolish if they are not participating in the game.

I have a rhetorical question we should consider when presented these get rich quick pitches: “If this is so profitable, why aren’t you (the marketer) spending 100% of your time capitalizing on this gold mine formula, rather than selling a video course, or a how-to book for a few dollars”? “Would you altruistically share a multi-million dollar secret with strangers when there are piles of money left to be made”? We all know the answer?

There is no get rich quick scheme that I have ever discovered, and believe me I have looked. Unless there is illegality involved, you will have to settle for getting rich slow. The prudent investor, inventor and businessperson will always win out over the reckless dreamer.

My firm views hundreds of new product submissions each year. Many have real commercial merit and potential. Most do not. The products that have real success opportunities offer user benefits of real value. A product that helps improve an experience or need always can find a home. The key point to consider when pursuing an economic opportunity is the markets need for that particular product, service or invention. If that niche need can be identified and filled, then chances increase exponentially for a successful placement.

Millions of people cultivating tulips, or tending smelly milk cultures, seeking foreclosure opportunities, or chasing the latest get rich fad will always lead to disappointment. Even worse than the money lost investing in these scams is the loss of trust.

The next time you are exposed to an advertisement promising to change your life, add to your income, enable you to buy a McMansion or a helicopter, and obtain riches painlessly, be very cynical, very careful. There are no shortcuts to success. If there were, we would all be very rich and probably have our own infomercials.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 9th, 2008 at 12:20 pm and is filed under Success. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.