Word. And Robbins DWD is close to 5,000, although, to be fair, it's 6 days straight in an auditorium packed with thousands.

"He who can does; he who cannot, teaches."

I'm not against teachings. It's just all those people who call themselves teacher also needs to be inventors and must add value for existing norms.

Nowadays teachers act like guardians of popular culture prisons. They give the book and say learn what the book teaches. Their duty is make sure we do, nothing more.

Go Straight To The Source

Valuable advice in a self-help context. Gurus don't always want you to heal yourself and not need them any more. Instead they package just enough info to keep you on the hook wanting more- from THEM. Looking directly to the source material can advance you farther than the author who first introduced you to a topic.

This applies in news. Often stories don't agree with the very source material they cite; even worse, the article's own headline often doesn't even agree with its own body text. Fox and Breitbart are particularly bad offenders here. Check source materials, to obtain the facts you need to make intelligent decisions, and also to monitor the credibility of sources. Make sure to act upon your findings, too many people keep citing the same B.S. sources no matter how many times they are blatantly punked by basic propaganda techniques and small change lies and deceptions.

It applies to material goods. Wherever possible buy up the food chain so to speak, in bulk and from original sources where a channel exists for retail level purchasers. Customers at my B&M business often tell me, "Have you ever looked at (online store)? to which I deadpan, "Yes, I buy from the same suppliers (online store) buys from." You used to have to have a wholesale account and minimum purchase levels, now many suppliers are retailing goods online to the public more cheaply than to some of their longtime wholesale customers!

Most of these “experts” never sell anything original - it is just watered down concepts and advice sold in a new shiny wrapping.

I totally agree with you. I'd say that about 90-95% is this stuff. Same shit in different kind of package. But I'd also like to point out that:

• Many of the free content wouldn't be available if someone hasn't paid for it in a way or another.
• You can learn many of these things "for free" by reading free stuff but one of the main points with legit (only few are) mentoring and training is that it cuts down your learning curve from years to months.
• You won't become master at something by training couple of hours over one weekend. That's why for example one pickup bootcamp is somewhat useless. They may give you a push but one weekend isn't enough. You should be spending thousands over 6-12 months to get training and mentoring over that time that it would give you desired results.
• You don't necessarily see the value because you may be blinded by the simplicity of summaries or instructions (which these experts and "experts" are doing). You may feel like "This is simple, I would have figured that out". But if you went to the sources and read all the material and tried to combine them with real life experiences to a useful instructions and principles, you probably wouldn't able to do it because you aren't experienced and trained enough etc. Invention is good when it's simple enough that people think: "I could have invented that"
• Personally I like some of the material which is summarized for me even tho the summarization is done by a repackager-expert. For example I repackage some information for you now. I've read plenty of books written by self made millionaires. The core principles on how to get rich in eeeeevery book are the same: 1. Work hard and diligently and keep doing right little choices over the long period of time. 2. Be responsible of your actions (or non-actions) and make yourself accountable. 3. Be humble, learn from your mistakes and improve yourself.. You can now choose the skip the books because you now already have 90% of the relevant information or you can read them for fun and to gather missing remnants of knowledge.

YOU. NEED. ONE. BOOK.

177 Mental Toughness Secrets of the World Class : The Thought Processes, Habits and Philosophies of The Great Ones. By Steve Seibold.

It will cost you $10 if that.

Buddy of mine lost like 100lbs and paid some pick up artist coach dude or whatever a few thousand dollars. They went out a few times but he still got most of his plates off tinder.

I guess it was good for him because it got him out of his shell, made him way more social. He was going out to clubs, getting bottle service, all that shit. This was the guy who was too fat and socially anxious to chill at a house with 4 people in it a few years ago.

Of course I ripped on him about paying a pickup artist coach but hey, he can wipe his ass with 5 grand and not even blink. Dude makes 5-6x what I do.

Perspective is everything. Could he have learned all that online? Sure. Would he have gone out on his own? Probably not.

May you reach the day early when you realize the best source of knowledge are your fuckups and your self-observation skills in life

Always thought that, i'm irritated that some of my friends are complete fanboys of this types of gurus

Fuck RSD and Tyler and his bullshit

Bunch of frauds

Often times the original source is pretty obscure and difficult to interpret, especially when I comes to spirituality and religion. Often times getting the concepts in a condensed form from a person who took the time to go through the original text and make the information more relatable is useful. After you get exposure to the concepts and form somewhat of a framework to go off of, you can go to the original text to fill in the nuances. There is benefits in either learning from learners and the original text. This is why people listen to religious leaders and pastors instead of solely reading the religious text.

$1000 is nothing to people who can get good value out of the information.

Like if you're at the stage of professional development to do Tony Robbins, that's the difference between making an extra $2-$3 million in your lifetime.

Speaking of NLP, I know someone who started marketing himself as an NLP Coach while taking NLP classes.

Most beginners are desperate and don't even know where to start so they tend to latch onto the first person they come across that they think gives them good advice. Most teaching business models profit off of this.

Imagine spending a G on a meditation course taught by some hipster from Brooklyn NY. People actually paying some soy boy to “teach” them to sit and breathe.

Almost all these “self-improvement” courses are rehashings of things taught by philosophers (Plato, Buddha, etc).

This is why libraries are important. Free books both in paper and audio.

All of these people just rehash what the ancients have said. You can find the same shit in books like 'Meditations' or '48 Laws of Power.' No need to pay $30 for some bullshit Tim Ferris tell-all. They just say the same stuff but with more buzzwords.

For all those who don't want to walk the hard road.

Your view is missing one key aspect, and that the psicological hook that some things can have. Is not about if the content is the same or not, some people have the ability to put that content in your head more way more effectible that you will do reading the 12$ book by your own. Some people don't need help, they just need the information and they will get things done withouth help, but some people do, and that is the people that most likely will buy the book and never read it, or read it and do nothing with it.

If you put 1000 dolars in something, there is a very good chance that you will invest the time and effort to make that money worth. I'm not saying that paying 1000 dolars to some stupid youtube influencer is the way to go, but for some people it will help (assuming that the dude is not bs and is actually selling something good), after all, 1000 dolars for changing your life is still very cheap. We spend far more money in things that we don't need and that won't really make our lifes better.

There is more than one path to success, while the fundamentals are always the same, different people will need/take different paths. Dont try to box everything in such a simplistic way of thinking.

My parents spent $1000 on TM meditation (transcendental meditation) 17 years ago.

This thing saved my life. Sometimes it's not how much you spend on something, but the value you get out of it. Sure I could have googled the special mantra I received, but 17 years later, I'm still leveraging TM to go through my divorce, my wife's false allegations of rape against me, and her denying access.

If I knew this years ago I could've saved thousands of dollars, no regrets though.

Some things have accelerated my results fast enough. At the end i would say I broke even.

If the first product leads to an upsell or I notice I'm getting put in a funnel "This product will change your life!" Then I usually just exit the sight.

Usually I question whether their success comes from what they teach or just selling. I can't knock the hustle though, I respect that.

As other commenters said, paying money for something and actually being forced to go out and interact with people can provide motivation that may not manifest by buying a book. Also it helps to have an actual real life person give you one on one guidance. It’s like reading a book as opposed to being taught

Thank you for sharing The Source. Can you recommend more authors that belong in that category, especially some talking about finances and/or managing a business? I'm looking for a Finances 101 type of book to start. I'm sure I'll want to read more advanced books after.