 If you are trying to learn business and marketing, and get better at building a business that is successful, you're going to experience this several times a year. Usually in the fall and then beginning of the year, maybe at the start of the summer, it's the launches from the big players who sell expensive business and training programs, marketing training programs, maybe they call it group coaching or whatever they call it, that usually has several hundred students, maybe more and usually cost $19.97. And I'm not talking $19.97, I'm talking $1,997. Have you ever experienced those kinds of launches? Have you ever seen that kind of marketing? I will tell you, please do not buy them, okay? If I were your advisor, if I'm your friend, I will say please do not buy them because you can use your money in better ways than spending $2,000 on a program that has three to 500 students in it, okay? So first of all, it is a big mistake for you to buy it, but it is not a mistake for them to sell it because they are making a lot of money selling it to people like you. But you think, oh my God, it's from this famous person, maybe it's their famous or not, I don't know. But it's from this person that seems like they know what they're talking about and they seem really credible. And this program only opens once a year or twice a year or whatever and I better join because everything's so exciting and they have these big webinars with hundreds of people in it and they promised me the moon, I'm gonna be able to make lots of money by taking this program and look at all the people, all the testimonials, my God, look, dozens of people saying this is an amazing program. It must be true. And plus there's a 30-day money-back guarantee so if it doesn't work out, I can always back out. They don't tell you that it's hard to back out sometimes because they will have people try to convince you to stay in and sometimes you even forget because you just are not that organized and you forget some of you are organized but a lot of people aren't and they forget to request a refund before the 30 days and that's why the refund request exists. I mean, that's why the money-back guarantees, that's how they make a lot of money is people are disorganized and they don't request a refund within the certain amount of time. Okay, so why is it a mistake for you to buy it? And let me just define what I'm talking about here. What kind of programs you should stay away from and be very careful not to spend your money doing, okay? Any business program, any marketing training program that is more than $500 and has more than 50 students. Okay, those numbers are slightly arbitrary for me because I've been in the market and I have sold lots of expensive programs. If you know my history, you will know that the first five years of my business I was selling $2,000 programs and I usually had more than 50 people, sometimes 100, 200, 300 people per session, per program that I sold and I made a lot of money in the first couple of years and I regret it. I will tell you, I regret it and I know some of you watching this probably spent that money with me and I'm genuinely sorry that I sold those things. Please contact me, I'll try to figure out what I can't pay the money back because I donated a lot of the money but I can try to help you out in other ways, give you access to my current courses, et cetera. So I know, because I've made a lot of money selling this stuff and I also have a lot of friends, well, previous friends I guess, who made a lot of money selling and I helped them to sell it successfully too. So I know what I'm talking about. Those of us who are sellers are making millions of dollars doing it and the buyers, I'll tell you what happened, 95% of you do not get the value that you paid for. 95% of you, only one out of 20 maybe gets the value a little bit but 19 out of 20 of you do not get the value for paying $1,000 or $2,000 for these programs. Please stop doing it and I'll tell you why you don't get the value. You have this illusion that oh my God, this program is gonna teach me this, it's gonna teach me these 12 things and all 12 things are so important because I attended the webinar and they convinced me that these 12 things are important and I'm gonna buy this program. If I buy this, I don't want to buy anything else. I just spend $2,000 or $1,000 on this program, teaches all 12 things and I'm great and let me tell you why that's a bad idea. This is the, when you buy these 12 things, first chances are you're gonna start going through the first module and you're gonna get discouraged. How many times has that happened to you? You start going through the first module, you start getting discouraged and then maybe you'll get on a Q and A call and there are dozens of people on the Q and A or maybe hundreds of people on the Q and A and they don't even get to you or maybe you're too shy to ask and then you go into the Facebook group or whatever online forum they have, they have dozens of people or hundreds of people there and you feel shy, because you don't know the people there. There's no real community there. You don't know the people there and so you feel shy or it's hard to describe your problem or your challenge in writing and so the Q and A's don't really help you because you can't get your specific individualized problem answered and the forums don't help you, okay? Now, business and authentic business journey is an individualized one. You have unique challenges. I know that because I coach people one to one. You have unique challenges. Yes, your challenges might have some similarities with other people, but your situation, trust me, it's unique. If you wanna build a business, that's not cookie cutter. That's not just following the formulas because you know it's not fulfilling and you know it's not authentic to you. So you have unique situations. I know that. So when you buy a program that's $1,000, $2,000, they're not tailored to your unique situation, okay? So number one, you don't get your questions answered. Number two, you get discouraged and you have no individualized support or real accountability. They might have like an assistant coach try to help you out, but it's not the same as the head coach. It's not. You know that if you've experienced it, okay? So that's one reason is that it doesn't really give you the kind of support that you need. The second reason, very importantly, is you can't consume all that information and really benefit from it. Here is how business growth happens. Let me tell you how business learning actually happens. Three steps, ready? Step one, you learn a little bit of knowledge. Step one, step two, you apply that little bit of knowledge. And step three, you get help, troubleshooting, any problems that happen when you were trying to apply that little bit of knowledge. Business learning does not happen like this. You enter a big program with 12 modules. You sit through and watch all the videos or even the first module video and you try to do the homework and then you're like, oh my God, I don't know how to do this or I have come up with this particular question I have and try to get an answer in the forum, et cetera. Business learning happens with bits of knowledge, consume, apply. If you're being sold a 12-module program or eight-module program or whatever, the temptation is just, I got stuck in module one, but let me just go on and watch module two or let me just stop and put it away and go on to the next shiny object that's being sold to me, okay? So please do not, let's all, and by the way, I should say I'm one of the goalable ones because I spent $30,000 before I started my business, okay? Before I got smart about it, I spent $30,000 on these kinds of programs. So I am also one of the people who was tricked and lied to and goalable ones. And then I learned like, oh, the people making the money are the people selling it. So I became one of the bad guys selling these programs. I don't wanna say bad guys, good guys, but you know what I mean? Let me say this, the people who are doing that, they're not evil. I don't really believe anybody's evil, to be honest. Like that's a whole other conversation. But what they're doing is, it's the old quote by Upton Sinclair. It's hard to convince a man not to do something. Well, it's hard to convince a man not to do something when his salary depends on, sorry, it's hard to explain to a man. It's hard to help someone understand something when their salary depends on them not understanding it. It's hard to help someone understand something when their salary, their income, depends on them not understanding it. This was made famous, this quote was made famous by Al Gore and Inconvenient Truth. It's hard for the oil executives to understand that they're creating climate change and it's bad, or coal executives because their salary means, their salary, their security, their sense of prestige, their sense of, this is supporting my family and my community is dependent upon them not understanding climate change, okay? So they look at all the evidence that says climate change is false, it's not real, okay? And so they go into that bubble. This is true with the big program sellers too. They're not evil, they just make a lot of money doing it and so they are in denial of the fact that most of the people buying it are not getting the value from it. And they make a justification saying, hey, listen, if you're not getting the value, just ask for your money back. I tell you the money back guarantee very clearly there. Why aren't you asking for the money back? Because people are disorganized, like I said, people are embarrassed to ask for money back and when they try to ask for money back, they get lots of questions saying, well, hey, have you tried this? Well, why don't you try that? Why don't you try this? So, okay, so let me keep going then and talk about the alternatives here. What should you do instead, okay? What you should do instead, the best alternative, how do you spend to $2,000 instead of buying the big name program with hundreds of students, here's how you should spend the $2,000. Spend $1,000 on one-to-one coaching, okay? Because one-to-one coaching will give you the customized advice. And by the way, I'm not saying this because I want you to hire me as a coach because I have a waiting list right now. My coaching one-on-one is full. You can draw my waiting list if you want to or you can ask me and I have my own clients, some of my clients are extraordinary business coaches and they might have openings. So please contact me for one-on-one coaching of any kind, life coaching, relationship, health, et cetera, because I have clients who are in those realms. Of course I'm biased and I will recommend my clients first, but some of you are also extraordinary one-on-one coaches. So please comment below if you're a one-on-one coach and support people that way, okay? So spend $1,000 with one-on-one coaching so that you can get the customized advice for your customized business situation because I guarantee you your situation is different from every other student because I've coached enough people to know this. So that's $1,000, okay? The other $1,000, you spend that with paid advertising with Facebook ads or Google ads or Instagram ads, probably one of those three. If you do this, your $2,000 will be far better spent than if you spent $2,000 buying a 12-module, eight-module, six-module, 20-module program, you will thank me for it. If you don't do this, you'll spend that $2,000 and then six months later, you'll come back and say, but God, I wish I would have listened to George. I promise you that is the case. If you can prove me wrong, otherwise you spent $2,000 on a program that's 700 students and you said that, well, well, you can't know because if you would have spent that money with one-on-one coaching and then with Facebook ads, your business literally would have improved a lot more than just spending $2,000 on going to basically the profit of the head coach and some of their assistant coaches and their team. So I hope this is helpful. Okay, I'll give you another alternative and I have to say a somewhat better alternative than the large group programs. I am biased is a small group program or a mastermind group, okay? So one-on-one coaching is really the best alternative if you can spend money on that plus paid ads. If you can't, then spend money on a group program with 50 or less people, okay? This is why I stopped selling the programs where I enrolled 100, 200 people and now I only do group programs of less than 50 people because less than 50 people I find, I'm able to support them very well. I hope those of you who are group program members agree with me. I'm able to support you all very well in the group programs of less than 50 people. I'm talking, by the way, about my master heart program which is $150 a month for a year. And yes, it's $2,000 basically, but it's less than 50 people and I'm there every single week. I have a group call every week an hour long where I'm there and I usually run out of questions. So I'm there every week and I'm also responding to the Facebook group three times a week. And so I'm very hands on and I kind of get to know the members, et cetera. So it's different, it's very different than what I used to do. I'm also not talking about low price courses, courses that are under $500. My courses are $60, so it's very affordable. But if you buy a course that's $60 to $100, $45, $120, $300, that's relatively low spending. I mean, even over $100, I would start to question a little bit business marketing courses because like I said, it's better to buy smaller courses where you are implementing something really small. Please, please, please listen to me. I hope you will spend your money wisely. Don't spend more than $100. I mean, maybe some courses are okay. And if you're questioning, George, should I spend money on this course? I mean, I don't wanna criticize anybody's course. I really don't. But generally speaking, if it's more than $100 for a business course, why are you doing it? Now coaching is different. If you get individualized support, that's different. Do you spend money on that? Great. But if it's just a do-it-yourself, like maybe you can answer questions in a forum or something, more than $100 is, ah, I start to question it. Less than $100 do-it-yourself course makes a lot of sense because you're learning something that's really doable and you're implementing it and then you take the next course and then your business keeps moving forward. So that's my model, right? That's why I sell $60 to $100 courses. Right now it's $60, maybe $100 next year, what we'll see. But $60 to $100 courses, you learn something, you implement it, you move your business forward, you ask questions. I even offer bonus Q&A calls, which most people don't even do. I do three of them. And then the second thing you can spend money on is a group program. If you like a community, if you enjoy, some people don't, okay? But if you enjoy a community, you like getting to know other people and then supporting each other, a group program of less than 50 people is really, can be really powerful, can be transformational. And my group program has been transformational for the people in it who have been engaging. And then the third option is to spend money on a one-to-one coach. Some of you are one-to-one coaches and I'm promoting you, right? Spend money with a one-to-one coach who can really help you in a customized way. And then the fourth way to spend your money, paid ads, Facebook ads are amazing. Instagram ads can be amazing. Google ads, if you learn how to use it, can also be amazing. So anyway, I won't belabor the point. That's all I'll say. That's what I'll say for now. And I'll just end the video by thanking those of you who have been able to join me live. Alejandra, thank you. Lisa, Kendra, Newt, Terry, Mandy, Gudrun, Tanya, and Jana, thank you. I've got a couple of comments here. Thank you, Alejandra, for your comments. So let's see here. And Mandy and Laura, thank you. And Captain, thank you as well. Yeah, Alejandra says, which I had heard this from you and saved myself six figure investment in programs and coaching. Oh my God, it's so true. I, yes, I have had clients come to me after spending $80,000, $80,000 on coaching programs. And by the way, another popular offering, it's $10,000 group coaching program, $10,000. I can't even, listen, my, if you hired me as a one-to-one coach, you only pay $350 a month. After a year, you paid what? What is it? Less than $5,000. And that's one-to-one with me and getting access to all my courses. It's like, I don't understand how any of you can spend $10,000 on business coaching. Why are you doing that? You don't need to. There's excellent coaches like me who will charge you a lot less and get you a lot farther. Okay, so don't believe anybody who's trying to sell you. I mean, I'm sorry, I do have a few clients of mine who, but anyway, I don't, I just, please spend your money wisely. Don't get, don't fall for the big hype. And oh my God, all these people, and I should tell you, by the way, the testimonials that you're seeing, well, George, it can't be wrong because look at all these testimonials, all the praise from all their clients. What they don't tell, what we don't tell you is that the testimonials are the 5% of the people who would have succeeded anyway without us. Okay, they would have succeeded anyway, but they just happened into our program and we use their success and we credit to ourselves. I know this, because I did that. I've done that a lot. Okay, now I hope, I'm trying to be more honest now, but it's so easy not to be honest in marketing. It's so easy to use the testimonials and suggest that that's kind of normal for people to experience. Okay, so the testimonials are of the 5% or sometimes even 1% who would have succeeded anyway or number two, they were handpicked by the coach. They were handpicked and they were led by the coach, handheld by the coach, given a lot more benefit than most of the program members. You don't know this, nobody's telling you this, except me and maybe a few other honest people. The testimonials people were given a lot more support than most of the other program people were and this is one of my more angry videos because I had a nervous, I mean not nervous breakdown, but I really had a crisis of conscience five years into doing this kind of business model from 2009 all the way to 2013, through 2013. Yeah, five years. I did this kind of model and I made a lot of money. I gave a lot of it away to charity because I was guilty, I felt guilty. And now I'm not living on those savings anymore. I've had to make my own money again the last couple of years to be able to survive and live. So it's not like I'm, some people said, George, you made a lot of money and now you're just living off the fat of the land and you're living off of what you did to other people. And no, no, no, I gave a lot of it away and I basically had to start over. So anyway, I hope my experience and my example can help save collectively here millions of dollars of spending or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars of spending. Be wise with your money. Don't spend more than $100 on a course and so that you can be really learning specific skills that will move you forward. Not learning a 12-module, you don't need a 12-module program. You need one module at a time. Spend money on that. And I'm also telling those of you, those of you trying to sell multi-thousand dollar multi-module programs, I'm on to you. We are on to you, okay? We are on to you. Stop, stop it. You're not doing anybody favors except for your own profit margin. Yes, it's profitable for you, I get it. But it's not helpful for your people. It's not helpful for your customers and clients. I was there, I know, and you know too if you're honest with yourself, okay? So stop it, break your 12-module program into single-module programs and sell them individually. It'll be better for the customers, okay? And actually, ironically, it might even be better for your bottom line. So because people will trust you more and they'll get benefit from a single module and then they'll go on and they'll buy the next one and the next one, next one. And yes, you might say, well, George, it's easier just to sell a 12-module program. I know it is. Of course, I knew that. But it's better for everybody, including your own conscience and your long-term business. It's better to break it up and sell smaller, okay? So anyway, I think that's enough. Thank you, Judith, for joining me as well. And I'm recording this video in September of 2018. The reason I'm doing this is because September, October, and November are the times when you're gonna start seeing these giant programs being sold. And also, January, February, and March, very popular times. So basically in the next six to seven months, this is the prime time right now. That's why I'm making this video. So basically, when in doubt, don't buy the program. Or even if you're gonna spend more than $100, comment on this video and ask me. Again, I'm hesitating because I don't wanna say, don't spend, I don't wanna publicly criticize anybody else's program. So I'm being very vague about it. But you know who's trying to sell you something for more than $100. That's not one-on-one coaching, or that's not a small group. So anyway, enough said. And blessings, and I wish you true business growth by taking it one step at a time. Be well.