the Online course "epidemic" and the PayPal Mafia
Nowadays online I seem to always be being preached to by some kind of "expert", on a YouTube ad, usually trying to get me to sign up for this Amazing! ; Once In A Lifetime! ; Life Changing!... course, seminar or newsletter.
Of course, these people or rarely actually experts in anything apart from video advertising. Commonly this kind of thing is one massive pyramid scheme: "sign up for my course for $5 and I'll teach you how to make your own course and get people to sign up for $5".
Over and over the process repeats. It got me thinking. Who would I actually be willing to get advice from and furthermore who would I actually be willing to pay for such advice?
When thinking about this a few examples pop into my head, tutors and coaches being primary examples. Paying people in these two occupations is common, and this doesn't seem unreasonable. After all, these are people who probably do their job well and advance your ability in an area or skill set that you are already somewhat well versed in. This means it is not two hard to believe that they may be able to advance your skill level. Its plausible.
But when an advert pops up telling me that I can make $100,000 in just a month by just taking their course I do wonder who actually buys this stuff...
A good phrase on this matter goes: extraordinary claims should require extraordinary evidence to be believed.
This led me to further examine who I take advice from. In a way I think my philosophy is similar to the well known statement - that you are the combination of the five people you spend the most time with. That phrase, I believe, could be altered to you are the combination of the people you take advice from.
If that is the case then I would want to be taking advice from the people with something actionable, not just the ones that got lucky:
An example would be if I were to take advice on business I would try to take it from someone who didn't just have one good business but two, evidence they didn't just "get lucky". Instead of trusting a man who started just one company that was mildly successful I would far rather trust, say someone from the PayPal mafia. The group that left PayPal as it was acquired by eBay and then proceeded to go and make a large number of other successful companies and investments, these people have the extraordinary evidence... Going from PayPal to starting YouTube, Yelp or, if your Elon Musk, SpaceX, Neuralink, the Boring company, SolarCity and working as the CEO of Tesla.
These multiple successes act as evidence that they got more than just one off lucky, they probably have repeatable steps.
Unlike those courses from Bitcoin millionaires who got lucky once and now making money selling courses to other people persuading them to try and get lucky, with a lot of lingo included to make it seem like they know what they are talking about.
As the title of Sarah Lacy's book goes, "once your lucky, twice your good". I would try and persuade people to be more conscious of whom they are taking advice from and whether its worth your money, or more importantly your time, in other words were they lucky, or are they good.
Their is so many valuable things that you can spend you time learning, or leaning about - so don't waste your time on something hollow and potentially unworthy of your time. Its the same philosophy as many people tell you to hold when reading a book, there are so many good ones out there that you don't have to force yourself to finish one you are not enjoying.
In this case find the education and educator from whom you can gain the most value, not the other way round.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal_Mafia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkkNqZzay8Y
https://dinarrecaps.com/our-blog/68-bits-of-unsolicited-advice
https://www.elitedaily.com/life/sum-of-5-closest-friends/1723824