Why Do The Gurus Spend So Much Time On Fluff?

Over the years, I’ve read a lot of guru materials. At the predecessor of the Field Guide for Real Estate Investors we used to do extensive evaluations of guru materials. A member would purchase a book, ebook, home study course, etc and send it to us to be examined and evaluated. That experience taught me a lot about the gurus, their methods and their real experience levels with the methods and successes they claimed.

Over the years we developed some objective metrics to gauge the value of the materials.

For example, margin size. There are accepted standards for “normal” margins in any kind of printed material. There are entire industry groups dedicated to helping with normalization of layout and such. Their standards adjust from time to time but they are amazingly consistent over time. When margins exceed the accepted norms, our objective metrics would reflect that. In the most extreme case the margins were 2.5 inches on each side of the page and three inches at the top and bottom. That left a “printed” area of 17.5 square inches out of 93.5 available inches on the page. In other words, less than 19% of the available area on a page is used. But, they also double spaced the text, so it was really less than 10% was used.

Compare that to the typical or normal used in the printing industry of about 68% of the area being used you can see this guru’s materials took up about 7 times more space than they should. So, the 150 “page” book they advertised was really about 21 real pages. At $99 that meant each page costs about $5.

Another area that has always made me chuckle is the amount of time a guru will spend on background or filler material. Sticking with the example above, this guru’s materials “taught” how to buy subject to existing financing. Yet, more than half the book was about their life story. Almost 11 of the 21 real pages were devoted to telling about where they started and how awful their life was before they “discovered” how to do this new thing!

Of the ten pages left, five were spent telling how great the reader’s life will be after they start following the “system”.

In less than five real pages, they described the mechanics of buying subject to the existing financing. Only five pages dealt with the subject advertised to sell the eBook! That means the real cost per page of the real subject matter covered was about $20 per page.

Now, I am not saying motivational materials have no place in this world. But, motivational materials disguised the way the gurus do are useless to a serious investor. There are some really great motivational speakers and writers. They can help you make much needed mental adjustments in your thinking process that will directly affect your long term success. But, they don’t claim to be showing you the secrets the rich keep for themselves and then spend most of time on self gratification through an autobiography.

Just something to think about as you are reading your next squeeze page where the guru is breathlessly telling their life story leading to the discovery they want to sell you. Don’t be surprised when you get to read that life story, in even more time and space wasting detail, when you get the materials.

Related posts:

1. Pricing Chris Moore’s eBook on Raising Private Money
2. My Opinion on Investing Gurus
3. Interesting Testimonial for Chris Moore’s New eBook
4. The Real Lesson is, “Don’t Be A Casey!”
5. That Is Why You Fail

Tags: False Hope, Gurus, Investing