Or how the ShamWow guy wins.
I had a few people beta read the first post in this self-imposed undercover mini-billionaire challenge I came up with. One of those beta readers was my wife Mary who was absolute aghast about me putting up our real true-life budget. And rightly so. You are not supposed to talk about money in the way I now want to talk about money because people get squirmy.
I think what really committed me toward publicly sharing personal financial information was the hope that either A) I would totally fail in meeting my let’s make $12,738.75 in the month of September and no one would ever read the blog or B) that I’d totally succeed and people would go back and read from the beginning and C) and that if option B happened, I’d have enough material from the blog to put together one of those How I Did It books, which I could then charge for an exorbitant amount of cash to make the majority of people believe I was a scam.
Which brings me to the second kind of beta reader who said I sounded like an informercial.
“What do you mean you don’t have a lack of money? You WHAT?! you have a laack of imagination??” And I don’t know, I’m not doing the voice in my head justice—imagine Dana Carvey’s The Church Lady.
Anyway. I said I started early in August to have days to write about moving forward with the blog. Except, today is literally a few hours from September 13th.
I met my goal.
Well. A lot of things still have to go right yet, and if everything indeed goes right the cash is not arriving until mid-October. But here I was in the last post wondering about ubering around eats.
At the end of both seasons of Undercover Billionaire, the contestants could never actually put their hands on a liquid million. The businesses they created were valued at X amount of dollars, which is not the same as having that wad of cash stashed in your purse. By that same logic, if you looked at my books, you’d reasonably assume I’m worth $32,477.50. Yes, that number is bigger than my original goal.
I don’t even know how to react to that.
I’ve just sat here for the last forty-five minutes trying to figure out what to say next. I have been left speechless, which is weird because I never don’t have anything to say.
And look I understand how I sound—like one of those finance-bros who I never aspired to emulate.
I made the mistake and signed up for one of those free Grant Cordone online workshops because I’ve been reading his book 10X and been watching him on Undercover Billionaire. I got about a third of the way through the workshop when I realized, everything he said had zero content. At least with the ShamWow you saw exactly how dry it was underneath the carpet. Cordone droned about what he had accomplished, brought in his mother to appeal to our emotion, and advertised another training. This training would tell you all the secrets for 19.95 here’s how you get your ShamWow. Well, I just exited out of the video. That’s when the magic began. It started slow at first. One email, two emails spaced apart by days. The emails began to ramp up. Now my inbox overflows Grant Cardone. I receive email in a pattern. On Monday, he’ll send me one email. On Tuesday, two. Wednesday we are back to one. And so on and so forth. I do not know why I don’t unsubscribe.
But you have read exactly this far. You have the choice to walk away from the screen, but I as a writer know that even if you swipe left or close the laptop lid, you will be back to find out what happens next.
This is what I’m going to tell you. You’re probably already receiving my bi-monthly email. And now you are reading this blog. And, if you subscribe to the blog, you will on average receive approximately 58 emails from me per month.
Is Grant Cordone so wrong?
I have never been given $30,000 at one time. And yes I do mean “given.” And please don’t assume this is just a one house deal, it’s more like four and a half house deals, and I did do work, but to be allowed the privilege to enter into these clients’ lives, to assist them in achieving their goals, that’s what I worked for, that’s my payday.
Right there, in the paragraph above, you’re thinking, oh that’s a sappy sentiment he can afford now.
I know. The sentiment is nice and all, but you are here for the money. I’m telling you, what I did is repeatable. I’m going to tell you step by step exactly what I did. I’ll warn you too, you’re going to hear a lot about real estate, but I believe the same practices are applicable in any industry.
And then, finally we had that third group of beta readers. Their reaction?
Let’s do this.
(To be Continued)
