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Introduction. The Day I Almost Bought a Course from a Ghost
It was eleven at night.
Outside, that Medellín rain was falling, the kind that starts as if it couldn’t care less and, before you know it, there’s a motorcycle floating down the Regional.
Inside, there was me.
My phone in one hand.
A cigarette in the other.
The computer on.
And a mix of exhaustion, anxiety and hope I hadn’t felt since I met that unmentionable man I once called my partner.
The guy on the screen looked like he knew what he was talking about.
Crisp, well-ironed white shirt.
Big watch.
Bookshelf in the background.
They always have a bookshelf.
It doesn’t matter if they’ve never read a whole book. The bookshelf has to be there, because apparently you put four spines behind you and you’re automatically certified as a philosopher, an economist and a savior of the poor.
He spoke slowly.
Without stumbling.
With the kind of confidence only two types of people have:
the ones who know a tremendous amount…
and the ones who’ve been repeating the same lie three hundred times.
—The system is designed so you work your whole life as a poor wage slave —he said.
And I nodded.
I nodded as if the man were sitting in my living room and had just discovered my personal tragedy by looking into a crystal ball.
Because, to be honest, the sentence had some truth to it.
And that’s where the danger is.
The best scams don’t start with a complete lie.
They start with a truth that hurts.
How many nights had I gone without sleep?
Putting together gift baskets.
Answering messages.
Sorting out orders.
Building websites.
Starting YouTube channels.
Looking for new ways to make money.
Coordinating delivery guys capable of getting lost even when you send them the location, the address, a photo of the house, the name of the building and a drone marking the way.
How many times had I worked all day only to end up staring at my bank account wondering where the fuck the money was?
Was it enough?
No, dude.
Around here money is an illusion.
You think you have some until you pay the rent, the utilities, the food, the debts and the subscriptions that charge you exactly on the day your account is at its skinniest.
—But there is a way out of that system —the man went on.
Then he lowered his voice.
Because millionaire secrets are always told quietly.
Must be so the banks don’t hear them.
—A way that changed my life and can change yours too.
And there came the promise.
Ten thousand dollars a month.
Working from anywhere.
No boss.
No schedule.
No stress.
Without explaining exactly what you had to do, but that was a minor detail.
—All you need is this —he said, pointing to a screen full of charts, arrows, figures and words in English.
I didn’t understand a damn thing.
But it looked professional.
And when you’re tired, you easily confuse complicated with smart.
—My method has been tested in more than forty countries and is backed by testimonials from ordinary people who are now living the life they always dreamed of.
María appeared.
Thirty-four years old.
Single mother.
She used to work twelve hours a day in a factory.
Now she traveled the world with her kids, earned more than an executive and smiled at the ocean, as if children never threw tantrums and traveling with them were a spiritual experience.
Then Carlos appeared.
Former bank employee.
He had made six thousand dollars in his first month.
Carlos had a beautiful house, a happy wife and teeth so white they lit up the room.
Nobody explained what Carlos sold.
Or to whom.
Or how much he had invested.
Or whether the six thousand dollars were profit or sales.
But there was no time to get annoying about details either.
What mattered was that Carlos was smiling.
Then came the price.
—This program normally costs three thousand dollars —he said.
The number appeared on the screen, crossed out with a red line.
Three thousand dollars.
A price so big you could almost hear how they had made it up five minutes earlier.
—But if you sign up today, in the next twenty minutes, you’ll get everything for only four hundred and ninety-seven dollars.
Only.
I love it when they put “only” in front of a number that could leave a family eating rice and eggs for weeks.
Four hundred and ninety-seven dollars.
I looked at the number.
I converted it to Colombian pesos in my head.
And I thought:
—Do I have room on my card?
Lies.
I’m kidding.
I knew perfectly well I didn’t have that kind of credit.
If there was barely enough to get through the day to day, I certainly didn’t have two million pesos lying around to sponsor that nobody’s beach.
But the number didn’t seem ridiculous to me.
That’s the worst part.
It seemed like a bargain.
Three thousand dollars of value for four hundred and ninety-seven.
You saw that and thought that not buying was practically losing money.
Look at the beauty of the manipulation.
The guy still hadn’t proven to me that the course was worth even the four hundred and ninety-seven dollars he was charging, but he had already made me feel that, if I didn’t buy, I was letting more than two thousand five hundred slip away.
I hadn’t bought anything and I already felt like a winner.
—But that’s not all —he shouted.
Of course it wasn’t all.
It’s never all.
Those people can keep adding bonuses until you end up buying a cryptocurrency course that includes vegan recipes, quantum meditation and a special class to heal your relationship with your inner child.
—If you sign up right now, you’ll also get, for FREE, my millionaire mindset course, my cryptocurrency workshop for beginners, my class on quitting your job in six months and lifetime access to our exclusive community of successful entrepreneurs.
Free.
FREE.
The word appeared in huge letters.
Each bonus was worth, according to him, hundreds of dollars.
It all added up to something like fifteen thousand.
The man was practically giving away his intellectual estate.
A saint.
A martyr of digital marketing.
The Jesus Christ of sales funnels.
The bonuses kept coming.
One after another.
And then the countdown appeared.
Twenty minutes.
Nineteen.
Eighteen.
Seventeen.
That’s when things got serious.
—Spots are running out —he warned—. There are only twelve left for Colombia. When they’re gone, this opportunity will never come again. Tomorrow the price goes back to three thousand dollars.
Twelve spots for Colombia.
What conveniently precise numbers.
You could picture half the country sitting at their computers, card in hand, fighting to get in.
Three thousand dollars tomorrow.
Four hundred and ninety-seven now.
Fuck.
And me with no money.
So I thought:
Brayan has a card.
I went looking for him.
I asked to borrow his card.
We’d figure out how to pay later.
That sentence —“we’ll figure out how to pay later”— has been the prologue to more financial tragedies than any economic crisis.
I went back to the computer.
Running.
That’s not an exaggeration.
I ran.
The countdown kept going.
My fingers were inches away from typing the numbers.
And it was in that moment, holding a card that wasn’t even mine, that I remembered something that guy didn’t know about me:
I know how to sell too.
I’ve spent years explaining to my clients why a gift basket is worth what it costs.
I know a website has to solve something.
I know an honest tarot reading represents time, experience and knowledge.
And I know that when someone needs to stop you from thinking in order to sell to you, they probably don’t want you thinking too much about what they’re selling.
That’s what urgency is for.
Not to help you.
To rush you.
So the fear of missing the opportunity beats your urge to check whether the opportunity even exists.
So you don’t ask.
So you don’t compare.
So you don’t look for opinions.
So you don’t talk to anyone who might tell you:
—Dude, that smells funny.
So I didn’t type the numbers.
I did what no smoke seller wants you to do while the countdown keeps ticking:
I started digging.
I googled the guy.
The first results looked wonderful.
Interviews.
Articles.
Reviews.
Success stories.
Everything spoke well of him.
Too well.
And when everything that comes up about a person looks like it was written by their mother, it was most likely paid for by their marketing team.
The interviews were set up by people connected to his business.
The articles repeated the same sentences.
The reviews appeared on pages that seemed to have been created for the sole purpose of saying the course was wonderful.
That wasn’t reputation.
It was decoration.
Then I looked for testimonials outside his garden.
Not the ones he had picked.
Not the ones crying with happiness in the video.
I looked in forums.
On Reddit.
In Facebook groups.
In comments buried under posts nobody saw.
And that’s where the other business showed up.
People who paid and never got access.
People who finished the course and didn’t make a single peso.
People who asked for a refund and got blocked.
People who discovered the supposed secret method was basic information they could find for free on the internet.
People in debt.
Ashamed.
Feeling that they were the problem because the seller had told them they didn’t get results for lack of discipline, mindset or commitment.
Of course.
The course could be crap.