Back in 2012, we used to believe that giving out the truth would lead to more competition. That people would wake up, realize their mistakes and take action. After realizing this belief was wrong we started writing here as a hobby (originally to troll the internet which later changed). The reason for this? Human nature will never change. You’re not supposed to use words such as “never” and “will”… But. We don’t care because it is the truth. At the end of the day people are simply animals and the vast majority will fall into the same traps over and over and over again. Fixing a person from the inside out takes a lot of time, effort, thinking and will power. All items that the typical person lacks.
Human Nature and How to Profit off of it.
Unwilling to Take Action: Pick me up motivational seminars will be around for decades. This is a natural human flaw. 95% of people are unwilling to take action and people get emotionally charged when watching ridiculous things from a Michael Jordan commercial to a Tony Robbins seminar. This is why 95% of people will never succeed. They need someone else to get them to do work. This is also why 95% of people want to be employees and believe it is “less risky”. This is the biggest lie ever sold.
Since we know this human flaw will exist as long as we are alive (at least the next 100 years) we should take advantage of it. If you have a business it will be easy to hire employees and underpay them. You can justify underpaying them by treating them nicely (the exact reverse of most business models). Since you know that they don’t have the capacity to work for themselves you can pay them below market but tell them they are amazing employees. This reduces churn and you get to increase your profit margins. Importantly, if you think this paragraph is “mean” this is exactly how the top companies operate. Even the biggest most important companies will fire a person instantly if they break this mold of higher profit margin per employee. Big companies are fixated on profitability and protecting operating margins.
Obsession with Homeruns: People will constantly flock to anything that could be a “life changer”. This means any investment vehicle that has wild swings up and down (they will ignore the underlying fundamentals). If you see any large cap stock, crypto currency or real estate market suddenly go up 100%+…. You’ll begin to hear “stories”. They are all the same. Some guy someone knows gets rich off of the space and suddenly everyone is interested in investing tons of money into it. We have gotten to a point where people will focus on “what happened to the price” instead of asking “why did the price move”.
This is yet another human flaw and is why the lottery exists. It is the same concept. Any “chance”, no matter how slim, will attract humans looking for some sort of immediate solution to their lives. The answer of course is to start a casino if you can. If you cannot start a casino the next best thing is to sell things such as sweepstakes and contests. Set up the sweepstakes such that you’ll never actually lose. For every $100 that come in say $98 go out. People will sign up. They believe in luck instead of creating it themselves.
Need for a Quick Fix: Building on the items above, since we know humans are unwilling to fix things themselves and are in love with “quick riches”… we can surmise that they are also quite interested in “quick fixes”. This is why the skin care, diet and testosterone boosting industry are all alive and healthy. These industries target massive pain points since the typical person is not in shape. They will look for “remedies” for their fat loss, their muscle gains and their deteriorating skin. As our readers know, there are no quick solutions to any of these since they are all solved internally.
Now onto the more important part, since people are searching for quick fixes you should sell products that do work *temporarily*. Anything that will slightly help them will be seen as a godsend. Telling someone to overhaul their diet, exercise and work routine is just not feasible so go ahead and sell Band-Aids instead. As long as the Band-Aid works and helps stop the bleeding you’ll get rave reviews. If you don’t believe Band-Aids will work we’ll go ahead and pose a question “What would you call the cosmetics industry?” Billions of dollars are spent on products that temporarily help the appearance of women. Cosmetics do not improve skin (in fact they cause damage in most cases) and yet look at the sales. If we really want to open Pandora’s box, ask yourself… is the fashion industry there because people want to look better without actually changing their bodies? You know our answer to that one.
They Are Never Wrong: Now you’re probably wondering, well all of this stuff makes sense but wouldn’t they eventually realize they are wrong and take action? Not to worry! They won’t. Why? Well they are never wrong. Instead of sitting and thinking most people backward rationalize all of their decisions. If they buy a motivational book and do five push-ups the next day because someone inspired them to do so… they’ll think the purchase was worth it. This is how the human brain operates. Since they are never wrong, once they’ve been sold on one purchase of a meaningless product they’ll justify the action later.
Since we’re getting into more complex territory here is how it would work from a money making perspective. We know people don’t want to do anything by themselves. If they try and fail then their ego is destroyed and they can’t have that. So… how do you make money from it? Well your average person is going to ask for a lot of “help” and by help all you need to do is figure out what they want to do anyway. They don’t want help they want to justify what they have decided they are going to do anyway. So you repeat this back to them. If they succeed they’ll remember you as the supportive guy. If they fail… then you can help them rationalize by saying “it was the right risk adjusted thing to do it just didn’t work out”. Under no circumstances do you give them an actual opinion or any advice. If you operate like this in your everyday life you’ll notice that you have a ton of people who believe you’re a great guy. And. All you did was tell them what they wanted to hear.
They Have Minimal Diversity in Skills: Continuing to build on all of the above, since human nature is to value “stability” which they believe revolves around working for another person (a job) the typical person will have minimal skill diversity. They will be pigeon holed into a single set of niche tasks that may or may not be useful in the future. This is an important distinction because we’re not saying that people should juggle tasks. That also leads to failure. Instead one should focus on a single broad direction and learn all of the necessary tasks involved. Why? Well we can’t think of a single business that operates with only one person for sales, product development, supply chain management, etc. The CEO or head of the company will certainly be well versed in the majority of those tasks.
Now to the making money part. Since most people will rely on one source of livable income, you already know what we’re going to say, you’ll need several. Having one source of income that pays for all of your expenses is like putting your entire life into one stock. It’s just not smart. We’d say a good starting point is around four streams of livable income. If you have living wage coming from say 1) real estate, 2) your career, 3) your online business and 4) stocks/bonds… You’re in good shape. If you only have a career/job… you’re essentially in emergency mode. Now, if you want to hear the cynical side as well, you can also use the minimal skill diversity to improve automation. As we move into the future process oriented jobs will be taken over by AI (this has already happened and anyone in online sales knows exactly what we’re talking about). If you’re looking to cut costs and run a large team, you’ll try to make a process out of each group. Once it’s a process just have AI do the rest and cut the piece that has now been automated. If people believe the prior few sentences were “bad” this is how the majority of billionaires will operate over the next several years. Remember in any large company people are just line items and the goal of the managers is to cut that line-item without hurting the top-line… Use AI.
Three Ways to Save Time
We’ve now given away five ways to profit off of human nature knowing that people are: 1) unwilling to take action, 2) are drawn to big moves, 3) are looking for quick answers to problems, 4) believe they are never wrong and 5) lack skill diversity. The more important part is how to save time. Time is more important than money and knowing human nature will save you a lot of headaches. We cannot change human nature so the next best thing is to save time.
Changing an Opinion: No point here. Unless someone is completely new to a topic there is no point in changing their opinion. It won’t happen and if you’re right they will simply dislike you because their ego took a hit (you were right and they were wrong). This is not a good way to win at life. Instead of trying to change opinions make a decision on if the person has already made a strong opinion. This is the real trick. If someone is 100% new to a topic then feel free to provide an opinion. If they already have an opinion, just agree with it and take their side of the argument. Besides. In order to have your own strong opinion you should be able to argue the other side with ease… This will save you a large amount of time and we can’t over state that enough: 1) figure out if they have a strong opinion – takes a few minutes, 2) then decide to either agree *or*give an actual opinion (if they have an opinion just agree). In addition, if you read this paragraph and disagree, we think you have a good point and things aren’t black and white so there are definitely grey areas (see if you catch the joke).
The Never Ending Search: In our book, Efficiency, we covered practically every major scam there is from “T-boosting” pills to magic brain pills that make you smarter to affiliates to gym advice etc. The reality… people will *still* look for magic tricks! You can spell it out and even teach them how to spot the scams and they will still fall for it because they are driven by emotion. So when someone comes up to you with some new “fad” just agree with them. If someone wants to do cross fit and injure themselves don’t tell them the truth. Tell them it’s cool they are “getting out there to try and experience something new”. This is probably the best phrase to use. “It’s all about experiencing different things, just get out of your comfort zone!” and other such cliché phrases. This will make them feel good and you won’t have to explain that they are on a never ending search for things that don’t exist. As always logic doesn’t sell so save yourself the time and get used to that standard line!
Find the Flaw and Ignore the Advice: If you find a guy who thinks he has it made, be careful. Most guys with money fail in many other categories. Don’t take fitness advice from the overweight guy with $10 million dollars. Sure he made money, but he sure doesn’t know anything about fitness. Similarly, you wouldn’t take dating advice from a guy with an overbearing wife or someone you would never talk to in a social setting yourself. So on and so forth. This will save you a lot of time. Since we know most people only succeed in one category (niche) you’ll tell them you want “advice in the other categories” to boost their ego and eventually work your way into the information you want. As they say tell an overweight guy you think he lost weight since last time you saw him and tell a smart nerdy guy you want dating advice. Once rapport is built you’ll all set to get the more valuable information.
