Cutting straight to the point, a regular person is someone who should not bother reading this blog. They should immediately close the browser and go to a motivational seminar or spend their money on self help books written by unsuccessful people. If they are really ambitious, they can go ahead and update their resume and find another hourly or salary job that requires no change in responsibility or skill-set.
In short? Regular people should be avoided at all costs and you can see the impact they can have on this blog alone. For one reason or another, traffic has tripled here (again), we have to automatically mark hundreds of comments as spam (again) and for some reason they think this blog is written for them (it isn’t). Regular people simply *slow you down*. This post is going to go borderline “nasty” in commentary towards regular people in an attempt to kick them off the website forever.
#1 Regular People are Impressed by $3,000 in Monthly Passive Income: No joke, they are impressed by this. Regular people believe that $3,000/month while doing nothing is an “accomplishment”. They believe that it is obtainable by starting a website catered to other imbeciles like themselves and that it will free them up to “see the world”. In reality? $3,000 a month doesn’t even pay for rent in a major city and should be achieved well before your 30th birthday. Think about it. Even at 7% returns all you would need is just over $500K to hit this marker.
#2 Regular People Never Fail: You would think that a regular person would be failing day and night to improve his current circumstances. But. In reality, he is busy being an expert on everything. You can compete professionally in tennis but somehow he will claim that he gave up his “potential” way back in high school. He “could have” been in the same position as you if he “wanted to”.
#3 Regular People Pass On Bad Advice: Since he has never accomplished anything… but… believes that he will be “successful in the future” he passes on more non-sense advice to anyone who will listen. He will give you advice on fitness (never even competed in college), money (doesn’t even make $250K), girls (he was the “man” in college) and your career (hasn’t gotten promoted in 5 years). Never challenge any of his ideas because he will get extremely upset. Much better to smile, nod and agree.
#4 Regular People Believe Wall Street Wants to Rip Them Off: Lets draw the line at tier 3 and above Wall Street professionals. This means you do not interact with retail clients at all. In short? Wall Street employees don’t even interact with regular people on a work basis let alone care about their pocket books. Wall Street is a fee based organization and a performance based entity as well. No employee on Wall Street is interested in squeezing out $50 from a guy who makes $100K a year. It is a waste of time. Front office Wall Street employees are only interested in major institutions and company management teams. A regular person’s Scott Trade account isn’t even on the radar.
#5 Regular People Live Above Their Means: Since regular people are smarter than you when it comes to… well… everything. They deserve the best. This means they have no problem ringing up hundreds or even thousands of dollars of credit card debt. In addition? They have the audacity to complain when they are charged late fees! They are living well beyond what they can afford to purchase but… because they “deserve it”… they believe all fees should be waved.
This is a major hint for those of you looking to make money. If you want to start a finance blog catered to the masses create one where you claim you were “up to your eyeballs in credit card debt but figured out how to solve your problems using this one quick trick!”.
#6 Regular People are Emotional: If you want to target the masses (idiots) you need to write extremely “moving pieces”. The best example of a way to speak to the masses is Steve Jobs’ 2005 commencement speech at Stanford University. It had everything lined up perfectly to go viral with “regular people”. People saw the word Stanford and thought they were getting a sneak peek at “elite” advice. Of course Steve Jobs realizes he is on stage being recorded so his *audience* is really *the world* not just Stanford university students. So he created a pump up feel good speech that went viral. No doubt this helped his product sales. For those that actually read his book? You’ll realize he was a tyrant just like the vast majority of successful people. Beautifully delivered and well marketed.
If you want more examples of how to communicate with regular people, just pull up videos of viral motivational speeches. These are all targeted at regular people.
#7 Regular People are Influenced by Their Environment: The difference between elite and regular is subtle. Elite people adapt to their environment while regular people are *impacted* by their environment. Regular people are easily swayed by the opinions of strangers. Therefore, a new environment will actually change the way they think. Regular people are essentially chameleons. They are too scared to stand out so they will blend into whatever crowd you put them in.
Alternatively? Elite people will *adapt* to the new rules they are handed. Instead of simply trying to fit in like a chameleon they will figure out how to succeed in the new environment regardless of what other people are doing.
#8 Regular People are Liars: The difference between regular people and elite people is this. Regular people lie *up* elite people lie *down*. If a regular guy claims to make $100K a year he probably makes closer to $80K. Meanwhile. If an elite person tells you he makes $80K he probably makes $250K+. He is just giving a low ball number to avoid answering questions all day.
Of course there are new money elite people who like to flash cash, however, most rich people enjoy hiding their wealth. They have already been “hit up” for loans and favors by their closest friends and relatives so they decided to simply hide it.
Try and poke around for clues? They won’t have any interest in giving you information unless they find a way for both of you to benefit.
#9 Regular People Believe Rich People Are Mean: Another false assumption. Rich people are generally extremely logical. If you ask for a favor that you know he can easily do and he says “no” this does not imply that the person is mean. Instead? It implies that he has no reason to grant the favor.
Regular people expect hand outs and this is exactly why a rich person is never going to say yes. A smart person who is good at networking is going to ask for basic advice, execute on it and show results before asking for any hand outs.
Regular people expect rich people to simply give them something for “knowing them”. No joke. This is how they think. If they simply know the rich person they believe this entitles them to some sort of income.
#10 Regular People Rarely Improve: If you meet a regular person in 2015 and run into him in 2017, you will be talking to the exact same person. His income probably went up by 3-5%, he gained or lost 2-5 pounds and his face is slightly narrower due to the increase in age. You don’t have to ask him what he has been up to because he can summarize his entire two years in five minutes. He went to work for an hourly wage or annual salary. He hit the gym a few times but quit. He read a couple of self help books. The end.
It is very easy to tell when you’re dealing with a regular person since his life never changes. It’s the same story every single year and he has the same “accomplishments” to hang his hat on. The only difference is the accomplishments are now 2 years further in the past.
#11 Regular People Long for the Past: Over the last 10 years we have seen nothing but massive economic opportunity. Sure some cities have seen more benefits than others. But. Life in the USA has gone no where but up and to the right. This of course assumes that your life has improved. Regular people live for the past because they don’t think their future is going to be any better. In short, avoid anyone who talks about the past. No one talks about the past if their future is brighter.
#12 Regular People Ask Terrible Questions: This is what inspired this post in the first place. We missed a full post because of all the terrible questions and emails we received. Regular people cannot even ask a question without giving their life story as a back drop. Classic ways to tell if you’re talking to a regular person:
1) “Wow really great post I just had a quick question…. 10 sentences later… what are your thoughts on this” – We don’t care about your life story. No one does.
2) “I read this book written by so and so what do you think” – It doesn’t matter what we think. Reading more than 1 book every two months is a waste of time. Try the philosophies you learned and see if it works. That is your answer. If it doesn’t work then it was a terrible book. If it does work it was a great purchase.
3) “What do you think is going to happen to the economy” – We don’t care again. Even if the S&P 500 goes down by 50% it won’t change our lifestyles at all. Funny enough, in the comments people said we were at the peak. Of course the market is up another 20%+ since then. Again. Even if it corrects down by 50%, you should be running a company, so it will be meaningless anyway.
#13 Regular People Do the Minimum: The easiest way to sell a regular position on a wage slavery job is to tell them that it pays extremely high on a “per hour basis”. Once they believe that it is is the best position in terms of time for money exchange they will sign the dotted line. Why? They want to do the minimum. Without actually creating any value they believe that their time is valuable (it isn’t). Instead of creating enough value around them (forcing their time to become valuable) they assume that their time is valuable from day one which leads to a life of mediocrity.
#14 Regular People Like Rules: Since regular people refuse to create anything they will naturally avoid any revenue generating positions. They do not like risk or creativity. This is a given. Instead they expect to be handed a pamphlet that says do X then do Y then do Z. Make the pamphlet incredibly detailed so a robot could do the exact same thing. Then they will complain when a robot takes their job.
#15 Regular People Hate Sales: Naturally, if regular people dislike creating and thinking on their feet they will hate sales. Sales requires a person to be rejected hundreds of times per week (remember regular people never fail!) so this goes against their core belief system (they are “special”).
#16 Regular People Are Waiting for You to Slip: Regular people gossip more than soap operas. No joke. Since nothing is going on in their lives they will track your life like the CIA. In fact, even if you obtain a promotion at a different Company for the split second they find you “left” they will barrage you with emails and texts about how they “knew you were going to fail” (they assume you were let go). If you are on social media (you shouldn’t be) then this will be amplified 10x when your Linked-in profile is changed.
#17 Regular People Hate It When You Succeed: The bigger the divide between you and regular people becomes, the more they will hate you for it. They don’t have the guts to tell you to your face and instead will try to find ways to take you down. It is much better to build a large moat around your life instead. Blend into the crowd, don’t flash anything and avoid giving out information at all costs. Notably, even if you live in an upper middle class area, continue to do this since you may find that there is a large divide between you and your neighbors as well.
#18 Regular People Are Not Interesting: They are simply boring. Boring type A people that you would never want to spend your time with. They are so easy to figure out that you can have a single 15 minute lunch with them and know that you have no interest in meeting them ever again. Is this judgemental? Yes. Is it true? Yup. You can box up a regular person within fifteen minutes (tops).
#19 Regular People Believe They Are Socially Aware: This one is by far the most humorous. If someone is easily influenced by their environment then they are not socially aware by definition. We’re extremely aware that this blog has been raided by regular people over the last 2 months and have no problem calling it out and losing the “traffic” since it is junk traffic to begin with (we also know where it is coming from). Regular people believe they are smart and make their own decisions (thinking they are socially aware) but instead, the same tired old “tricks” will work on them. Look no further than the ad space on yahoo to prove this theory to be true.
#20 Regular People Are Easily Upset: Finally, regular people are easily upset. You can tell them that their favorite character on XYZ sitcom died and they will actually cry or become unhappy. In fact? Regular people may even hate an actor or actress if he is a Villain on a TV show! It isn’t even real!
Things like this are beyond comprehension for most of our readers (the ones around a few months ago).
