They say they can make you a millionaire - if you give them a few thousand. Andrew Taylor road-tested three self-described money makers.
You see their toothy grins beaming from posters everywhere. They promise to unlock the secrets of being a millionaire, taking you from the daily grind of an unfulfilling job to a paradise of wealth, happiness and even spiritual enlightenment. All they need is a few hours of your time - and a wad of cash.
There are as many types of wealth creation guru as there are ways to spend money and we have neither the space nor the expertise to assess them all here. But when it comes to how they look, sound and charge, Radar can help you with that. We went along to three "free" introductory seminars to save you the hassle and we think we might have discovered at least one of the secrets to creating wealth - hosting wealth creation seminars.
1 Adam Hudson: The Five Proven Secrets Behind Every Great Entrepreneur Throughout History
Apparently, Adam Hudson managed to blow his million-dollar fortune in just three short years. His orthodontist no doubt made a sizeable dent in Hudson's wealth if his Hollywood smile is anything to go by. Happily, he's once again cashed-up and, as he assures us time and again, he is now "in a position where I have set myself up for life".
Hudson, however, has bad news for those of us who think that wealth is a passport to fast cars, fast women and making it past the bouncers at the Establishment. Far from being glamorous, making money requires hard work and keeping it is equally as dull. Hudson's selling point is the rather uninspiring: "Just because he drives a Porsche doesn't mean he is rich. It may mean he's actually quite stupid." Or simply making up for a lack of size.
Hudson says there are no short cuts to wealth, no quick fixes and no infallible elixirs, despite what other motivators imply. On the other hand, persistence does pay off: Hudson says he survived the wreckage of five business failures before hitting it big selling - wait for it - personal development material.
Far from feeling motivated, it's easy to feel depressed by what Hudson has to say. He doesn't even suggest we aim for Donald Trump-sized wealth, but rather settle for being debt-free. So you'll need to save up before you can afford his $2195 Winning with Money course.
2 Dr John Demartini: How to Make One Hell of a Profit and Still Get to Heaven
John Demartini looks eerily similar to Tom Cruise's self-improvement guru, T. J. Mackey, in the film Magnolia. He's also married to Athena Starwoman, whose stargazing must surely provide tips on how to make wads of cash.
Essentially, Demartini's message is that if he can ride the wave of financial success after being an illiterate, teenage surfie bum, then so can everyone else. Demartini says he "literally" lived on the streets at age 14, couldn't read or write until he was 17 and "almost died" while living as a surfer in Hawaii. Aged 50, he makes jokes about 1960s drug culture as if he experienced it.
Despite this, he somehow passed a college entrance exam and entered higher education where he "fasted for 35 days without eating". Not that having a university degree matters when it comes to making money. Fear - not socio-economic status - is the main barrier stopping us "exploding economically", especially fear of not being smart enough, he says.
Demartini's advice is mostly aimed at building self-confidence, although he also plays on fears of retiring into poverty. He suggests that we walk around carrying the amount of cash we'd like to earn in a day - hardly sensible from a personal safety point of view - and also says he wants to wean us off asking for discounts: paying full price is apparently a sign of self-worth. (Funny then, that he offers a "Buy Five and Get One Free!" deal with his two-day Breakthrough Experience seminar.)
There are worse ways of spending two hours than listening to Demartini telling me to love myself. "We all deserve to be wealthy," he says. And later, "live outrageously, don't stagnate" and the slightly bewildering "be self-actualised and have a magnificent life". As he points out, it's done him no end of good. But whether I need to pay $1295 to spend a weekend with him boosting my ego is another story.
3 Jamie McIntyre: What I Didn't Learn at School but Wish I Had
McIntyre might be a self-made millionaire, but he doesn't look like one dressed in beige slacks and ill-fitting white T-shirt with an Elvis-inspired quiff and the slight hint of a harelip. But then Bill Gates and Donald Trump are no oil paintings and they're billionaires.
Lacking Hudson's boyish charm and Demartini's charisma, McIntyre's seminar is mind-numbingly dull. Rhetorical questions go unanswered by an audience that appears bemused, bored and wishing they'd seen a film instead. His anecdotes are neither funny nor insightful. His tone is condescending, if not insensitive.
At one point, he asks, "How do you know if Telstra really works on top of Ayers Rock?" suggesting it's a crime if you don't.
By his own standards, McIntyre was a loser. He says he was $150,000 in debt and sleeping on a friend's couch in his early days. But rather than vegetate in front of daytime TV, McIntyre devoured self-help books and hung around rich people until he realised the surest path to wealth lay in talking about it.
He blames the education system for causing failure, frustration and financial disaster in our society. Rather than teaching students how to have money work for us, schools waste time with reading, writing and arithmetic. Indeed, he says, "this type of information has been deliberately kept a secret, keeping many Australians constrained to a job and a slave to the banks".
McIntyre also reckons many of us feel guilty about being wealthy. He's not one of them since he applies "universal laws and principles and abide[s] by the laws of karma".
Karma or not, listening to McIntyre won't help your self-esteem. He says most Australians are dismal failures, pointing to Australian Bureau of Statistics figures that show 96 per cent of the population at age 65 end up dead, dead broke, pensioners or dependent on their families. A bureau spokesman says he is not aware of any bureau publication that contains this statistic, but McIntyre told us he read them in a newspaper article.
McIntyre says a mentor once advised him: "If you want to succeed, you need to figure out what most Australians are doing and do the exact opposite." Like becoming homeless, unemployed, a junkie or going to jail?
McIntyre, however, says his adult education course, which promises to teach you all the money-making skills that school forgot, will do the trick. At a cost of $2995 for his home study program, it had bloody better. For $4995, you can study at home and join McIntyre for a three-day seminar in Fiji in October.
As tempting as it is to find out how to "generate an extra $4000 to $5000 a month for less than five minutes work" or score up to $35,000 tax-free every year, I'm a bit worried about what the Australian Tax Office will say about these newly acquired riches. In three hours of talking, McIntyre makes no mention of how to survive a tax audit.
Talk back at radar.smh.com.au
Choose carefullyOctober was a tough month for the wealth creation industry. Disgraced property spruiker Henry Kaye was found by the Federal Court to have engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct and banned from ever again promising to make millionaires out of ordinary people.
Also, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission took action in the Federal Court to restrict the activities of five parties involved in wealth creation seminars.
The commission's targets were two self-styled wealth creation gurus, Carlo Castellano and Jon Giannopoulos, who directed companies that ran the Options Trading Mastery, Index Trading Strategies and Rapid Wealth Options Strategies seminars around Australia, including in Sydney.
The Federal Court decided the companies gave financial product advice while unlicensed and that Giannopoulos and Castellano had been involved. Castellano's company had even said it would be virtually impossible not to make money after attending one of his seminars.
Commission spokesman Greg Tanzer promised to keep a close eye on the promoters of wealth creation seminars to ensure they didn't dodge the law. "ASIC will take action against spruikers to alert and protect consumers about the possible risks associated with wealth creation