I’ve Been Burnt Before, How Do I Know I Can Trust You?
This is a fair question and one that you should probably ask yourself (not only about me, but everyone) BEFORE you part with your hard earned money. If you’ve been burnt before, you’re not alone. I’ve also made some poor decisions where I’ve lost quite a bit of money.
Some years ago I was a speaker at an international conference and there was a person promoting an investment offering what I considered to be unrealistic rates of returns. Because quite a number of people asked me what I thought of the investment and the promoter of this scheme, I started doing some research.
The first thing I did was to look at the information the promoter was providing to prospective investors. The documentation consisted of a number of photocopied pages, no address details and a mobile phone number as a means of contact.
The promoter was inviting people to invest upwards of $100,000 and claimed to be a millionaire in his own right. He didn’t even have a business card.
When questioned about the poor quality of information he was providing to prospective investors, he explained that his luggage had been stolen or lost on the way to the hotel and he had to quickly put something together at the hotel’s business centre so he could tell people about his wonderful investment opportunity.
Now misfortune can happen to anyone and I’m at least willing to give someone the opportunity to give me a credible explanation before I dismiss what I hear.
Sadly in this case, Allan was a total shyster. It turned out that he had borrowed the money for the airfare, that he had been sharing a house with a few other people and that he was nothing more than a conman and a penniless bum!
When he spoke, he was very convincing and sounded quite credible. So much so, that he managed to extract several million dollars from naive investors at that conference.
I was so incensed by what I heard and saw from this conman that I wrote the book, Due Diligence Made Simple.
In this book I explain how you can research an investment opportunity so you don’t get burnt.
So why should you trust me?
The first reason is that I walk my talk and that I’ve been around for a long time. I only teach things that I’ve personally done and can prove.
Secondly, my business operates from established premises (which we own) with a proper street address and a good track record. Our ABN is 081 878 499.
Thirdly, you can see from the many testimonials on my websites, that I have a large number of successful students who have learnt and benefited from what I teach.
From time to time we are asked if it is possible to speak to these testimonial providers directly. Unfortunately this is not possible, because we respect our students’ privacy and never give out their contact details. I’m sure you will understand and respect this. So you can see that these testimonials are genuine however, we often provide pictures of the people giving the testimonial and/or audio or videos as well.
Finally, I acknowledge that we cannot please all people, all of the time and that some people may have different expectations of what we provide. That’s why we back up everything we sell with a money back guarantee so you truly have nothing to lose.
I don’t know how I can be any fairer than that and what else I can do to assure you that you will be well served with the information and products we provide.
In closing this post, let me address one more comment that I sometimes hear people make. Some people say: “I’ve been burnt too many times before to trust anybody now.”
Once again, I sympathise and empathise with this sentiment, however I’d also like to point out that it can be self destructive to you as well.
It’s not very productive for you to “tar everyone with the same brush.”
There will always be good and bad operators in every line of work and in every type of business that you come across. If you dismiss everyone as bad from the very beginning or allow your scepticism to overshadow every possible opportunity, you will be doing yourself a big disservice and become a distrusting, angry and bitter person. That will not benefit you and the only person you are hurting by that attitude is yourself.
My strongest suggestion to you is to accept that you are responsible for your financial future and that you have the power to change what is not working for you right now. Don’t blame anyone else for your situation and don’t beat yourself up over mistakes you have made in the past.
Recognise that we all make mistakes and that from time to time, you will make some more.
Remember that as a young toddler when you were learning to walk, you fell over many times and collected a lot of bruises and scrapes along the way. Nevertheless, the only reason you can walk today is that your parents continued to encourage you to get up and walk and because you persisted until you made it!
Always remember this, before you let a previous bad experience cloud your judgement for the future.
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Warm Regards,
Hans Jakobi - Australia's Wealth Coach