The sucker at the table

You have a friend.  And you have known this friend for over 20 years.  You met when you were both young …er…. And you hang out together, you do things together, you were maybe their bridesmaid or best man at their wedding.  You talk to them every week, they complain about their work, you complain about yours.  You go out and you have Mexican food with a few margaritas and then you Uber home.  You help them and they help you when you need help.  To say the least… you’ve met.  You are buddies. 

Then, one day, out of the blue, they call you during the daytime.  This only happens when something is wrong.  You activate the screen saver on your computer with the Microsoft key and the letter L.  You grab your phone and run outside so nobody can hear you talk to them, and you answer.  “What’s the matter?  Are you ok?” And… they are very very excited.  They can barely catch their breath.  And they proceed to start talking a million miles an hour about the most amazing company and the most amazing product line they have ever seen!  And they want YOU to see it!  Tonight!  At an opportunity meeting!  And you can make money, and you will both be rich and you will have amazing cars and vacations, and we will live forever and be rich and have amazing products and all we have to do is sell some stuff that we use already anyway! 

As you stare at your phone in disbelief, thinking to yourself, your friend should not be this stupid and you should not have left your work for this s*&^, you realize one of two things.  Your friend has been recruited by a cult to sell stuff nobody wants and now wants you to do the same, which you will not do.  And two… you kind of think back to that video you saw a few days ago about AI doing something something … something… online that makes money for no effort, and you totally meant to do it but you forgot.  You should investigate it.  Although you are pretty sure you will not be joining your friend in their little pyramid scheme idiocy, you are pretty sure you want to do that AI thing you saw on YouTube because someone made a video about it and you think it is rather possible.   

What you may or may not realize is that the “opportunity” your friend is pitching to you is no worse or better than the video “opportunity” you saw online except, the one you saw online carries more weight for you as legitimate because you are getting the message from a stranger rather than someone you saw throw up a few weeks ago after you guys visited Frankie’s taco stand and Sushi bar on the corner of 54th and Albatross avenue for late night tacos following 3 for 1 pitchers of margarita night at the Four Dead Cadaver Washer’s Saloon and Biker Bar. We tend to have a strange duality about our thinking as human beings.  We trust strangers with information more than we trust our friends and family because we tend to assign respect to strangers and exercise skepticism with our family and friends because we feel comfortable debating with people we know more than strangers.  That’s why first dates tend to go respectfully most of the time and people don’t show their true colors until the relationship progresses a little further along. 

But what we must realize is that those great sounding adds on platforms we frequent are not great ideas.  They are not even good ideas.  Have you heard someone say to you, after YOU pitched some idea to someone you know, “well if it was such a great idea, why is the person you met trying to ‘teach you the business’ instead of doing it themselves and if they are so successful at it, how come they are charging for the idea instead of just giving it away?” The answer to that of course is “well, they don’t HAVE to do it, but they are such great and generous people that they want to share the wealth with everyone!”

The real answer should be this.  Say, you are at a card game, and you were invited to this card game by someone you know.  And they tell you about the wonderful people at the table who want to teach you to play this card game so you can be good at it and then you can teach it to other people and those other people will pay YOU money to learn the game from you.  And you were asked to bring along a sizeable amount of money because well, it costs money to learn the business.  And you look around the table and everyone is anteing up except their pile are much bigger than yours and you seem to be anteing up a greater percentage of your pile than they are of theirs.  And your friend leans over and whispers to you, “watch that guy right there, he really knows what he is doing and he thinks you will be terrific at this game and he will teach you everything he knows, but don’t tell the others because he can’t do it for everyone so they might need to lose a little bit so you can win more”. 

As you trying to figure out who the suckers at the table are, slowly you come to the realization that there are no suckers at the table – except one.  YOU.  But by the time you realize this, your money is gone, the Big Guy who was supposed to take you under his wing has long moved on to other suckers to tutor and you are now one of the players at the table who seemingly has a large pile of money except you borrowed it all from your credit cards to remain at the table and you watch a new person turn all their money over to the Big Guy and you finally understand that “fake it until you make it” has about as much value in this game as fly crap on a calendar. 

Now you are disillusioned, and you want out, but your money is gone and now that game you signed up for to have a better financial lifestyle is costing you everything you have and everything you borrowed. 

Nothing in this world is ever as easy or simple as people tell you it is.  Everything is complex and complicated and there are no shortcuts to success other than winning the lottery but even that is tricky because lottery winners, on average, tend to file for bankruptcy 7 times more than most other people who never win anything. 

So, the next time you see some great idea, or you hear some great idea from someone, remember to look around the table that they are inviting you to sit at.  If you can’t figure out who the suckers are at the table – it's, YOU.