Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Influencer Scam Tactics Revealed | Mike Winnet

Episode Date: June 19, 2023

Influencer Scam Tactics Revealed | Mike Winnet

Long-Bandie Twizzlers candy keeps the fun going. Keep the fun going. Like, say Jordan Belfort's a great example. He defrauded a lot of people. He went to prison. He came back and he's still seen as like a good, a success. right? Yeah. So even when you do the thing and you

come out, the comeback's almost as good as... Yeah, he's super likable. Yeah. Yeah. What tells me is like, to me, Grant Cardone is not likable. No. Like the arrogance, he's so arrogant. He's so over the top. And, you know, he's almost

abusive. Like he mouse off to people. He calls people names. He picks it people. It's like, you know, I can't imagine both following this guy but you know belford to me is always very humble very polite very nice you know and he's doing well and you know so and maybe that's the ultimate scam right i want him to survive i want him to succeed yeah even though you know i understand he stole a bunch of money did a bunch of pump and dump schemes and you know i get it but it's it's strange isn't it

sometimes you root for the bad guy right Hey, this is Matt Cox, and I'm going to be interviewing Mike Winnett. Mike Winnett is an entrepreneur, and he had a YouTube channel, which we're going to talk about, called Contropreneurs, and Super Interesting Story, so check it out. So, you're English. You can tell by my complexion, right? Well, yeah, the accent. And I know you, I mean, we've spoken before, we spoke what?

like two years ago, I think, like a year and a half years ago. And when you were starting the whole, um, the entrepreneur YouTube channel. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The glory days. Yeah. The fake gurus and the whole thing. And I was going to be kind of like a, kind of like a fraud con man expert that kind of.

Yeah. So originally we were going to talk about, um, walking and talking through how the fraud works and how some of these scams work. And yeah, but things happen with that. channel which caused me a lot of grief because obviously people that make a lot of money through frauds and scams often don't like people exposing and talking about the tactics they use so it caused me a lot of grief both professionally and personally really so that's why the channel i took a year break i didn't upload anything for over a year let it all die down a little bit and i only

started uploading again six weeks ago so for the first time in over 12 months i started uploading again so okay are you kind of dialing it back a little bit yeah you were actually going to like you were going to the seminars and really doing like a almost like an expose type thing yeah so what i actually did was so i was lucky enough that um i had a real business and i scaled that business and sold it for 11 million dollars in 2017 right well let's let's jump back for a second I'm sorry. So you were born in England, raised in England, educated in England. Yeah. Well, actually I was born in Germany. My dad's a soldier. So my dad was posted overseas. So I was born in Germany. And then I went to my schooling in England essentially. And then as I got older, I got into sort of sales. I went to university, did a degree in criminology, did a degree in criminology, then got out. And then when I realized what you actually get paid for studying for four years and what the job they wanted to do, it didn't really tally up. So I ended up like most people where I'm from. working in a call center and then doing tele sales. Most people do that where we're from.

It's quite a, there's lots of call sensors around here. And that was the first time I'd ever got paid to turn up to work. So we used to get a basic salary. But then I'd also get paid if I was actually good at my job. So I'd get paid commission. And it kind of blew my mind that I'm getting paid twice here. So I did quite well through sales. And then I always felt like I could have my own business. So I left my job and then started working in startup businesses. And I worked in two startups for six and a half years. And, but with the sole intentions just to learn the skills about business that one day I'd feel confident and comfortable enough to set up my own business. I was age 29. I quit my job. I was on 70,000 UK pounds, maybe close to maybe

$100,000 a year job. And I had a baby on the way. but I felt confident enough to start my own business. So I quit my job just one morning, came home, and I told my wife at the time that I'd quit. And she said, what are you going to do now? And I said, I don't know, but I've got six weeks to work it out because my company paid me garden leave. They call it here where you can't work for anybody else,

but they pay you to make sure you don't steal data or customers or anything like that. and in those six weeks, I wrote down 10 million pounds it was, was my target, 10 million pounds in three years, and I wrote a business plan, backward plans of business, and then just executed that plan and two and a half years later, I got offered $8 million, which is $11.1 million and sold my business to an American company, actually. the cruel twist in all of this, that company that I started was resold again just last week for one billion US dollars.

So the company, did I sell it too early? Yes, I did. Well, maybe, you know, maybe. But you never know. And that's what happened. So when I sold my business, it was really good terms for me. They basically wanted me from the day they inquired to when they give me the money was 32 days. And they wanted me to leave the business that day.

So they wanted me to pack up myself and go. But they also put something in that contract, which was I couldn't do the same thing or in that same industry for two years to protect their investment. Right. And non-compete. Yeah. So what happened was I, what was the business?

Do you mind me asking? Yeah. So it was called Learning Heroes, which has been renamed to Litmus Heroes, which was then bought by SAP. They're like one of the biggest education companies in Europe now, probably the world. but essentially it was online training content for big corporate clients we actually had some

American clients um arby's was one of our clients so you know the fast food restaurants yeah yeah so they would use some of our training content so how to meet and greet people at the till how to upsize an order from regular to large so they would watch my videos and content and use that to train their stuff so we did that but we did that for lots of corporate companies in the UK, mainly and Australia, English-speaking world. But why we were unique was back in those days, all our competitors tried to tie companies into long contracts, price per head, price per course. And we just basically came along and said it's $500 a month. It's for unlimited users in your business. And it hadn't been done like that before. We used to create new content every

week and we grew to 340 customers paying us $500 a month and we then sold the business. My plan was to just get in, get out really quickly. I had no interest in that sector. I didn't have a passion for it. I didn't even enjoy it. I didn't want to be known as the e-learning boy. I literally wanted to earn a lump sum of money so I could then invest in stuff that I was interested in stock, shares, properties, and I thought that would give me the best vehicle. So I created an industry. I had no knowledge of, a business in an industry, I had no knowledge of, no passion, no experience.

It just suited the model that I look for, which is, can you be disruptive, can it be subscription-based, can you provide a real alternative, can you get in, get out, can you, you know, blow your competitors away? Could you cause enough problems to people that they might want to purchase your business to stop you damaging their business. And that was what I did. So I'm one of the lucky ones. Yeah, right.

I can see that. So, but from there, you kind of, you, how did you take the leap from transitioning from saying, hey, I'm an entrepreneur. I've got, I've got a nice chunk of money. I want to reinvest that. But I'm also stuck where I can't compete with this company. And instead, you turned around and you went, like, to me, it's just completely, Well, it's still education-based.

Yeah, it was just accident, really. So what happened was, like, I'm a working-class kid. Like, not many of my friends would go and do the same thing that I did. Not anybody, many people that went to my school would do what I'd just done in business. And I mistakenly believe that there would be experts online that could help somebody that wasn't very savvy with investing. So I would search for people online to say, you know, should I invest in crypto? So should I invest in whatever it might be, stocks and shares, should I invest in property? And bearing in mind, I did all this stuff with my business with no social media.

I'd never had social media at all before this point. I was only on LinkedIn. So I did it without building a brand or being known. I just was on LinkedIn. And then I discovered that on Instagram and on YouTube and on Google, the world is full of 20. three-year-old Lambo driving experts in business that could promise me more wealth than had ever seen before in 60 days, 90 days, if only I would buy their course. And do you know what it was? I just found it fascinating. I thought, wow, I thought I was smart by setting up a business

and selling it two and a half years later from $11 million. A bit of had only just done Chad's course, I could have been working four hours a week from the beach. Right. I've been an idiot here actually working hard, employing people, paying loads of tax, and grafting for six days a week for two and a half years. So it was curiosity that got the better of me. And I just thought I've got a little lump sum of money here. I wonder how many people out there are hoping that Chad, the 24 year old Lambo driver, is telling the truth and would drop money on a credit card to buy his course. And I thought, so I'd do a little bit of research on these people. And essentially, I found two camps of people.

Number one, those that said everything's a scam, everything's fake, don't trust these gurus. But then there was other people that were saying, this is the best thing, it's changed their life, and they've become millionaires. Obviously, most of those people saying that are probably selling you the same shit

or a part of the scam. Right. So I just thought there doesn't seem to be anybody out there. Or maybe they were going to be successful in the scam, taking that course, didn't do anything for them. Exactly. They were going to be successful no matter what they were doing.

Yeah, exactly right, because the stats will say if there's a thousand people in a room all paying to be there and one in 500 people go on to become millionaires, two people in that room might go on to be millionaires the next few years, right? It doesn't necessarily mean it's that guru's course that's done that. They had it in them already. The scary stat is 499 people have took that course and failed. And in any other industry, if you had a product with a success rate of 0.2, percent or whatever the stats are, it would probably get pulled from shelves and be told it wasn't

right for consumption or it shouldn't be used. But weirdly, in the wealth, yeah, but exactly, I put weirdly in the wealth creation space, there's enough gray areas and it's not regulated enough that people can make wild claims and put out a subpar product and they can get away with it. So I just ring fenced $500,000 and I thought, I'm going to click on every, advert I see, buy that person's course, do the course and reveal what my actual results were from actually doing their course. So while they're saying you can earn six figures in 90 days, I will do it and then reveal that I only earned $200 or $300. And I was someone that actually knew how to run a business. So if I can't achieve these things, having actually grown and

scale the real business, what hope has somebody that's a stay-at-home mom that's never had to deal with business before, what hope has she got of becoming a drop shipping guru, uh, sorry, drop shipping or affiliate marketing or a crypto, um, trader or a flipping houses. I saw the one you did on flipping how where you bought some house. Yeah. Yeah. And it's great. You know, when they're talking about the numbers when you're in the course, everyone's going to become a property millionaire. But the actual reality is there's so many hidden costs. There's so many things that they don't tell you about. There's legal things, tax implications. So don't be fooled by these. You can earn 10 grand a month from property by

putting no money down. You need to put money down. You need to pay that money back to wherever you've got it from. Then, you know, there's lots of liabilities and stuff. So I just did it because it interested me. I thought it might help somebody. And I kind of found it funny, if I'm honest. Right. That people were falling for it or? Both really, because sometimes I thought like this is so ridiculous. How are people still spending money with these guys? And then I started to break down their actual process and go into how they sell things and how do they establish authority and credibility. And even that, then I started to one pick. So an example was most of these gurus are best selling authors because it gives you a certain level of credibility,

right? Right. But then I worked out exactly how they achieved that thing. And instead of just doing a video to explain, so this is how you can fake credibility and become a bestselling author, I thought I would make a mockery of it and I produced a book that just said blank page on 144 blank pages. I uploaded it to Amazon in the business section and I got that book to number one on Amazon within 24 hours. So I'm an Amazon bestselling author with a book that was top of the charts. It was pushed by Amazon as the hot new release of the day. It was used as the actual image for the business section and it didn't have any words in. It said blank page. It took me one day. But then I would make a video on that to show people, listen, don't be impressed by a best

selling author if they promise you riches and wealth. I can do it with a blank book in 24 hours. So is it really as hard as you think it is? And that's what I started to do. Every week, I would just find something funny from the world of gurus, experts and sort of the wealth creation industry. And I'd kind of expose it, but I thought I did it in an amusing way. Now, it ruffled a few feathers. Right.

Because now all of a sudden, people were getting annoyed because they were saying, well, you know, why are you saying that to scam? You're saying everything. For a limited time at McDonald's, enjoy the tasty breakfast trio. Your choice of chicken or sausage McMuffin or McGrittles with a hash brown,

and a small iced coffee for five bucks plus tax. Available until 11 a.m. at participating McDonald's restaurants. Price excludes flavored iced coffee and delivery. It's a scam. Well, I'm not saying everything's a scam. I just don't think that your course is going to make. How many millionaires has your course really made? Show me the stats. But the interesting thing, by the way,

and I talk about it's quite a lot. What's weird about business and making money and creating wealth? People sort of, I don't know what you call it, like logic or their thought process suddenly shift. But if you replace business or entrepreneurship or drop shipping or affiliate marketing or crypto, whatever the thing is that they're selling, if you replace it with sport and then think of the exact same advert with the same logic and language, but apply it to sport. So imagine there was an advert that showed up on YouTube now that said, win the PGA tour in 90 days, whether you've never picked up a golf club or hit a golf ball. Now, we would all see

that advert and it's it's one thousand nine hundred ninety seven dollars and it's by a guy that you'd never heard of before yeah and it's not and it's obvious it's obvious you you would immediately say so you would sit there like what the fuck how does that work but then as soon as you replace that with earn um six figure salary in 90 days in drop shipping even if you don't know how to work a computer people click that advert and they will spend that money with it but being in business and being in entrepreneurship is like an elite level level sport. You've got to have done your reps. You've got to have worked in business before. You've got to understand some basic fundamentals. I started my business after working in startups

for six years. It took me six years of learning for me to even think I had a chance of being successful and earning six figures. I don't understand why people think they could do Chad's course in 48 hours and become a millionaire. But weirdly, millions of people buy this thing. it sounds good you know and people do know like it's funny because i used to teach a real estate class right like in prison but i and i i was you know i was in prison for mortgage fraud uh and related to real estate so i ended up teaching the real estate course for 10 years and everybody in there wanted to flip houses they all they buy and sell houses buy them cheap fix them up and sell them and I would go in and I would tell when I taught that and I went over maybe took a couple days

and went over that couple of different classes and I would go in and I would explain listen one time I bought a house not one time shoot this is over and over again I bought a house for $50,000 I put $20,000 in it I sold it for $100,000 how much money did I make and I said that's a true statement I really did that all the time but you know I'm saying that that's exactly everything I just said is true. I may go, man, you made $30,000. I said, no, I didn't. What I didn't tell you was how much the closing costs were,

that I had to help the guy with his down payment, that I had to pay the closing costs for the borrower, that I had, you know what I'm saying? You start adding all that up, and the next thing you know, you didn't make nearly what, and I had to pay all of the caring costs for the loan that I bought. I had to pay the points. I had to pay that.

So you start adding it up, and it's like you didn't make 30, you made 19,000 and it took four months, you know, and it was it was agony and I was going out to the property over and over again. You don't talk about how the kids knock the little kids in the neighborhood through rocks through the windows or you got three air conditioning stolen and a guy fell off your the roof and you're still waiting for him to sue you. So, you know, it always like you said, it always sounds good. Like I could because that's the headline thing. Because imagine you we did an advert. Imagine that was your advert for your property course, by the way. How to potentially earn $19,000 after four months being sued. You're probably not going to get many clicks on your

advert, but that's the reality. And that's all I wanted to do. I wanted to provide some sort of realism and balance to a lot of these grand claims by, ironically, the difference is you'd bought and sold houses there, right? A lot of these people that sell property courses, especially in the UK, don't actually make their money through buying and selling houses. They make their money through selling courses on how you can buy and sell houses. They don't even do the thing that they're now trying to teach you and tell you how much money can make. Now, from a logical business point of view, if I had a property course based in Manchester,

at the north of England, if I made $100,000 or $100,000 a month through investing in below market value properties, and that's how I made my money, I wouldn't spend my weekend teaching people how to compete with me in my own hometown for $37. The numbers don't stack up. You're turning your customers into competitors. So just from a business point of view, most of these people telling you how to do the thing, they're only selling you the course because the real money is stopped.

You can't make money like they're claiming nowadays because if they could, they'd be doing that full time. He built some of the nation's largest banks out of an estimated $55 million because $50 million wasn't enough and $60 million seemed excessive. He is the most interesting man in the world. I don't typically commit crimes but when I do it's bank fraud. Stay greedy my friends. Support the channel. Join Matthew Cox's Patreon. But if everyone wants to escape the rat race and anybody telling you a shortcut to escape that and a shortcut to riches will always do well. But the irony being, if we look at anybody in life that's successful, and I mean, like truly successful, and it could be business, gym, music, whatever it might be. The rock,

do you really think the rock is on YouTube looking for videos on how to build the perfect chest in the next 30 days? Or do you think the rock's at the gym building the perfect chest, right? And it's taking them years. When you see people in business, business, I've never, ever met Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, RIP, but I'd never met any of these people at any of these events. I'd never met any truly world, well, world-renowned guru tell me that the secret to their success was just working four hours from the beach from their laptop. But all these courses, that's what they all say. Or that I took, I made, I'm making millions right now. How'd you do it? I took, I took Grant Cardone's

course. Yeah, no one. The only people that say that they took Grant's Cardone course and make money are people that ironically are affiliate sellers for Grant Cardone's course. Right. And say Grant Cardone as the example, I was offered a testimonial from Grant Cardone for my fake business that I made up for a fake product that didn't exist for $25,000. I was approached by one of his affiliates that said, we'd love to give you a testimonial from Grant to say that we've used your services. It's brilliant. It didn't exist. It didn't exist.

He just wanted 25 grand and he'd say whatever you wanted. Right. And these are the kind of videos I was making. And it was weird, actually. It was one of the 10x community that threatened to cave my head in with a rock. And he was going to come to my hometown. And they call him like Uncle G, Uncle Grant, mad. It's very religious, you know, the whole setup.

and it's entrenched in Scientology and stuff like that. Once you start looking at what's behind it, it's quite murky, it's quite dark, it's quite interesting, but also it's a lot of hassle. And for a guy that's an actual business guy and I don't really,

I wasn't a YouTuber, it kind of brought a lot of hassle that didn't marry up to me. Like I can deal with hassle if it brings in money, but I was just doing it to sort of educate people, make a few people laugh and potentially stop people spending money on rubbish.

And so when I started getting the death threats and the um someone posted my kid's school online the address and all that stuff it just got a bit too much for me really and started to affect me a little bit so you how long you you put up the youtube channel it's still up right yeah and i've had to remove quite a lot of videos i'm probably down maybe 12 13 videos that have gone unknowingly some of them i would say are my better videos. And you took them down or YouTube took them down? A combination of both.

Some were enforced by YouTube and others were, if they stayed up, I'd receive legal letters from lawyers and solicitors in the UK saying that if they weren't removed, I'd have to pay certain things out. Annoyingly, a lot of the legal action is to scare you more than anything. A lot of it can't stand up, but it's just hassle. And the problem is when you... You have to go get a lawyer. You got to go get a lawyer to...

Yeah, so I actually won, I won a couple of these cases against them, but it still costs me like four and a half thousand pounds, $6,000 to win a case. Right. So you can imagine if you've got a YouTube video that might make $300, $400 in ad revenue, but it's cost to you $6,000 for it to be up. That's not a good business model. So I just remove some videos because of the hassle. And then also, because of the global pandemic,

I had to focus more on my actual real businesses. that i do in real life because my real life is my real life youtube's just it's not a thing for me really i exist off youtube quite happily but there's a lot because i'm a business person that's on youtube rather than i'm a youtube trying to create a business on youtube which a lot of people do so there's nothing wrong with that by the way it's just i've always preferred my real life business thing right um yeah no i i i actually make most of my money you know selling paintings and you know, optioning. Yeah, seen some of your stuff that you do. Yeah. So did you learn that when you were in prison? Did you get into the painting when you're in prison? Or did you

that before? No, no. I, um, I have a degree in fine arts. So my, my degrees in fine arts. I've always painted. I just, you know, I didn't think I could make any money at it when I graduated college. So, you know, I went. I got the degree and I knew I wasn't going to be able to support myself as a, as an artist. So I started doing other things. And eventually I ended up owning a mortgage company and committed to fraud and then it just spiraled out of control. But yeah. It's easy to do, you know, you know, so when we talk about the entrepreneur stuff, I think sometimes I don't think, I mean, there's some people their intention is bad from the off.

Like they're doing it because it's a quick vehicle to quick cash, but I think sometimes they genuinely believe what they're doing is a victimless thing. And well, if it doesn't work, it's because they've not implemented the training properly. and there's so many get-outs that sometimes they might be the victim of it themselves. They've bought into that lifestyle so much because they've normally learned from their own mentor or their own guru. They paid someone that's taught them all these things that I think they don't necessarily realize how bad it's because I bet you didn't set up a mortgage company with the intentions

of committing a mortgage fraud when he started or did you? No, no. But then slowly creeped up on me. Yeah. And so I think that's what I've learned. And this is the sometimes there's a misconception that I hate all entrepreneurs. or sometimes I think you've got to admire their business ability, how they market themselves, how they grow, whatever.

They do a lot of bad things, but there's also some good things you can learn from them. You just need to apply it to some of the lessons you can learn from even the worst entrepreneurs. Actually, there's some value there. You can almost learn the internet's made people black and white, right? It's Republicans, it's Democrats, it's Brexit. Is it leave or stay?

You know, it's very much like that where real life's a lot more nuanced. and, you know, bad people do good things sometimes. Good people do bad things sometimes. It doesn't mean that you are those things forever. And that's the one thing or one problem I've got with my channel. I think sometimes people think everything that is a scam that's like this. But you know what? There's some great courses online.

You can learn skills online. There are some great business people that are mentoring people out there. Not everything is a scam. However, your audience sometimes can't see that. Like I get asked about Gary Vayner. quite a lot because I ended up meeting the guy and ended up going to his office and people say like do you like Gary V or do you hate him my real answer is neither do you think Gary V's a good guy or a bad guy well he's kind of both like aren't we all you know right and it's an interesting thing

I think how the internet I don't know if it's the internet but people don't seem to be able to think critically or realize that people can be two very different things at the same time sometimes. So it's a, even my audience eventually towards the end, I was getting a bit frustrated with them as well as the gurus that we, which is a mad thing to say, isn't it, about the audience that you've built. Yeah. Well, I mean, I get people that leave horrible comments, you know, in the comment section of my videos, almost every video. It's like you're watching though. Like you are watching in this guy, like there's a couple of guys, they really watch the videos but you have like professional you know trolls or haters or whatever and it's it's

it's odd but you know this is the thing just like you're saying um you know i i was on uh concrete is a podcast that's around here a friend of mine danny runs it and i was a big big podcast that isn't it yeah i think he's got a few million views right uh well he's got he's got like half a million subscribers yeah um but he's got videos that have you know five 10 million views so anyway we were talking one time and he said i said something about oh i can't go oh yeah yeah i can't go i said i got i'm going to church you know tomorrow and he was like church and i was like yeah and he's kind of you know mocked me a little bit and i went i said well wait a second i don't have to believe to go to church i don't have to believe every single thing

that they're saying you know what i'm saying or the entire belief system of the entire religion like what did Jesus Christ die on the cross i mean i don't know it says in the book maybe you know um you know there's all these things you know was you know the universe created in seven six days or we know whatever look i don't know is i go and this guy that i'm listening to some of the stuff that he says i like some of it i disagree with i take what i want i walk out the door i feel okay about it. I'm good. But you're right. There are people that it is, oh, you went to church. Oh, you don't believe in abortion. Oh, you're a horrible person. Oh, you want to keep women down. Oh, it's like, whoa, whoa, what are you talking about? Like they just go nuts over. It's like,

bro, I just said I go to church with my girlfriend. Like I, you know, people get crazy. They're really so polarized at this point. Yeah, but I think, I mean, I think we are. But I also think that obviously social media is deliberately set up for that because the more angry we are, the more we comment, the more time we spend on it. And the more it focuses on you. Like, I turn on, if I turn on, you know, TikTok, like, all I get is stuff that just is like, you know, it's very divisive, divisive, everything I get. I never get anything from the other side at this point, unless it's backing the other side. It's like, it's, it's really designed to just separate everybody. Yeah. And it's such a strange thing.

I think this is why, by the way, that these entrepreneurs have done so well. I think social media plays a big part. You can laser target people with a message. You can target them based on what they search for. And then so you can target vulnerable people. And I think with society now, and it's a bit deep,

but I've really got into the science and stuff behind all this. It's been quite interesting. But I think family and community is kind of eroded, sort of the last 50 years. Like, you know, you would meet someone in your local town, you'd go and work in the local factory, and you'd sort of, like, have the same group of friends, and you'd all have the same experiences. Now, we're seeing almost too much. We know too many things from too many places in the world, and we've meant to have an opinion on things that we would never have known existed 50 years ago. I wouldn't have known 50 years ago what was happening in South America or deforestation or I wouldn't know these things or pollution or plastic bottles. off the coast of China. I wouldn't have known about global warming, carbon footprints, royal families. I wouldn't have known about politics, pedophiles, all these different things

we wouldn't know, where now we are being force-fed that from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to sleep. So your brain's constantly receiving information. Then you're looking on social media to escape that and you're seeing a version, filtered version, one moment in someone's life that's not real, just for a picture. Right. So you're sat there in your little town, where you're from, age 18, 19. Your mom and dad have split up. You've not really got the community. You've not got a group of friends. There's no clear career path for you. And then you start looking for something online to replace that. It's why gangs do well in inner city areas. You're looking for that sense of belonging, family. And that's why religion does well. Whether you believe in it or not,

the sense that you can all have a shared experience and you listen to the same people and it's why it works because that's what we innately that's what we want but what's happened is people like Andrew Tate people like Grant Cardone people like Gary Vee have become that voice so a whole disillusions um audience of sort of 16 to 23 year old lads essentially because they think that everybody out there does drive a Lambo doesn't and six figures. Anybody working nine to five is an idiot. They should have achieved these things by these ages. And I think that on top of drugs going out low self-worth, I think it's the perfect melting pot for them to reach out to these false profits. And you can use both senses of the word.

You know, it's false profits with a F and it's a false profit with a pH. That's what I think it is. And I think that all contributes to why young lads look up to people like Andrew Tate. He's obviously the biggest one at the moment. But also, he is a direct opposition to the woke agenda that's been pushed, right? And I'm not saying either of those things are right. But when you create such extreme views on social media, either way, an equal and opposite reaction has to happen. That's what happens. And that's why they do so well. And I think social media's got a huge part to play. And then also the erosion of like family, family values, the family unit, sense of

belonging, father figures, all those things. I think they all are interlinked as mad as it sounds, which is way deeper than my YouTube channel, by the way, but I'm just saying, I get why people are like that now. You know what I was thinking. So I know a couple of people that love Anthony Robbins. Yeah. It's like a cult. They go to every single one of his, they, they, one of his, um, they, they, they, uh, one of his,

whatever you want to call them seminars they've paid to be a member of some club they like they it's like a cult and yet these are both of these people are deeply troubled do not have a lot of money do not and i'm sitting there like you've been following this guy for 10 years yeah like when are you going to have your breakthrough when are you going to become your millionaire you know when are you going to be start living your best life it's it's odd isn't it but you pay you buy all his stuff you you know all of his stuff you're excited you're in this plan you've got pictures with him you've got it's like what what are you doing like what is your real goal for is it just to be a member of the club like is it well i thought i think for a lot

people that's what it is so i've gone to lots of these events now and i see the same faces there it's like their thing you know they get hyped up they leave their feeling motivated they don't do anything two days later it's worn off and they're looking for the next one that's why a lot of these people are multiple victims. They might have bought six or seven different courses or attended six or seven different gurus live event. And none of them have actually paid off because they've not actually implemented one thing and followed it through. And that's even if you did implement it, the chances of you actually being successful through those methods are low anyway. But that's what I noticed quite a lot. There are multiple victims. I get messages from

America all the time because there's a lot of people over there doing that. And I don't say, oh, my grandma spent $21,000 on these gurus in Boston, can you help us get the money back? Part of me wants to say, well, stop spending money with fucking idiots. Yeah. You know, but you can't, can you? But I do think that. Stop handing money to people that you didn't have existed two days ago,

thinking they're going to save you. They're not going to. Yeah, no, no, nobody's, yeah, nobody's coming to help you. But also as well, by the way, and you'll probably, well, maybe not, but you'll know in scams quite often the victim is the victim because they think that they're going to gain a competitive edge off somebody else anyway. It's almost like they need to feel like they're getting something. There's a famous, you know, famous quote, which is, you know, you can't scam an honest man. Yeah. Well, you say you can't con an honest John is what we say

in the UK. Same thing. Yeah. And it is that, isn't it? So like if you're doing, like, a diamond fraud, you're telling someone these diamonds should be worth $20,000, but you can have, for 4,000. But I got them, I stole them, or I got a good deal, or I got this, or the guy doesn't know that I took them and I need to get rid of them real quick. Yeah, so they're thinking, shit, I'm getting 20,000's worth of dollars. I'm going to sell these for 10,000. So I'm going to be making 6,000 off someone.

So, like, where a normal, good honest person would say, there's something not right about this. I don't want anything to do with these diamonds. But then you get the people that do get scams saying, oh, yeah, I'll take them. Then before you know it, they bought glass, ball balls, plastic. He built some of the nation's largest banks out of an estimated $55 million, because $50 million wasn't enough, and $60 million seemed excessive. He is the most interesting man in the world. I don't typically commit crimes, but when I do, it's bank fraud.

Stay greedy, my friends. Support the channel. Join Matthew Cox's Patreon. Yeah, I was thinking, you've ever heard of Victor Lusting, the guy who's, he sold the Eiffel Tower twice? Oh, yeah, I do know this story. Yeah, he, you know, what he was so funny about it was he gets all the scrap dealers together, and he goes to, he pick, he finds one of the guys that he feels like he's, he's ripe for the pickens, you know, he's a mark. He goes to him and says, listen, I, I can make sure, I like you. I like you better than these other guys. I can make sure you get the bid.

You'll get the job. But I need a taste. I need you to help me out. So the guy gives him $50,000 in cash to make sure he gets the bid. So he can't turn around and go to the police and say, I bribed this guy to get the bid. So now you've committed a fraud. So you can't expose yourself that, hey, I'm a scumbag.

And I got taken by this scumbag. so but it's the same thing the other thing is is that it's almost like um you know being sexually assaulted for a woman you know you'll notice that some of the some women if will be sexually assaulted multiple times and it's like how did that happen again because just like marks you know is that you're more susceptible to be preyed upon that a second time there's something about there's something about you know your it's intuition and criminals they know that someone i can take advantage of or they've been taking advantage of before or the person thinks this won't happen to me again and they put themselves in the same situation again because they think well it

can't happen twice and it's the same thing with marks marks will get taken multiple times thinking, well, I got screwed two years ago, but I won't get screwed this time. And that's why the entrepreneurs works so well, you know, and that's why people that haven't had a result buying Tony Robbins's course at $2,000 will then go and spend $5,000 to do his more, is more in-depth mastermind boot camp in a circle thing. And they won't get results from that. But then they think, well, do you know what, if I paid the $10,000, but it's like, but you've not actually achieved anything to this point. You didn't get it for $2,000 worth. exactly but they've like committed to the scam and what's really what's a clever part of this

of the entrepreneur formula to me is how they make people um make a declaration you know post publicly say that you're going to achieve this thing because once you put it out there that you're going to Tony Robbins and you're going to change your life and unleash the inner beast and become a millionaire when it doesn't happen you won't tell people because you're embarrassed so you will actually lie about your achievements and results because you wouldn't want people to say Oh, well, I told you so. So the maddest thing about it is I know people that have paid more money to people they've not had results from, rather than just walk away and think, I've been burnt here.

I'm going to leave. They would rather carry on spending money and quietly keep it to themselves that they've been unsuccessful because their mom will take, the mom will ask them why they did it. The dad will, the brothers, the sisters, their friends. Why have you spent 20 grand with that guy? You've not achieved anything. Oh, well, I have. They feel like they've got to justify it because no one wants to be made an idiot of, right?

Right. So it's a really clever thing to make people. Yeah, the psychology is amazing. It's amazing. And do you know what? The interesting thing is these tactics work. And there's nothing wrong with selling products using a discount or using scarcity or testimonials. And none of these things, if they're real.

If they're real, legit examples of these things and the product that you're selling is actually good, serves a purpose, help somebody achieve the thing that it claims and you target the right person that's got a good chance of being successful, there's nothing wrong with these things. But unfortunately, that doesn't happen with most of these people. Well, you know, what I was thinking is like, have you ever been to Disney World? No, I've never been. You never been to Disney World? I've been to America once. I was there for three days. I had food poisoning, and I saw a dead body. Where'd you go? New York. New York. Yeah. Literally, I was in New York. I, I, I spent, spent three hours out of my hotel room.

I was in the hotel room, puking up and shitting myself for two solid days. I had a meeting with Gary Vee. On that way to that meeting with Gary Vaynerchuk in New York, I saw a woman being put into a body bag, people taking pictures of it. And then I was back in my hotel room. So I've literally been out in New York for three hours in my entire life.

That's my only experience of America. Go to Orlando. You go to go to Florida. You go to Orlando. So anyway, If you go to, well, you've been to a theme park, right? Yeah, Alton's Howers in England, we'd call it. Oh, okay.

What is it? Alton's Howers, people from around here will know. That's the main theme park in the UK. Okay, so I don't know what it's like there, but I know that the, here's what they do. You go to, let's say, the Hulk, it's a roller coaster. You go to the Hulk in Islands of Adventure. That's another theme park. And all the theme parks in Orlando are like right next to each other.

you can spend a week just going to scene parks but they're all kind of the same you get when you first walk into the ride there's a big room with all the you know the the walkie things that you walk through the you know so there's a big there's a big room and you're and you can see the door to the ride so you think

I go through so God it's pretty big there's a wait you sit there for a minute and you go yeah but it's right there so you wait and you wait 30 minutes and then you're done and when you get through that door you realize it's not the ride it's another room with more of a lot no way but it's smaller it's half the size of the other room and so you think to yourself you know what i've already waited 30 minutes

this one looks like it's about 10 or 15 minutes so you wait in that one Because the door's right there to the ride. So you wait. And then when you get to that door, you realize there's another line or another room with lines in it, but it's shaped oddly. So it looks short. And it's smaller. So you wait.

I've already waited 45 minutes. This one's about five minutes. So you walk the five minutes. Then when you get through there, there's another room with a much bigger room, probably the same size as the original room, but now you can actually see people getting on the ride. So you wait. You would have never waited over an hour and 20 minutes had you seen that. But the psychology behind it is they know they'll wait this long, but they won't wait that

long again unless, you know, they keep building up the incentive to wait and wait and wait. You're not going to wait for an hour and a half that they told you was an hour and a half. Right. So, you know, it's the same thing I think with these guys is like one of the things they do. And I noticed this happens a lot with with con men is there's the psychology that their understanding of their customers or their marks or whatever you want to call them is is phenomenal. It's amazing. I've met some of these guys that literally they would tell me their pitch and I would sit there and listen to their pitch. and I would go, and I'm in prison with the guy. And I would say, wait a second, you can't guarantee this. Yeah, and if they ask me if I can guarantee it, I say I can't. Oh, no, I can't. All I'm telling you is that I'm going to sell you these vending machines in this area,

but I can't promise nobody else will sell vending machines in that area. I can promise you that I won't sell that area to somebody else. An area they don't really own the right. to and then they will sign a contract and then what they do is if the guy waffles what they say is is they say well listen there's six areas these three are taken somebody has this one but these two are still available and the guy says well wait that i don't want that one i want this one i'm sorry that one's already taken this one we got a contract on where we send it out but the guy hasn't signed it yet so that it's the urgency it's the yeah they are more concerned about losing out

on a good deal than protecting their investment yeah and these and they know it and they're some of these guys are brilliant when you listen to them you're like yeah that's that's that's the biggest thing that i've learned from watching these people for two and a half years three years and go into all their events and listen to their actual scripts that they use is pretty much the same The only thing they change is whatever vehicle it is that's going to get you to the successful point, right? But it's like using NLP, like saying, by now you should think this, by now you should think that.

And it's really, really interesting. But I always go back to, they're so good at marketing, and they're quite clearly good at sales, and they've obviously got a business mind. Why don't they just put that time and effort into creating something that actually does achieve results for people? But the reason being is not as many people

would buy those things. People always want to buy something that's going to make them wealthy, healthy or happy. So they always go back to that. It's why people buy diet pills rather than I'll just eat less and move more. It's why people buy an app belt to send electrons to their six pack or they download the six minute apps. People will spend money, lots of money, on things that they probably can't even be bothered implementing because they think it's going to help them achieve something.

and that's a far easier sell than saying imagine if I had a book that said the 100 hour work week your 10 years to become a millionaire business person and then I had a book next to it saying the four hour the four hour work week be a millionaire in 12 months which of those two books are going to sell more copies and unfortunately yeah they want to be lied to almost yeah yeah yeah and that's why it but equally there are some victims that are that are taken about a job and it's sad and I feel sorry for them

and it's not been a good thing. But there's others where when I hear the stories I think, but why would you believe that? Especially when they're not people that you've already heard of or you know are successful business people that are positioning themselves as successful in business.

So if there's somebody that you'd not heard of 48 hours ago is telling you that he's the world's number one wealth coach, be suspicious because if you've never heard of him before, he probably isn't the thing that he's claiming. Yeah. But yeah, you must have seen it with Marx over and over again. Sometimes you just think when they hear the story back to them, you think, why haven't they realized at this point or why haven't they questioned that at this point? but I think logic is just kicked off a cliff and that's why they use urgency because when

you're in a state of panic and you think you're going to miss out on a deal and you think there's only five left of this opportunity and you've got to act now when you need to get the money it's not until you go home and you sit there and think about it you might get buyers remorse a week later two weeks later because anything hang on this doesn't feel right or my guts telling me something's wrong here it's very interesting but they are they're experts in psychology, they're experts in marketing. They could make a lot of money by having a marketing agency, right? Probably, yeah. Probably not as much as they're making, selling their own course. But I mean, I look at now, and if you Google some of the main names, some of the names that I've

mentioned in this, they've all got like class action lawsuits going on for like $100 million or $400 million. And their customers have been burnt and they've all clubbed together to start legal action against these people. So I think there's a lot of these people that in sort of two, three years time are probably going to be in prison or paying back a lot of the money. I mean, I don't know how it works, but be paying money back to victims that they've kind of defrauded from people. But equally as well, by the way, for a lot of these people, the, they go to, like, say Jordan

Belfort's a great example. He defrauded a lot of people. He went to prison. He came back and he's still seen as like a good success story, right? Yeah. So even when you do the thing and you come out, the comeback's almost as good as. Yeah, he's super likable. Yeah.

What kills me is like, to me, Grant Cardone is not likable. No. Like the arrogance, he's so arrogant. He's so over the top. And, you know, he's almost abusive. like he's he mouse off to people he he calls people names he picks it people it's like you know it bought i can't imagine both following this guy but you know belfort to me is always very humble very polite very nice you know and he's doing well and you know so

maybe that's the ultimate scum right i i don't i want him to survive i want him to succeed yeah even though you know i understand he stole a bunch of money did a bunch of pump and dump schemes and you know i get it but it's it's strange isn't it sometimes you root for the bad guy right and jordan belfort's one then people where you actually think like he's kind of like what is it like the sopranos don't if you ever watch the sopranos of course but like you like tony soprano yeah everyone liked him when what he did wasn't very nice no no it wasn't nice to his wife he wasn't particularly nice to his kids he wasn't nice to anybody but yeah he was a likable guy right right for a prolonged period of time he wasn't nice to anybody pro you know over the yeah but you felt

sorry for him you kind of understood the pressures he had you know maybe everyone needs a gumah that's the right that's the answer right um yeah so i i have a question uh so you're you're starting in the channel kind of your not that it stopped but you stop posting for about a year yeah and so now you're starting to put up are you you're doing new videos but are you what's the format now as So what I started to do now was just or I now sign up to people's webinars and I just do their live webinars and I see how many of the entrepreneur scripts that I've sort of put together do they use to sell their products? And it's like bullshit backstories, fake testimonials, inflated value, price ends in a seven

because most of these courses price ends in like $197 or $1,997. They've all, they all claim it's like $309,000. thousand dollars worth of value but they're selling it for this rock bottom price it's is it time limited so i just now i have a little bingo cards that i play and i watch their pitch and we kind of just have a little bit of a fun but what we do is i watch them live by the way i don't know if they're going to pass or fail before i start but when we cut away a lot of the boring bits and you you edit it together to show the most extreme and outrageous bits of their pitch there's no way you would buy from these people you would think who the hell is handing these people money because it's quite funny so it's

more like a sort of comical way of mocking some of these gurus but in a way where i'm not saying this guy is a con this guy is a scam it's more like look at how funny and bad his pictures look how rubbish his slide deck is look how badly look how crap his testimonials are and what i've found is weirdly, a lot of the people and testimonials in these guru's courses are used in multiple people's courses. So I'm seeing the same testimonials used elsewhere. It's just like a humorous observation. So it's less investigative, Lexxpose these people and cause legal problems. It's more, aren't these people a little bit silly? You'll still fall in for this now. You're a bit of an idiot right um because also as well by the way i spent 500 000 on shit that didn't work that's

not a sustainable business model yeah yeah you know like my accountant goes mad you know my youtube channel hasn't made five thousand dollars but i spent five thousand dollars putting it all together so well um okay um so yeah mike win it is the youtube channel if anyone wants to check it out and see some of the videos see how i got a best selling book um with a blank book or see what it was like in Andrew Tate's course or see what it was like in Grant Cardone's course or Ty Lopez. I've done them all and I've put my findings on there. It's quite funny. If you don't mind the accent and pasty skin. How often do you upload videos? Maybe like three, four times a month. Normally every Friday. But we were going to upload

today, but the Queen's died in the UK. The Queen died yesterday. And I don't know if we'll upload today because a lot of people have gone on like a social media blackout. you know so probably next week we'll be back okay well um listen i i appreciate you taking the time and i know we missed each other a couple times and yeah yeah i finally did it yeah yeah um if you know look if you if you you know if you need any help or or you know want to do an interview on your channel or anything like that i mean or want me to you know look at somebody or review something or whatever i'd be more than happy to because definitely i'll have a i'll have a think what we can do and get back to you.

Yeah, let me know. Listen, I appreciate it. Thank you. I, you know, wish you luck and I'll look out for your, for your videos. Because, I mean, the few that I've watched, like, I watched the one on the real estate. I watched the one where you actually, you had gone to several of these things. And I watched the one on Gary Vee because I like Gary Vee. Yeah.

I mean, I, he does say the same things over and over again. I don't really pay attention. Like, I've never bought anything from him. I'm not going to buy an NFT from him. I'm not going to, you know, like, I know. Like I know a lot of stuff, it's hype, and I'm just like, yeah, I'm not interested in that. But I like the basic thing. He says, you know, be happy, follow your passions.

You know, I picked. He's the one. So he was originally going to get my series to Netflix. He was going to give me a Netflix introduction. And that never happened. But ironically, Netflix eventually got in touch with me themselves. They'd see my video. I did three hours of talking heads with Netflix.

And they were coming over to the UK to film. I signed the paperwork to give permission to use my content, some of my IP, my intellectual property, my ideas. And then two days before filming was meant to start, they pulled the plug. And then nine months later, they released an episode on Netflix called Money Explained, Get Rich Quick. And that video looks and sounds very much like the video that I recorded with them. Wow. Yeah, so they cut me out on Netflix.

But if you wait to the very end, it's a special thanks and my name's on there. Yeah, I think that's how they get around it. I never got paid but I signed the paperwork so I genuinely thought we were doing this together and I would have been in that documentary but no they used the talking head thing and then they went through my YouTube channel and they pretty much built the episode based on what I said for it it was almost like they used another narrate an American narrator to narrate the words that I'd said um it's funny because I've I actually had I've had the same thing happened to me a couple times I had vice came talk to me we're all excited asked me to look at this look at that and then

then never got back with me next thing I know there was a eight months later an episode came out they used all my they used one of my stories used all my material and then the very end they said they gave me a they called it a um oh a consulting producer credit and so when I complained hey what's going on? You owe me this much money. We talked about this. We talked about that. They were like, oh, we, we didn't realize. We gave you a credit. I don't want a credit. I want the credit. And take that to the bank, eh? Huh? Take that to the bank and pay with something with the credit. Yeah, exactly. They ended up, they did end up giving me something, but not nearly what I deserve. But then again, it's like,

okay, do you spend five or $10,000 to fight them in court to get half of that? Yeah. Most people disappear, right? that's how I felt with Netflix. But the irony about mine is my whole thing is about being scammed and how to avoid being scammed. And I got scammed by Netflix making an episode about scams, right? Yeah, I get it. I hear the, I hear it. Okay, listen, I appreciate it.

Thank you very much. And let me know if I can do anything. Yeah, brilliant. Cheers, Matt. Appreciate it. See later. Thank you. Hey, listen, I appreciate it.

And thanks to Mike Winnett. I if you like the video do me a favor and hit the subscribe button hit the bell so you get notified of videos like this lead me a comment in the comment section and I will try and respond to you I try and I don't know if I'm at 80 or 90 percent I mean that you know of responding I don't know I hit the bell I hit the I hit the you know the little you know heart a lot of them at sometimes sometimes they don't require response and but typically if it requires a response I try and respond. I probably get 70, 80% of the ones where they probably deserve a response. So leave me a comment or if you really want to talk to me in the description, in the description box,

you'll see my email is always there. I appreciate you guys watching. If you like the video, do me a favor also. YouTube has a thank you button where you could actually donate to the channel. It's like a dollar 90. I think you could donate like $1.99 or $2.99 or $4.99. That would really help. And yeah, so I appreciate and see you.