Let’s talk about the new-age career option that doesn’t require a degree, talent, or even honesty: selling dreams online. You’ve seen them.
The guy in front of a rented Lamborghini, yelling at you about how you’re wasting your life. The girl lounging in a Bali villa (which is conveniently available on Airbnb for $300 a night), sipping a coconut and telling you how she made $200,000 last month while “working just 2 hours a day.” And of course, the phrase that always follows: “Click the link in my bio to learn how you can do the same.” Welcome to the wild west of course selling. Or, as I like to call it: the How to Get Rich by Telling People How to Get Rich Industry.
Fake It Till You Funnel It
Let’s address the Ferrari in the room. The online guru you’re watching isn’t rich because they cracked some secret code to passive income. They’re rich because you paid $97 for their course. Multiply that by 10,000 hopefuls, and they’re making bank – not through the stock market, drop shipping, or crypto, but by selling you the fantasy of a better life.
They’ve mastered the art of "fake it till you make it" or more accurately, "fake it till you can afford to lease it." From luxury cars rented by the hour to villas booked just for filming content, what you're seeing isn’t reality. It’s set design. It’s theatre. And the script is always the same:
1. Show off a ridiculous lifestyle.
2. Blame the viewer for not having it.
3. Present your $49.99 course as salvation.
4. Use testimonials (usually staged or cherry-picked).
5. Repeat.
They’re not teaching success. They’re teaching envy.
Here’s the sad part. People fall for it. Especially young people scrolling through TikTok or YouTube, bombarded with lifestyle porn 24/7. You see someone your age buying Rolexes and sipping champagne in a Dubai penthouse and you start questioning your entire existence.
- “Am I doing something wrong?”
- “Should I be richer by now?”
- “Why am I working a 9-5 when this guy just made $30,000 in 30 seconds?”
It creates this constant loop of inadequacy, where no matter what you accomplish, it’s not enough because some guy on the internet is screaming at you that you should be on a yacht right now. That kind of pressure doesn’t motivate, it manipulates. It doesn’t spark ambition, it fuels anxiety. The more you chase their fake lives, the more your real one feels like a failure.
And guess who profits from that insecurity?
Yup. Mr. “Buy My Course.”
The Business Model of Deception
Let’s be brutally honest: If these “coaches” really found a foolproof way to get rich, they’d never share it with you. They’d guard it like the Coca-Cola formula.
Think about it, if I had a proven method that made me $1 million a month, would I package it into a $50 Canva-made PDF and run Facebook ads to strangers? Of course not. I’d be too busy making millions.
The truth is: you are the product. Your clicks. Your confusion. Your desperation.
They don’t want you to succeed more than them. They want you dependent. That way, you keep buying the next tier of the course, then the mastermind, then the exclusive community, then the private mentorship. It never ends.
They don’t sell you results. They sell you hope, repackaged in five modules and a Discord server.
Now you might think, “Amantha, this is a Western problem. That’s what happens when
Americans get too much Wi-Fi.”
But hold up, it's creeping into Sri Lanka too. You’ve probably seen local “coaches” popping up, now teaching you how to “scale to six figures” in a country where a packet of milk powder is a luxury item. The only thing they're scaling is your gullibility.
Instead of learning how to build a real business, young people are now learning how to build a sales funnel for a course they haven’t even taken. It’s like taking swimming lessons from someone who’s never been in a pool, but they watched a lot of YouTube videos about it.
We need to be smarter than this.
So, What ShouldYou Actually Do?
Here’s the part where you expect me to plug my course, right?
Nope.
The No BS Marketer doesn’t sell courses. I sell common sense. And here it is, free of charge:
1. Learn from people who’ve done the work. Not those who’ve mastered selling it. The best mentors don’t scream at you from a rented Rolls-Royce. They’re probably too busy building actual businesses.
2. Do the hard stuff. Real success doesn’t come from passive-income pyramids or PDF checklists. It comes from trying, failing, iterating, and grinding, with a side of luck and a lot of timing.
3. Be curious, not desperate. Desperation makes you an easy target. Curiosity makes you a smart learner. Ask questions. Dig deeper. If something sounds too good to be true, it’s because it usually is.
4. Build real skills. Copywriting. Design. Strategy. Sales. Content creation. Learn how to make things people want. That’s how you make money, not by convincing someone else to buy your "how to make money" course.
5. Define YOUR success. Don’t let some influencer’s highlight reel determine your worth. For some, success is owning a business. For others, it’s a stable 9-5, a peaceful home, or just enough to live comfortably. Don’t borrow someone else’s dreams.
And To the Youngsters Reading This…
I get it.
We all want the shortcut. The cheat code. The secret formula. But here’s the truth; there’s no magic bullet. There’s only real work, over real time, with real people.
I started my own marketing agency at 22. No trust fund. No family connections. No guru courses. Just pure curiosity, a hunger to learn, and a desire to do things differently. I didn’t need a rented Lambo. I just needed a laptop, a few crazy ideas, and the guts to try.
And so do you.
You don’t need to fake it to make it. You just need to make something real, whether that’s a brand, a page, a service, or just a video that makes someone laugh. Start there. Build upwards. Stay grounded.
And please, for the love of Avurudukavili, don’t blow your savings on a “7-Figure Blueprint” from a guy who lives with his mum.
Final Thought:
If you're ever tempted to buy a course promising you the world in 30 days or less, just ask yourself one question:
"If this worked so well, why are they still trying to sell it to me?"
Keep your eyes open, your wallet closed, and your dreams real.
