How to NOT Escape the Rat Race — And Why Everyone Wants to Show You How to Escape It

Introduction

Perhaps you have also noticed that you are offered courses and ebooks and other material at every turn that are supposed to show you how to finally escape from the Rat Race.

By now you’re wondering if you’re the only one who hasn’t yet understood how to escape the Rat Race. Because apparently so many have already done it. You probably think to yourself what you might bedoing wrong, or why it is not yet so easy to do for you.

You compare yourself with such people and become unhappy…

More and more questions…

Why do these people want to help me so badly?
What do they get out of helping me?

I know, there are just so many questions running through your head — and I will answer them right away. But first, let’s be clear about what people are likely to be in this game of get out of the rat race. There are two kinds of people:

1. Those who really want to help you.
2. Those who want to get rich from selling products and services to you.

But then often comes the argument:

Why not both?

Ah well, here is the ideology of capitalism. I was also quite perplexed when I once worked in an agency and they said that “company XYZ now needed help” from them. And of course they would be very happy to help this company. However, “help” here stood for a service for which one is supposed to pay with money.

To be honest, I found this rather shabby and disgusting.

Let me tell you a story…

So, do they really want to help you?

I want tell you about the first time I made money online. It was pretty crazy! I was really very very excited. I could not believe it. But I was also very very thankful. I mean, I tried for a very long time and finally earned something. Holy cow!

Of course, the first money wasn’t very much, but then of course more and more came in over time. I was so excited that I wanted to tell other people about it. I created various information products and now I wanted to sell them too. I mean, now that you know how to do it you can sell the scheme to other people, right? The price was very low considering how much time and effort I had already put into it. I offered it online — but nobody wanted to buy it.

But people were very sceptical. Why should they believe me? I told them I had finally done it. Finally I can show them too. I had the sincere desire to help them but I wanted to get compensated for all the work I have done by testing and finally creating these information products. But the joy faded very quickly, because nobody was interested. Nobody really believed in me or in the products I wanted to sell to them.

They thought I was just trying to get rich by selling them information products.

Honestly, I can’t blame them.

Still, it was quite a shock for me at the time.

Maybe people don’t want to make money online after all?

And then it dawned on me:

The “Make Money Online” (MMO)-niche is difficult.

Very difficult.

You need the financial means to run ads for a correspondingly long time and you have to sell more and more high-priced products. However, I only had one book and it wasn’t very expensive. But that’s not how this business model works. You can’t really help others: You have to sell them something for a lot of money that they could actually have acquired for little money.

Why?

Because you need to recoup the cost of customer acquisition. You have to sell high-priced products because they pay for your ad spend. But it’s not only in this niche, it’s in other niches too.

You can’t just sell a simple PDF for little money. You have to spend a lot of money on ads and eventually sell a course for several hundred dollars. Unless of course you already have a list of several thousand people. Then making new money is easy.

Because if you send a twenty dollar product to your list and only a few hundred people (out of thousands) buy that, then you’re already making several thousand dollars.

But I didn’t have such a list.
I only had that one book.

With that, my motivation to help other people also flowed. I couldn’t help them unless I sold high-priced courses. But I didn’t want to do that. That would be a bit too stupid for me. But I can’t spend a lot of money on ads if I don’t sell such a course. In the end, that means that no one will know about my product and no one will buy it. On top of that, people were very sceptical. You have to keep them in line long enough, give them something over and over again, and then sell them something bigger at the end.

As you can probably tell,
this wasn’t interesting for me.

As quickly as I got into the MMO-niche, I was out again.

A different route…

Coming back to the questions:

Why do these people want to help me so badly?
What do they get out of helping me?

I came to the conclusion that it was not possible to help people, if you wanted to sell them a low-cost product. You either have to have been around long enough or sell them a more expensive product a little later. That was a shame, because I couldn’t pitch my ideas that way.

So I came to the following realisation:

1. There are people who really want to help you.
2. There are people who don’t care and just want to make money
3. Both have to sell high-priced products, otherwise it’s not profitable because the ads cost too much.

This business model might not work any other way.
Or does it?

I let this project rest for a while and busy myself with other things. I didn’t focus too much on presenting my ideas to other people. I thought to myself that it just wasn’t possible. It was much easier to make money in other ways (and damn it was so much money! but let’s postpone that for another time). Anyway, I knew I would never enter the MMO niche again.

But then I got to listen to some different people and it really made an impression on me. It changed my thinking completely….

Some Food for Thought…

1. You want people to pay you $10k to listen to you, but would you pay people $10k to listen to you? Because that’s how it should be.
2. Give your course away for $1 and make your money the way you actually want to explain to them how to make money. Because if you can’t even make enough money with it, even though you’re an expert, how good can it be for other people who don’t know it that well yet?
3. If you can’t give it away for free, then you don’t want to help people. You just want to make money. It’s okay, but don’t claim you want to “help” people.

As a result, I reduced the prices of most of my e-books and books. However, the Amazon algorithm then played against me again and eventually no one bought my books anymore. Today, I keep trying out different prices, but never out of the motivation to really earn a lot of money with it. I see making additional money as a hobby and now I already have more than enough. And here comes the important thing:

If all these people who talk about having so much money really had so much money, what need would they have to sell you something for so much money?

Of course we all know: “People who pay, pay attention” but still there are limits. You don’t have to sell everything. Above all, you don’t have to sell everything expensively. At cost-price is quite enough.

💸 The Making-Money landscape is changing! It is finally possible to become a One Person Multi Billion Dollar Business. I have outlined this in my latest book which you can read here for free 📗.

Final thoughts

I don’t want to take away your motivation. It is definitely possible to earn more money. There are also many people who want to show you how to do it. I believe they have good intentions. But if someone wants to sell you a course, maybe be sceptical.

They are still trapped in the rat race by selling you get-rich-quick-schemes until they can get out of the rat race themselves.

If they did not need to, they would just give it away for free. There are enough people on Youtube who do this (giving advice for free). TikTok is also a good source. But also buy a few courses here and there. Try new things. Fall on your face. Combine different approaches. Follow the people you really like. Get motivated and go for it.

I too bought many courses and fell flat on my face for a long time. That’s just the way it is. We all go that way. But then you also find your own ideas by trying different things.

But I will write specifically about that in another article.

Until then, great success and all the best!

Your friend

Daniel