Speaking of sorting your true supporters in life, I was just reading the front page of the Vancouver Sun newspaper today and there was this story about a court case involving a lottery winner and how he was defrauded out of millions of dollars from a couple that became very close friends with him after he won the jackpot.

In a nutshell, from what I read the person was a carpet cleaner who occasionally preformed services on the couple’s house. The carpet cleaner bumped into the husband one day and since the carpet cleaner looked up to the couple in some ways they began chatting with each other more frequently. As evident, he then won about $24,000,000 in a lottery and as a result he was congratulated by them and they became very close friends afterwards.

I guess we all know what happens next when people suddenly become like your best friend once they know you have money huh? I thought this incident was so conniving from a business and personal stance. The carpet cleaner was defrauded by the husband into investing millions of dollars into a company with a promise of some sort that he could sell it for like $20,000,000 afterwards and would give him a fifty percent share in it.

Not only was the value of the company well below what was claimed, but he did not share financial records of the company that was being purchased despite requests. Even though the lottery winner was weary over this, the person convinced him to trust him based on their apparent very close friendship and as a result millions of dollars were transferred over to him.

Shortly after, it was discovered that the money was mostly used for things such as paying off a mortgage for a house as well as buying a new car. To add to the sophistication about $100,000 was spent on lawyers to try and “cover up” the situation I guess you can say. Although, the person did learn the truth afterwards and took the couple to court. It was also mentioned that they would get jail time as well as a result of some of their conduct to continually mislead about the situation in various ways.

While I guess for one thing there is a business lesson in this on how you should rightfully be weary if someone uses friendship as a reason to simply trust their word for a business transaction, I was just thinking how it is so crazy on the lengths that some people will go to in an effort to try and defraud people that they have some kind of close relationship with for some kind of financial gain.

It’s stories like these that make certain precautions that people take, such as in my previous post, sound like the sensible thing to do. Even as a kid I’ve always heard the examples on how you should sit down and think where if you took away all of your items or belongings that make you popular how many “friends” would you truly have afterwards still?

As we get older we expect people to naturally value other people better as oppose to being like a child that always just wants more things without thinking about the welfare of others. Make no mistake about it, a lot of people are simply just out there to leach from you until there is nothing left to take and are willing to put on any type of mask to do so. To them, they haven’t realized yet that money isn’t everything in life.

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So I am currently in the midst of taking care of a situation that has been long overdue which involves trying to expose the truth as obviously someone is being deceitful with the issue revolving around money. I was just reading over some literature about the incident and with that alone I thought that it should be so horrendously apparent on who wasn’t being truthful.

It appears that the person is trying to lie so much that he is trying to create this extremely fictional story based on the material that he has as opposed to if you are telling the truth then you are using various things to solely back up your points. As a result, his own writing demonstrated contradiction after contradiction to the point where you have to wonder if you are dealing with an adolescence of some sort.

I remember that saying on how for every lie someone makes they need create another two lies or so to back it up. Reading all of this just made me think of the movie Liar Liar with Jim Carrey. So I just had to find some clips from the movie to watch.

Definitely would be funny if you could make liars tell the truth like that huh?

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This has got to be one of the more interesting topics I have heard when it comes to getting paid for the work that you do. The conversation originated from a lawyer who was expressing his opinion on how a lot of people in his field use big words to explain details to people in an effort to confuse clients into believing that they can never handle any legal cases themselves as it is too complex. Essentially, he expressed that if they did just use simple language it would make it more difficult to justify a high price. The conversation then even dived to other professions such as a doctor as well.

It’s kind of safe to say that most professions and fields have people who use these types of techniques as it isn’t industry specific. I remember one time I was just over hearing a conversation about someone telling a person that installing software yourself on a computer is very dangerous and used all these irrelevant technical explanations of it to warrant a $100 fee to do so.

The easiest test I usually use to see if the person is over embellishing the work or difficulty involved in something is if they are reluctant or cynical in informing you upon request on how you can learn more about your needs/issues for personal knowledge. Especially if they resort to belittling you for asking them that is sure a good sign that they are hiding something.

In my opinion, every profession is actually pretty straight forward once you understand the basic concept and theory. It’s how the person is able to apply that knowledge which is what I personally focus on whenever I need to pay someone to do something. I rarely seek for third party advise/services without having some form of knowledge of my needs. I usually find that it makes the other person’s life a lot easier too as at least you understand where all the work is coming from.

As always, in the end you are paying for results and if the person can do that then they can justify high prices for their offerings. That doesn’t mean you should just trust anyone blindly though.

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Awhile ago I was contacted on the phone by some firm that wanted me to advertise in its directory as they were saying how people within their community could really use my skills/services as it is in a high demand. The cost of it was $995 apparently and of course I just said I would think about it.

Recently though, I have been receiving continuous e-mails about it with constant price reductions to further encourage me to take the plunge. The last e-mail I got had one of the strangest sales tactics I have seen I thought as on one line of the e-mail they stated:

For your convenience I have arranged: Okay to pay Sept/Oct/Nov 2008

As of now I am just thinking that it is simply a way to get you to respond to them. On the other hand, I was just thinking how silly this will be if they actually did end up executing the service without me ever agreeing to it. At this point, I am just going to ignore it and see if they actually will go ahead and attempt to bill me for it. Should make for an interesting story I thought if they do.

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I just took this silly online test for fun which was suppose to find out how much money someone would have to pay you to say do something you would normally be against. I was looking at the scoreboard and it seems like people had price tags such as $250,000 or even one billion dollars. I guess in general the concept was the higher the amount the harder it is to get the person to do something.

So I did the test and I thought it was broken at first as the test said “No Price”. Then I read the result and then it all made sense as you can see here:

While this was all fun and games, I was thinking how this is an important scenario that people face everyday where we get enticed with money and materialistic gains to do things that would not exactly be considered admirable. Especially in a business environment, it can really create anarchy.

From my personal experience, everyone I have known who has ever allowed money to take over their judgment has ended up losing more in the long run whether it be from a financial point of view or a social one. Another way I think about it is that some people say success is always about the journey and so you could be cutting yourself short in the long run by doing irrational things solely because of money.

In the end, money is just an object that you control and not the other way around.

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