I was just passed this story that deals with a recent controversial firing of an 11 year staff member for a video game news site called Gamespot. Recently there was a highly anticipated game called Kane & Lynch that was released and the editor who was reviewing the game, Jeff Gerstmann, gave the title a less than admirable score of a 6/10.

From what I read, shortly after the person in question was fired and there were advertisements placed all over the site to advertise the game. This immediately made the majority of the public scream foul play such as concluding that the company who made the game, Eidos, was obviously paying Gamespot to help advertise its game.

As a result, people are saying that Jeff Gerstmann was allegedly fired partly due to some possible pressure from the advertiser that they would not do anymore business with them because of the review that was given. The company did issue this statement http://www.gamespot.com/news/6183666.html about it to hopefully tame it.

My personal opinion in general in regards to this is that there likely was pressure from the advertiser or that the company possibly wanted to get rid of the person for one reason or another. It just seems too odd that if you have someone working for you that long that you don’t at least give warnings if they are being unprofessional. Of course unless it was something serious such as stealing then that is a different question. What a story this will be if it was proven that money indeed played a big role in the decision making process.

I often hear the phrase on how everyone has a price. My personal train of thought is usually if there is a situation where you will be compensated financially to do something, at most money should only dictate your platform as oppose to your actions. Money can definitely help to facilitate you to do various deeds, but it shouldn’t speak for you.

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I was just reading this interesting article that talked about China’s implementation of a one child policy at around the early 80’s in order to control the growth of its population. The main topic was how being an only child in a family increases the likelihood of the child being spoiled and growing up with a mentality that things should be handed to them.

It went on to talk about how this has created a new generation of thinkers where things like a marriage is viewed more like a tool where one finds the right mate to achieve wealth and power as oppose to focusing in developing a nurturing relationship. Of course, it then dived into how so many people now see a divorce as simply a process to go through if one finds a more lucrative scenario to be in whereas before it was viewed as a disgraceful act.

Some of the comments I read were kind of amazing such as a person saying how it makes no sense to do so much work and planning in life financially when she could simply marry the right person and be worry free. I see this with people even if they are not the only child though. For example, it could even be a family having a lot of girls and so they tend to spoil the only boy in the family who then turns out to be the one who is always financially dependent on others.

Sometimes I would say the most important point to learning good financial management skills is to start from square one and to learn to appreciate the things that you already have while learning to genuinely respect others. That might sound cornball for a lot of people, but that attitude goes such a long way when it comes to money.

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I attended the Learning Annex event with an open mind and as you all know one of my main goals was to document my experience. It was held at the Vancouver and exhibition convention centre and to my knowledge there were about 4000 to 5000 attendees. Of course, I’m sure most people attended with the assumption that they would get to see Donald Trump live as well as getting a free copy of his book “Think Big and Kick Ass in Business and Life”.

They sent a mass e-mail to all the registrants beforehand on how the first fifty people in line would get $100. Apparently the first person there was lining up as early as 2:30am. That alone kind of gave me a picture beforehand on what the overall event would be like.

The live speakers there consisted of Bob Kittell, Dr. Albert Lowry, Don Burnham, Lee Brower, Raymond Aaron and Chris Johnson. The topics ranged from making money with stocks, real estate, utilizing government grants and general motivational speeches. With the exception of Lee Brower’s keynote, for the most part the other sessions felt like an incredibly long infomercial using typical techniques to get people to buy tools and seminar packages on the spot.

Here is an example with the first session which was pitching a seminar for a product called Investools that is suppose to help people in deciding when to sell or buy stocks. At first the speaker teaches people about some very basic information about the industry in general which of course is very enlightening if you don’t already have too much knowledge of it. They then proceed to inform how lucrative it can be to get involved while showing all these testimonials from people who have been successful with it.

With that planted in people’s mind, they then show you how expensive the program would normally be apparently while using a return on investment way of thinking to further justify the price. Afterwards, they tell you how they are offering this exclusive promotion for that day only where they have decided to give it at a special discounted price and that there are limited quantities. With Investools for example, it went from $4,297 to $999 (Which was a pretty consistent final price range for most of the other products).

This would cause a frenzy of people to get up from their seats to purchase the product right away for a fear of loss. It then felt like an auction house of some sort as the person would ask people to bring out their credit cards while continuously counting down how many have been sold. I captured a quick video of it here:

There was one technique that was used by a lot of the speakers which I thought was a bit devious personally. A lot of times the speaker would use the promise of giving people something expensive or luxurious for free on the spot to play with the crowd’s emotion to get them to chant and cheer. Then at the very end they casually slip in on how you have to buy their product to qualify in getting it for free. A great example was with Raymond Aaron’s session as he made a lot of people believe that he was going to give everyone in the room a free cruise ship vacation if people show enough enthusiasm. Here is a sample of that:

Aside from the speakers, most of the other happenings revolved around giving away money and prizes such as raffles and holding a quick dance contest. There were some activities that involved people having to network and meet others. I personally thought it would have been better if there were more events like that. I did get to meet some new contacts which was nice. People were getting weary overall it seemed with the conference and the event organizers would constantly mention how Donald Trump will be there.

At around 7pm or so one of the event organizer mentions how it was time for everyone to welcome Donald Trump. The lady was presenting it as if he was going to walk in the room. A lot of people were simply looking around the room and then to a lot of people’s surprise it was simply a recording from one of his past appearances at an Annex event in New York. There were a lot of moans and sarcasm from the crowd over it initially and it almost felt like the lady was shocked over the reaction. Lucky there was no anarchy of any sort. A lot of people simply left in disappointment without even watching the recorded speech.

For the Trump speech in general, myself and a lot of others thought it was kind of humorous when you could clearly see that the video was shortened from the original length it seemed as there would often be these noticeable video transition effects. Here is some of the video for those who are interested:

In the end, I did get a free copy of the book as advertised. It was disappointing overall I thought personally and I really didn’t like how some of the speakers seemed to try to belittle the status of the attendees as a way to imply that buying their products will help change all that. Some example are how there was a generalization at times that all the people in the room had horrible credit scores and that they could help them fix that or that everyone in there were poor financially with a disappointing lifestyle. I don’t know about everyone else, but I would have preferred if it was more of a positive approach in wanting to genuinely help others. I did get to meet friendly and successful people too and so all was not lost.

I thought the best session was Lee Brower’s keynote as he seemed genuine in wanting to help/inspire people without a hidden agenda to sell a product of some sort. There was a funny blooper at the end as he wanted to give away this package of Pringles to the crowd and the lid flipped opened.

If there was an actual fee to attend the event though I could easily see how a lot of people would have been outraged over it. I think most people were disappointed overall based on the comments I heard. I personally walked away with what I intended to do which was to attend mainly for experience.

In my opinion, I think the important thing to realize before attending these types of events is that if you want to change something in your life it always starts with you changing yourself first. That way you’ll prevent yourself from buying all these things emotionally in hopes that it will be a quick fix answer in life whether it’d be personally or financially.

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When it comes to financial and materialistic gains in business, it still surprises me on how one can constantly take things from others without giving back in some way. There was one conversation I had with a person who wanted help for commercial reasons without having to pay anything as according to him it should be a very easy thing to do anyways.

From my experience, it never turns out too well when a person keeps asking you to do things for them knowing well that you lose money in the process. Of course that is not to say that you should always expect something in return if you are doing a good deed. Generally speaking though, anyone that constantly asks for something without giving back are usually the first ones to look the other way if the situation was reversed too.

With that in mind, sometimes it just makes more sense not to excessively surround yourself with those types of personalities both from a business and personal stance. There is a difference between doing a good deed and being taken advantage of.

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I was reading a small article today in the paper about how this former city manager was making about $88,000 a year and is currently being charged for operating a marijuana growth operation. Some other people who read it as well commented on how it seemed so crazy that a person making that much a year would try to do something like that to make even more money.

This kind of reminds me on how someone told me before that he believes it is kind of important to train yourself in being able to live below your means. Not only do you save a lot of money, but at the same time it kind of teaches you that money is just an object. As a result, you will tend to focus on being more resourceful as well as oppose to thinking that you always need money for everything. Odds are, you will less likely to fall into temptation as well in situations like the above that seems like a quick and easy way to make more money.

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