If It Sounds Too Good To Be True, It Probably Is

Whenever someone says “It sounds too good to be true,” I have a magic question I always ask them.

If they say “yes” to this question, then we don’t go any further in the conversation.

If they say “no” to this question, then I know we’re getting somewhere. 🙂

The Magic Question

If I’ve shared the business with someone and that person says, “Oh, that sounds too good to be true” I always reply by asking the question, “Is that a good enough reason to stop looking?” 

You see, when I ask that question, what I’m really looking for is someone who has that little bit of curiosity – enough curiosity to be willing to evaluate further and determine if this thing really is too good to be true, or if it’s legit. 

If the person tells me, yes, it is a good enough reason to stop looking, then that’s all I need to hear.  I am not going to try to talk the person into it because most likely they are suspicious of everything. 

But for the individual who is the slightest bit curious and is willing to hang with me long enough to investigate or evaluate the business, I want to help them evaluate on their own by showing them the benefits – show them the downside risk.  I want them to fully understand it so that they truly can evaluate for themselves. 

Too Good To Be True? – PlayStation 

Here’s a fun story to illustrate what I mean by this. 

I have a son that is nine years old and he wants a PlayStation 5, which was just put out on the market. It’s sold out and hard to find, and so he’s been looking online locally, trying to see if he can find one that someone is reselling. 

Normally it’s around $400, but because it’s sold out, the average going price today is around $750. My son found one for $15.  So me, as a Dad, I could say, “Sounds too good to be true!” Right? But I don’t want to teach my son to be suspicious of everything. I want him to be curious about everything. 

Now you have to know that I’ve got a deal with him. The deal is that he has to do a pushup for every dollar that I spend on this thing, and so of course, he would rather do 15 pushups than 750. Smart kid. 🙂 

So he’s working hard, trying to find the best deal that he can, but I don’t want him to walk into something that isn’t true. So when he showed me the Playstation for $15 I said, “Well, isn’t that interesting. Let’s investigate further.” 

We dove into the fine print of the ad, which read: 

“Brand  new PlayStation 5. Never been opened. I’m doing a raffle. $15 a ticket, 100 spots unlimited buy-in. I will be doing the drawing on Friday to announce the winner.” 

My son read that and said, “We could win!” 

And I said, “We could! But let’s just pretend that we’re this seller for a second. Let’s look at his play….what is it that he’s got. I just had to walk my son through this so he could understand what was going on. 

To help my son get a visual on this, I explained how this would work.  Imagine a box, and every time someone puts in, they get a ticket in the box. Well, if it’s unlimited buy-in, we’re going to get a lot of people doing this. This guy’s going to make a lot of money, and even though we put money in, there’s only going to be one winner. Only one ticket is pulled out of the box.

I also told my son he would have to do the push ups based on how much we put into the raffle and even then, it’s not a guarantee he would end up with the PS5. 

 Just going through this little exercise, he could see how it was going to be a scam. 

What I was trying to do here was get him to be curious about it – get him to see the way that person was playing it. What’s the benefit, the downside, the risk. 

Too Good To Be True? – Newspaper Ad

Here’s another one. 

$$$ 

$20,000 a month. Top sales person needed.  

Wear sharp, Italian tailor-made suits. 

Drive fancy European sports cars. 

If you have the courage to call, it can make you rich.  

Will train.  

When I was in the military, I learned something very valuable from a professor in a personal finance course. One day he said, “For people who want to make a lot of money, you’re going to have to either own it or sell it.” That rang like a church bell in my head. I would always remember that. 

I needed money because I was going to settlement on a house. Remembering what I had learned in that finance course, I was looking for a sales position. 

Going through the newspaper in the Washington Post, every single ad made reference to “experience needed.”  Every single ad wanted sales experience except for this one that caught my attention, which said “will train.” 

That is what got my attention, and so I thought I’d take a look.  Does it sound like a scam? Sure. But was is a good enough reason to stop looking? It wasn’t for me. 

Be Curious – What Would I Be Doing?

I answered that ad. I met with the guy two times and I just evaluated it. I looked at what I would be doing. I could see I’d be doing what this guy was doing. I’d be generating leads. I would contact those leads. I would set appointments for them to see a presentation. Then, I would follow up and some would become customers and some would become reps and some would say no. 

That’s all I would be doing. After evaluating all of this I could see this wasn’t a scam. It was quite straight up. I hadn’t seen anything illegal; nothing unethical. 

He showed me a group of products. Showed me the exact ingredients compared to products and other ingredients. He broke it all down for me. 

So,  I did it.  And this is the breakdown of what I needed to study to determine exactly what I would be doing. 

• What’s the person who’s running the ad doing? Same thing he wants me to do. 
• What did I need to do to earn $20,000 a month? I needed to get customers and train sales teams. That’s what all businesses must do.

He was showing me a plan. He wasn’t showing me a scam. It was a plan to get what was advertised in that ad. 

The Result 

Every single one of those things that were promoted in the ad, I was able to get, in the timeframe that he said was possible – in six to 24 months. I was able to get to $20,000 a month. Why?  Because he broke it down for me to see that it was a matter of quantity going across the Pipeline. And if I was willing to do that amount of activity, then I could get everything that was promoted on that ad. 

By the next year it was at $65,000 a month. And then it got all the way up to $150,000 a month within my fifth year. I was able to get every single one of those items that was promoted in the ad. 

Now, if you’re the person that just said, “Yeah, but most people don’t do that.” To you I say, “Watch out!”  That goes back to that suspicious thing. In other words, you’ve got to go back and say, “Well, what is the ‘doing’?” 

It’s not “most people” right? It has to do with, who’s willing to do the quantity across the Pipeline. 

And all I had to do was just break it down in my mind and say… 

Okay, so I’m going to sell this skincare kit,  and I’m going to make a profit. And with that profit, I can run ads in the newspaper. I can do postcards. I can do door hangers. 

I didn’t spend that money, I reinvested everything I made. That was the way that I was able to do the quantity that I needed to do. 

So to summarize all of this, when I’m looking at something and it seems too good to be true, I ask:

1. What’s the benefit?
2. What’s the downside?
3. What’s the risk?

Part of finding opportunities is keeping an open mind, and learning to discern.  So I say, don’t be suspicious of everything, but rather, be curious of everything.

If you would please, take a moment to comment below and let me know if you’ve ever heard “Must be too good to be true.”  What did you do to help resolve the situation? How did you handle it? I look forward to reading your replies. 

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