Make for the exit -- fast
Some time ago, in spite of my admonitions, some of my friends attended expensive courses put on by a promoter of similar concepts. They too heard the same pitches about real estate and stock trading. They were taken by the opportunity to make lots of money with little work. They paid thousands of dollars for courses, CDs, Web site use and books. The promoter made millions from his courses and publications, but lost money on his firm's own investments. He is now facing jail time for tax evasion, and his clients and employees are now sadder but very much wiser.

The shame of this is that these get-rich-quick seminars likely attract more clients than seminars given by legitimate, hard-working financial planners who charge low fees and recommend low-cost portfolios consistent with their clients' goals and risk tolerance levels. Sure, some advisers hawk insurance products and investments that help them profit more than their clients. But their greed pales in comparison to that of firms promoting schemes that offer guaranteed extraordinary returns at little or no risk.

The get-rich-quick hucksters can probably find actual investors who can testify about their huge gains at these seminars. But the odds of the average person consistently achieving extraordinary results are low. It's true that lots of money can be made in real estate deals, but lots of money can be lost, too. I have friends on both sides of that fence, and my own real estate results have been very mixed.

As far as stock market trading goes, if such accomplishments were common and consistent among the average investor, then certainly mutual fund managers would be able to easily beat their benchmarks and hedge funds would never get in trouble. But this is not the case. Far more mutual funds lag the indexes than beat them. Hedge funds have their problems, too. Consider the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management, spearheaded by some of the brightest people in the finance business. And plenty of hedge funds recently found themselves on the wrong side of the housing bubble bet.

Unlike much of the audience, I walked out without signing up for the next level of instruction. An old joke popped into my head that asks, "How do you make a million dollars?" The answer: "You start with 2 million."