"Good advice is hard to come by "
, as the saying goes, and now, with the rise of social media,
free offers are piling up, and "FREE" has become the new marketing strategy.

So is that old saying still true?

I do believe so—or rather, that it will become even more important.
After all, we should distinguish between knowledge and good advice.
Information and knowledge are becoming increasingly accessible.
We’re already talking about an “information flood,” after all.
If I’m caught in a tsunami, my bottleneck is no longer a lack of water
but rather how I survive the flood.
The deeper you’re caught in the maelstrom, the more you’re willing to pay
to be rescued.

Maybe you're familiar with this story, too:

At a production facility, the assembly line came to a halt
because a machine had malfunctioned. The engineers couldn’t find the fault. Even experts flown in from the manufacturer couldn’t solve the problem.
Production had already suffered significant downtime. No one knew what to do. Then someone had the idea to bring in an old mechanic from the neighboring town and ask him for help—a man who had run a small repair shop there for many years and repaired old cars for which spare parts were no longer available. Perhaps he could help.

He came, took a look at the machine, grabbed his sledgehammer, struck the machine, and it started working again. Everyone at the company was happy—the assembly line was finally running again, and the losses had been minimized. Then the bill arrived: 10,000 euros. Everyone in management was horrified, even though they had averted much greater damage. They asked the old mechanic to reconsider his bill, arguing that one shouldn’t charge so much for a single hammer blow. The mechanic replied: “You’re absolutely right—that amount is too high for a single hammer blow, and I’ll correct the bill.” And then he rewrote it: “Hammer blow: 1.00 euro; ‘knowing where’: 9,999.00 euro = 10,000.00 euro.”

The key point is—and always will be—
that good advice comes at a high price. After all, building up the know-how and, above all, the practical skills takes time, dedication, and investment in training.

During a “Cheap Is Cool” campaign, people naturally always try to get a lower price. And above all, you get used to everyone asking, “Can you make it cheaper?” Why do tickets, seminars, etc., cost so much? The result, however, is often that quality suffers. If the quality is poor, you have to buy new advice or a new product. So you end up buying twice. The bottom line is that it ends up being more expensive.

Who can afford to buy something twice? The rich!

So it's better to weigh things carefully right from the start—you need sound advice, and that comes at a price.

And so a two-tier society is emerging in this area as well. Who can—or is willing—to afford good advice?

Sincerely,

Wolfgang Georg Sonnenburg

Winning for Life

__