Charlatans have existed since the times of early America. These salesmen would sell cures to ailments and convince people that happiness could be found in a bottle. From town to town they would swiftly manipulate people to believe in their cures, all with the purpose of monetary gain. Surely this is a relic, a thing of America’s past that would never be allowed by the savvy consumers of today. Surely the laws and institution of America would not allow such blatant exploitation to take place today. Unfortunately, as I have found to my disgust over the past two years, this practice is alive and well.

The Charlatans of yesteryear still exist today. They move from town to town under the names like “Motivational Speaker,” “Inspirational Author,” or simply “Coach” or “Consultant.”

Buy my book and you’ll be a millionaire in a minute! Buy my audio tape and you’ll be a billionaire! Enroll in my seminar and I’ll teach you how to be a millionaire in 2 hours time!

These motivational charlatans spew their messages not with bullhorns or standing atop boxes, but rather through mass marketing campaigns, catalogs and other propaganda. Prosperity is the cure most Americans seek, and countless snakes tell us their oils will make such prosperity effortless. They claim to have captured Prosperity like a genie in a bottle, and can grant you your wildest wishes – for a fee.

“I wish I were prosperous,” the self-help junkie says as he puts another recycled motivational speech into his tape deck. Does his wish come true?

We see the “cribs” of athletes and actors on TV and wonder what it would be like to have riches like they do, to have fun like they do. Wish number 2 – “I wish I could be like they are.” Does his second wish come true?

The notion of Effortless Prosperity is a disease that is rotting away at the heart of America. The entrepreneurial spirit is under attack by a cancer from within. Every day more and more people leap blindly into what they think is entrepreneurship, leaving behind stability for the promise of success. They don’t care that they are without a plan or strategy, and know only that they want a way out of the pain that our mediocre educational system has inflicted upon them.

Problem is, they won’t learn any more from the plethora of speakers pawning themselves off as success coaches and teachers. The reality is that these motivational speakers oftentimes have no right to “teach” teach because they themselves have only been successful through making people pay for his or her concept of success. The old saying that “those that can’t do, teach” is never truer than when I have witnessed such “teachers” draining the entrepreneur’s spirit (and bank account).

As a speaker myself, I entered the world of motivational speaking with an open mind, or perhaps naïve, as the veterans of the industry would say to me backstage. I came on the scene thinking that my colleagues must be good people who care only for the outcome their messages will have on those they teach. I assumed that the people within the business must all be qualified to teach on their topics. What I found was the opposite.

I found that these charlatans were after nothing more than the wallet of each and every person in their audiences. I came to my own learning from the works of Hill, Carnegie and Nightingale, whose messages were new and pure. A stark contrast to these pillars of contribution, today’s charlatans were armed with the most advanced tools of psychology and human behavior. Sitting backstage in the green rooms, I would learn of these tools.

A speaker would walk off stage with an evil smirk and declare, “I closed the room,” or basically sucked the audience dry. “How much did you get?” another would ask. “$250,000…” You’d think they were speaking to 20,000 people by those numbers. Not so. I witnessed a group of 500 people part with over half of a million dollars that day.

What value did those people receive for having in many cases leveraged their life’s saving (or their credit card balance) to purchase the drug of effortless prosperity? A recycled message plagiarized from every other before him. Most junkies never open the box, one speaker told me.

An observer to this, my first instinct was that this didn’t seem right. Having been an entrepreneur and a salesman for nearly 10 years, I started exploring their business models. What I found was that the money behind selling this notion of effortless prosperity was massive. The addiction America has with this drug consumes billions each year and these charlatans weren’t going to be stopped unless a cure for the disease of effortless prosperity was injected into the system of capitalism.

Such drug addiction deteriorates the entrepreneurial muscle of America. While other nations are building their culture and their industry on the values of hard work, sacrifice and commitment (the way early industries such as Ford, Getty and Carnegie built America), today’s message of choice seems to be the drug of effortless prosperity. Like any other drug, this is only fueling the competitive armies of those that seek to unseat our world dominance on capitalism. We face the prospect of losing our standing atop the world economy because of a culture of laziness built around a message that benefits those who write it rather than those who read it.

While these charlatans most be stopped, they are not the only ones at fault. As with a drug epidemic, there will be supply as long as there is demand. The solution is not just about punishing the suppliers, but also about rehabilitating the abusers into recovery, perhaps into a 12 step program that looks something like this:

Work your ass off.

Don’t give up, ever. Whether hope is gone or you think you’re going to die, don’t give up.

When faced with defeat, rise to your feet! Be committed long-term.

Keep angling. Find your angle and don’t be afraid to doubt yourself. Rejoice in your self-doubt.

Sacrifice. What are you willing to give to have your dream? How much of your life would you give for the amount of prosperity you seek?

Embrace the moment. It only gets better from this point forward.

Shake off your mistakes, but don’t repeat them.

Bank your lessons. When you see a problem creeping back a second time, put the fire out before it gets out of control.

Be grateful. Be grateful that you have a dream.

Remember that you are not safe. Even if you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there.

Do what you love and make it fun; if it’s not fun you’ll either quit or die unhappy.

Take action every day. You’ve got everything you need to succeed.