Chapter 3: The Mentor and His Free Lesson

Tuesday Night, Week 5

Marcus sent me a link to Coach Dex's page this evening, with the message "Thursday! Are you in?" I opened it in bed, while Lina was typing code with her headphones on. The first photo showed a young man, not much older than us, leaning against a long, shiny car. In the second, a laptop was open on a sunbed beside a blue swimming pool, next to a glass of something orange. In the third, he was laughing on a balcony above a lot of lights. Under every photo there were thousands of hearts.

His page said, "Three years ago I was a student with no money, just like you. Now I work two hours a day from wherever I want. I'll show you the system for free." There were videos of him talking very fast in a bright room about "freedom" and "mindset" and "leaving ordinary jobs behind". Some of the comments under the videos were from people who said that he had changed their lives. Others just said, "Coach!" with little crowns.

I showed the page to Lina. She took off one side of her headphones, looked at the car for about two seconds and said, "A photo of a car tells you that someone stood next to a car." Then she put the headphones back on. I laughed, but I also wrote the sentence down, because I think it is true and I think I will need it.

I said yes to Marcus. I told myself that I was going so that he would not be alone with it, which is partly true. The other part is that I am curious. My two lists are still pinching, the textbook for the second half of the term costs more than I expected, and a small voice in me keeps asking what would happen if Coach Dex really did know something.

Thursday Night, Week 5

We watched the free class in a small group room in the library, on Marcus's laptop, with one earphone each. About two hundred people were watching at the same time, according to the little number in the corner. Next to the video there was a chat that moved so fast I could not read it, full of hearts and "thank you, Coach" and the names of the places people were watching from.

Coach Dex began with his story. He said that he had been tired, poor and ignored, that he had nearly given up, and that one day he had found "the system". After that, he said, everything changed. He spoke well. He looked straight into the camera, and every few minutes he said, "I know you, because I was you." Marcus nodded each time he said it. I noticed that I nodded too, once, before I caught myself.

Then came the part that was supposed to be the lesson. He showed charts with green and red lines and arrows, and he said words like "entry" and "exit" and "momentum" very quickly, without stopping to explain them. I study biology, and I am used to being confused by new words, but usually the lecturer slows down when a word is hard. Coach Dex did the opposite. Whenever something sounded complicated, he went faster and smiled more, as if the confusion were part of the show.

After almost an hour, he said, "Now, I can't teach you everything in a free class. That wouldn't be fair to my VIP members." The VIP group, he explained, is where the real work happens. Members get his "signals" every day. A signal, as far as I could understand, is a message from him telling members exactly what to buy and when to sell it, so that they do not have to understand anything themselves. He said, "You just follow. I do the thinking."

Then he showed the price. Joining the VIP group costs about a week of Marcus's pay from the café in town. But, Coach Dex said, for people watching tonight there was a special price, a little lower, for the next sixty minutes only. A timer appeared on the screen and began to count down, and the chat filled with messages from people who said that they had joined and welcomed each other to the "VIP family".

Marcus had his hand on the laptop. I could see him doing the sum in his head: a week of café pay, and then his mother, and then the green numbers in his group. I did not tell him not to do it. I said, "The library closes in fifteen minutes. Shall we walk home first and talk on the way?" He looked at the timer, then at me, and closed the laptop.

On the walk, Marcus talked a lot. He said that Coach Dex was clearly successful, that the class had been free, that nobody gives away an hour for nothing unless they really want to help. I said that I was not sure about the last part. He said, "You think everyone is lying." I said that I did not think that at all. I said I just wanted to know how Coach Dex really earns his money, and Marcus did not answer.

Saturday Night, Week 5

I had my longest café shift today, because someone was ill and I stayed for both the morning and the lunch hour. Carrying trays, I kept thinking about my question from Thursday. How does Coach Dex earn his money? He says that he earns it by following his own system. But everything in the free class led to one thing: the VIP payment. The class was not the product. The class was the shop window.

I tried to think about it like a biology problem. If someone had a system that made a lot of money in two hours a day, the simplest thing would be to use it quietly and make even more. Why would that person spend hours making videos and classes to sell the system to students for a week of café pay each? The only answer I could find is that selling the course may be the real business. Two hundred people watching, and if even some of them pay, that is a great deal of money, whether the signals work or not.

Then I took down the leaflet from the student money advice office, the one I stuck above my desk in the first week. On the back it lists the names of the official offices in our country, and one of them is the office that supervises banks and investment firms. I did not search for "Coach Dex" or click on anything from his page. I typed the name of that official office myself, found its own website, and read what it says about choosing someone to advise you on investments.

What I learned is this. In many places, people and firms who give advice about what to buy and sell, or who manage other people's investments, have to be allowed to do it by the official office, and the office keeps a public list called a register. Anyone can search it. I searched it for every name I could find on Coach Dex's page, including the name of his "academy". I found nothing. Then I looked at the very bottom of his page, in tiny grey letters, where it said, "For education and entertainment only. Not financial advice."

I showed all of this to Lina this evening. She said that the pool photo could have been taken anywhere, on a holiday, in a rented house for one afternoon, or at a friend's place, and that she could easily find the same kind of photo herself in two minutes. "His photos show that he has photos, and that's all they show," she said. I asked her whether it was possible that he really was rich. "Maybe," she said, "but rich from what? That's your question, not the car."

Sunday Night, Week 5

When I told Grandma Rose about Coach Dex, she was quiet for a while. Then she said that in her bookkeeping years she had met several men who sold lessons on how to become rich, and that none of them had ever shown her their own accounts. "Their customers were their accounts," she said. I asked her what she meant, and she said, "Let me tell you about a peacock."

Before she began, she asked how Marcus was. I said that he was thinking about it. Grandma said, "Then be his friend, not his judge. The judge is right and alone. The friend is still there next week." I wrote that down on the back of a café receipt, because I did not have the notebook with me.

Grandma's Fable: The Peacock Who Sold Feathers

In a meadow at the edge of a wood there lived a great many sparrows. They worked hard every day, hopping through the grass to find seeds, and in a good week each sparrow found just enough. One spring a peacock walked into the meadow. His tail was the most beautiful thing the sparrows had ever seen, green and blue and gold, with a hundred shining eyes.

The peacock spread his tail in the sunshine and said, "Once I was as plain and hungry as you. Then I found a secret, and now look at me. Each morning I will drop one of my feathers for you. The feather will point to where the seeds fall that day. All I ask in return is three seeds for each sparrow, every morning." The sparrows looked at the tail, and they looked at their own brown wings, and many of them paid.

Each morning the peacock dropped a feather and turned it with his foot. "East today," he said, or, "Look by the stream." Sometimes the sparrows found seeds where the feather pointed, and sometimes they did not. When they did not, the peacock said that they had not followed the feather well enough. Every morning the pile of seeds beside the peacock grew bigger.

One small sparrow did not pay at once. Instead, she sat in a hawthorn bush and watched the peacock for a whole day. He never hopped through the grass. He never searched by the stream. He ate only the seeds that the sparrows brought him.

The next day the small sparrow flew to the old wren who had taught the young birds of the meadow for many years. "Did the peacock's secret make his tail?" she asked. The old wren laughed softly. "Every peacock is born with that tail, little one. It grew, as your brown feathers grew. It was not taught, and it cannot be sold."

"But how can I know who really knows where the seeds are?" asked the small sparrow. The old wren took her to the great oak in the middle of the meadow. On its bark, the owls had carved the names of every bird that had been allowed to teach the young, and anyone could fly there and look. The small sparrow looked for a long time. The peacock's name was not there.

She flew back to the meadow and told the other sparrows what she had watched and what she had read on the oak. The next morning, a few of them sat in the hawthorn bush and watched the peacock for themselves.

Monday Night, Week 6

I did not need Grandma to explain this one. The peacock's tail is Coach Dex's car and pool. They are beautiful, and they are real in the sense that a photo is real. But the tail did not come from the secret, and the sparrows paid for the secret because of the tail. And the small sparrow's day in the hawthorn bush was exactly the question I asked on Thursday: how does he really eat? The answer was in front of everyone, in the pile of seeds.

The oak with the owls' carvings is the register. I like that Grandma put it in the story, because it is the part people do not know about. Before this week, I did not know that there was a public list I could look at for myself. The small sparrow did not have to argue with the peacock. She only had to fly to the oak and read.

I told Marcus about the register in the lab today. He listened, and then he said, "But he isn't an adviser, he says so himself. He's a mentor, and that's different." I asked him whether a message every day telling people exactly what to buy and when to sell sounded like advice to him. He thought about it and said, "Maybe, but it's only a week's pay, and if it works, it pays for itself in a few days."

I did not push. I remembered Grandma's words about being a friend and not a judge. But I am uneasy tonight. I keep thinking about what Coach Dex wants: for students like Marcus to feel that the price is small compared to the dream. And I keep thinking about what he is afraid of: the small sparrow in the hawthorn bush, the one who sits still and watches how he really eats.

What I Checked This Week

The claim was that Coach Dex had become rich through a system, and that students could learn it from him, first in a free class and then in a paid VIP group with daily "signals". The proof he offered was his life: a car, a pool, a balcony, and thousands of hearts. When I counted with my own paws, none of that was proof of anything except that he has photos.

The first check was a question, not a search: how does this person really earn his money? I looked at what the free class was built to do, and everything led to one payment. When the main thing someone sells is a course about getting rich, then the course may be how he gets rich. That does not prove he is lying, but it means his success is not evidence that his system works.

The second check was the official register. In many places, people who give advice on investments, or who tell others what to buy and sell, must be allowed to do so by the official office that supervises banks and investment firms, and the office keeps a public register that anyone can search. I found the office myself, by its name from the student money advice office leaflet, and not through any link that Coach Dex gave me. None of his names were on it. Words in small letters such as "not financial advice" do not change what someone is really doing.

The third thing I learned is that a lifestyle in pictures proves nothing. Lina says that photos of a car show that someone stood next to a car. A beautiful life on a screen may be borrowed, rented or simply selected. And even if it is real, it does not say where the money came from.

So this week's check had two parts that go together: ask how the person really earns money, and then look for that person on the register through the official office's own website that I find myself. If someone wants to tell me what to do with my money, I should be able to find them there.

Things to Talk About as a Family

That is the last entry in Tess's diary for this week. Online "mentors" like Coach Dex are often young, friendly and convincing, and they speak directly to students who are tired of worrying about money. It is not strange that Marcus is drawn in; Coach Dex has said, many times, "I know you, because I was you." Tess's question about how he really earns money is one that anyone in a family can learn to ask, gently and without making the other person feel judged.

You might start with these questions. Think of someone online who seems to have a wonderful life and who also sells something: what do you actually know about how that person earns money? Did you know that in many places there is a public register of people and firms allowed to give investment advice, and how would you find the official office that keeps it, by yourselves, without using a link from an advertisement? And what is the difference, for each of you, between being someone's friend and being someone's judge when you are worried about a choice they are making?

One thing you could try together this week: find, as a family, the name of the official office in your country that supervises banks and investment firms, using a source you trust, such as a bank's own branch, a library, or a school or university advice service. Look at its own website together and find where the register is and how to search it. You do not need to search for anyone in particular. The point is to know where the oak tree stands before anyone needs to read it.