It’s not private equity. It’s a Ponzi scheme of aspiration.

There’s a whole ecosystem now built on one promise:
“You can buy a business with no money down and become financially free in 12 months.”

It sounds like M&A.
It looks like private equity.
But it behaves like a multi-level marketing scheme.

Because here’s what’s really happening:

The people selling you the dream aren’t acquiring HVAC companies or running $5M revenue businesses.
They’re running content businesses. And you’re the product.

The playbook is painfully predictable:
1. Record a podcast episode explaining how “anyone can buy a business.”
2. Show a staged screenshot of an LOI or closing dinner.
3. Offer a $10,000 mastermind or cohort-based course.
4. Rinse and repeat until someone asks for audited results.

It’s not illegal. It’s just clever marketing.

And it works because the audience wants it to be true.
Liars, lying to people who want to be lied to.

They’re not targeting operators. They’re targeting dreamers.
People who don’t actually want to run a business, they want to escape their job.
They want the feeling of momentum. The illusion of progress.
And the $3K course fee is the price of hope.

They’re selling dreams and dopamine hits to 99% of people who’ll never take action,
but will spend $3,000 to feel like they’re closer to the life they’ll never build.

But hope doesn’t build operating discipline.
Hope doesn’t get you through payroll or debt covenants or union negotiations.

Hope just makes someone else rich.

Meanwhile, these “gurus” have built a business that prints cash:
- No inventory
- No staff
- No working capital
- No P&L headaches
- Just infinite leverage on a single idea:
That you might be one deal away.

Here’s the difference:
- Real ETA is a career.
- Real operators are heads-down, not hosting webinars.
- Real investors put capital at risk.

But that doesn’t trend on TikTok.

So we get deal bro theatre instead.
• Ring light gurus.
• Zero skin in the game.
• Fake LOIs paraded as proof of concept.
• And podcast guests with more followers than cash flow.

It’s not that education is bad.
It’s that the wrong people are selling it.
And the wrong people are buying it, for the wrong reasons.

So here’s a simple litmus test:

If someone’s made more money talking about buying businesses than actually operating one...
You’re not in a private equity funnel.
You’re in someone else’s content marketing strategy.