Business: Rich and Lazy

He only works half the year in his stunning office on California’s Sunset Beach, and when he is there he puts in short hours. Even so, he figures to make $500,000 in 1973. In other words, Joe Karbo, 48, is the prototype for his book The Lazy Man’s Way to Riches. The slim $10 paperback, which Karbo candidly describes as “outrageously overpriced,” has sold 139,000 copies in the past six months.

Karbo, a bearded bear of a man, started a direct-mail house in 1962 to sell books on health, sex, beating the horses and how to get out of debt in 90 minutes (Karbo was once $50,000 in debt, and it took him three years). Before he wrote Lazy, he ran test ads for it: “I used to work hard . . . but I didn’t start making big money until I did less—a lot less. For example, this ad took about two hours to write. With a little luck it should earn me fifty, maybe a hundred thousand dollars.”

The book is part ripoff, part a paean to the potential of positive thinking. Karbo advises readers to see themselves as winners, and enter the mail-order business. He is less than specific about what one reader should sell, counseling readers to determine what they are best at, then figure out a product or service that can capitalize on that talent.

The ad campaign for Lazy is budgeted for $400,000, to be spent on ads in everything from dailies to girlies to Intellectual Digest. Instead of the shopworn “money-back guarantee,” Karbo promises to hold the buyer’s check or money order uncashed for one month; only 10% return the book. He also offers to evaluate readers’ ideas, and the letters are pouring in. Says Karbo: “I’m just as lazy as ever, but I’m more bothered.” And, of course, more rich.