“Big news!” shouts Jeff Lerner in a YouTube ad I just saw. “In the next 60 seconds, I’m going to show you the fastest way to become a millionaire.”

Shortcat is a keyboard tool for Mac OS X that lets you 'click' buttons and control your apps with a few keystrokes. Think of it as Spotlight for the user interface. The Shortcuts app enables you to create personal shortcuts with multiple steps from your favorite apps. Start from hundreds of examples in the Gallery or drag and drop to create your own. Shotcut is a free, open source, cross-platform video editor for Windows, Mac and Linux. Sep 04, 2020 On Windows 10, keyboard shortcuts provide a quick way to navigate and operate the experience and features using a single press of one or multiple keys, which otherwise will take several clicks. Jun 06, 2020 Shortcat is a keyboard tool for Mac OS X that lets you 'click' buttons and control your apps with a few keystrokes. Think of it as Spotlight for the user interface. Example: Using Shortcat to change DNS settings Download the beta! 6 June, 2020 - v0.7.11.

“Right now, there are over 1,700 new millionaires being created every day, in America alone, and it is more than double that across the globe,” he continues, referencing an article from 2016.

“People are becoming millionaires faster and easier than ever before. But how do they do it? And more importantly, how can an average person do it too?” he asks.

Now before I let Jeff answer that, here’s a case study you should watch. It probably won’t make you a millionaire, but it could pay some of your bills each month. And that’s a start, right?

There are no shortcuts

NEXT: 15 Mind-Melting Facts About This Business Model

Back to Jeff Lerner’s YouTube ad: “I did not become a millionaire the traditional way,” he continues.

“I didn’t work for 40 years. I didn’t invent anything. I don’t have a trust fund. And I did not win the lottery. But I did take a massive shortcut.”

“And since then I have made over $40 million dollars in my online businesses. I’ve been on the Inc. 5000 twice. I’ve won a bunch of other awards. And most importantly, I have helped a lot of people take their own shortcut.”

“Now, for the first time ever, I am sharing the secret to my success with everyone, for free, in a brand new book called The Millionaire Shortcut.”

Jeff warns he’s not gonna do this forever, but if you act now, it’s 100% free. No catch. No shipping costs. No credit card required.

He says he’ll send it straight to your inbox. You can download it instantly and read it in just a few minutes—as it’s less than 10 pages.

“You could be reading this in the next five minutes; and I promise, it’s going to be the most powerful book that you’ll ever read on the subject of how average people are becoming millionaires in the new economy,” Jeff claims.

Ah, what the hell. I’ll opt-in and see if Jeff’s nine page PDF can make me an overnight millionaire.

Is Jeff Lerner a liar?

Because he assured me in his ad that there was nothing to buy. Yet, after I entered my email, I was blindsided by this video sales letter. In it, Jeff pitches a $39 video course called the ENTRE Blueprint Training Bundle.

Which, if I’m being honest? Seemed like a bunch of generic tips and ideas.

Here’s how bad I do not want that course: I’d rather spend the $39 on a one night stay at a Super 8 hotel and sleep poorly in a queen sized bed that hundreds of crackheads have had sex on.

Moving on. The “book?” Said nothing, and said so poorly. It was a lame lead in to go watch the video and buy his course.

Oh, and get this. The “secret?” Find a millionaire mentor and copy them. Gee, super convenient Jeff. You wouldn’t know of any, would ya?

Shortcuts.com

Wait, what’s that? YOU happen to be a millionaire and have a never-ending series of courses and masterminds and live events I can buy? Perfect. Let me grab my credit card.

Also, I gotta say, of all the negative reviews I’ve done, Jeff Lerner might be the first to never say a single thing about what he actually does to make money. Nope. You’d have to start buying his programs just to find out.

You don’t think that’s because the only thing he does to make money at this point is sell you the “how to make money” stuff, do ya? *Wink.

RELATED: Should You Invest With Tai Lopez And Alex Mehr?

At a glance

Our Verdict

Nearly two decades after it first made an appearance on my desk, the mouse has yet to gain my favors. Modern graphical-user interfaces (GUIs) make its use practically mandatory, but I use it only when I have no other choice.

My dislike for pointing and clicking is not just a matter of reliving the good old days, when the only way to use computers was to type for hours on end—uphill, both ways—but rather a simple consequence of the fact that, unlike the mouse or trackpad, a keyboard gives me haptic feedback that allows me to type without looking.

I mention all this to help explain why Shortcat caught my eye. This little utility promises to let you use the keyboard to perform many operations, such as clicking textual links on a Web page, that normally require a pointing device.

Shortcat adds a systemwide menu to your menu bar (though you can turn this off) and lets you choose a global keyboard shortcut (I stuck with the default Command+Shift+Space). When you press that shortcut, Shortcat displays a small text-input box at the bottom of the screen.

As you start typing in the box, the app examines the contents of the active window (which gets a faint outline to confirm which window is being examined) and looks for actionable text items—buttons, checkboxes, files, and so on—that match the text you’ve typed. Shortcat matches in a variety of ways, including the first few letters of a word, or the initials of the words in a phrase (for example, typing LA will match both “later” and “load all”). Shortcat is clever enough to differentiate between regular text and “clickable” text (onscreen elements that can be clicked), and it can even detect items that have hidden textual content attached to them, such as clickable images with ALT tags on a Web page.

Shortcat highlights the first matching item with a very noticeable (but unobtrusive) green, rounded rectangle; if that’s the item you want to “click,” you just press Return. If multiple items match a given query, Shortcat assigns a unique letter to each, displaying that letter in the item’s highlight rectangle. You can quickly select one of those items—and, thus, turn its rectangle green—by pressing Control+[letter]; pressing Return “clicks” the item.

What if an onscreen element requires a double-click? Just press Return twice. And if you would normally use a modifier key when clicking—for example, Control+click or Command+click—you can simply hold down that modifier key while pressing Return to emulate the same action. If, on the other hand, you just want to move the pointer over a green-highlighted onscreen element, without actually clicking on it, you simply tap the Control key by itself.

With this simple mechanism, Shortcat allows you to bypass the use of the mouse completely, as long as the item you wish to activate is visible on the screen and has some sort of textual representation. (Of course, you must be able to tell what that textual representation is—in the case of image links, for example, that can be difficult.)

Shortcat is currently a beta, but I’ve been using it on my main Mac for several weeks and I’ve had very few problems. It has worked well with just about any app I’ve thrown at it, from the Finder to Safari to third-party software and developer tools. I have experienced a few hiccups here and there, mostly due to the fact that some apps were simply built with a focus on mouse usage: In addition to the aforementioned issues with clickable images on webpages, iTunes is somewhat difficult to control at times. (Then again, I have problems using iTunes’s user interface with a mouse, too, so this is unlikely to be a big surprise or a significant problem.)

Shortcat has to dig pretty deep into the operating system to work its magic; thus, although much of its functionality piggybacks on OS X’s Accessibility features, which are robust and well supported, your mileage may vary considerably, depending on the apps you tend to use.

Shortcat Jane

Still, Shortcat is more than worth a try. With very little training, it has the potential to improve your productivity more significantly than you’d expect—and to reduce the stress that using a mouse inflicts on your hand and arm muscles and joints.

Keyboard Shortcut Keys

(Note that the beta version of Shortcat is free; we don’t yet know what the final version will cost.)

Want to stay up to date with the latest Gems? You can follow Mac Gems on Twitter or on App.net.