There’s a self-help guru who I’ve been aware of for most of my life. In fact, you could say we grew up together and are of a similar age.
I’m not going to say a name, because he’s a multi-billionaire and, even though I’m pretty sure he has no interest in reading my posts, why risk annihilation? These days the sheep class, to which I belong to, has every right to fear reprisal from the oligarchs.
I grew up watching the career of this self-help guy.
I read his books when books were a thing. I would even go to the local library in the 90’s, borrow the cassette tapes, copy them and listen to them in the car. I remember painting my house back then, which involves lots of hours standing on a ladder in the sun, and listening to those tapes while I painted.
There were two or three of the tapes I really liked. I think they were about goal setting and finding your purpose.
Of course, he wasn’t the only self-help content I consumed. And I never got really consumed by his community. I read every popular book on how to be a better person, how to get control of my life and how to make more money and how to understand just exactly what the fuck was going on in this world and how I could maybe, just maybe figure out how I fit into it.
Spoiler alert.
You never get everything done. There is no perfect situation. Relationships are supposed to be hard. And life is a series of challenges. It’s how you react to those things and what you learn from them that is important.
There – just saved you a thousand hours of reading.
But, I didn’t know that at the time and I figured all these smart, smiling people must have the answer. Someone must have the answer.
And honestly, that’s the self-help industry’s stock and trade – pretending to have the answers.
It wasn’t just these self-improvement and pop-psychology books. I also read every new popular business book. And in between I read classic literature and science fiction. I’d like to claim some intellectual intent in all this consumption, but really it was my way of trying to figure out what was going on.
But, this one guy stood out. Whenever I was stuck, I’d reread or relisten to his tapes.
And, I’d do it in private. Because I wouldn’t want to be caught. That would be admitting I was weak. The men of my generation didn’t do that.
I truly got a lot of value out of those listening and reading sessions. They would get me out of my doldrums and refocus me on the tasks at hand. It was like a mental pick-me-up. Feeling discouraged? Have this guy tell you with conviction that you are full of personal power and you just need to get out of your own way and focus!
His real money makers were his in-person seminars. Where he would get thousands of people to fill a venue and whip them into a frenzy. I attended one of those. It seemed a bit too cult-like to me.
At this point, I feel like I’m standing up at my first AA meeting talking about it this way, but his content, and all that content, were inputs, that shaped my career and life. Maybe not in a radical way, but part of the tapestry.
For example, one of his later works was a book on money and investing that was, honestly, mostly unreadable, but, hey, if I can read James Joyce Ulysses I can read a book on famous money managers. I read that book and it really helped me position myself and my family for the relative security I have today as I’m getting ready to retire.
So, the bottom line is that I always had a positive feeling for the content. I was suspicious of all the falderal that made it seem like a cult, but I used what was useful.
The reason I’m bringing this up now is that last week I attended his yearly virtual seminar.
I don’t know how to put this any other way, it was weird. And I’m trying to figure out why.
He hasn’t changed. The stories were all the same. Actually, most of them, word for word, the same – which caused a bit of cognitive dissonance in me. How can this guy look me in the eye and tell this story with such passion when it’s the 10th time I’ve heard it? Like watching a person with dementia or a robot.
There was also this unnerving laugh track. I know it’s a Zoom call. I know how Zoom works. Everyone is muted. So all this audience response is pre-recorded and piped in by a producer.
Again cognitive dissonance. Does teaching need a laugh track like a 1970’s sitcom?
The teachings were all the same teachings. And they are still, for the most part, good teachings.
But it was weird, Maybe because I’ve changed. I’m different.
These yearly free seminars are an outgrowth of the Covid pandemic. He was forced to pivot his entire business model. When your bread-and-butter business is filling auditoriums with paying patrons for week-long seminars it really puts a wrinkle into your ability to deliver when the world shuts down.
In desperation he pivoted to giving the same content online through a Zoom call. And he has been repeating this every January since.
He offers it for free or for a pittance.
For me, already having a benign affinity for the content, and this being relatively free, and low barrier to entry, I’ve been signing up and watching it every year.
I look at it as a tune up, combined with nostalgia, a refresher course on stuff I already know but might need to be reminded of. A remembering of things I may have forgotten or taken for granted.
As a business move this switch to Zoom has been an absolute rainmaker for him. At first it was a response to the changing macro environment of Covid. But the Zoom seminars have become a gigantic sales funnel for all his content. I don’t remember the exact number, but I think it’s around 3 million people tuned in from around the globe this year.
Why is that important? Well, the biggest challenge for selling any product is finding prospects. If you can’t find prospects you can’t sell to them.
Let me explain.
This is called the ‘sales funnel’. The funnel defines how many prospects you need to draw into the top of the funnel to support the number of sales coming out the bottom. The efficiency with which you turn those prospects into customers is called the conversion rate.
For example, in the software business where I grew up typically you close around 10% of the prospects. This means from first call to closed sale you lose 90% of your funnel. I don’t know what the conversion rate for self-help seminars is but if you start with 3 million and your conversion rate is 10%, that’s easy math.
(300,000 new customers for you English majors.)
And throughout these free seminars they are always closing for the next seminar. It’s like a time share pitch. Sign up for the next seminar, if you act now it’s only $500 bucks!
(For you philosophy majors that’s $150,000,000 in new sales at a 10% conversion rate)
It really is Brilliant! And the content he’s selling hasn’t changed in years. So he’s got a product that has essentially no cost other than the variable cost of delivery.
Brilliant stuff.
(By the way, the reason I know so much about sales is I have also read every sales book ever written and listened to all the tapes.)
But, as I’m watching this beautifully executed sales machine, again the cognitive dissonance kicks in.
I see the people and the state of the audience. The audience is many desperate souls starving for hope, starving for direction in their fucked up lives. People looking for answers like a dying person looking for water in the desert.
And I’m torn.
On the one hand they obviously need help. On the other hand is spending $500 on a seminar and joining a cult the help they need? It’s starts feeling weird and icky. I’m pretty sure most of these desperate, broken, troubled people would drink the Kool aid.
Should this man have this kind of power over this many broken, desperate people?
The answers he offers are all good direction. To understand what’s holding you back. To rewrite your story. To forge a new identity of your choosing. All good and appropriate.
But my gut tells me that for these people, for this audience, many will end up trying to live lives that aren’t a good fit for them. Trying to rationalize the hustle that is destroying them and be convinced to try harder and come to another seminar. It seems based on a destination fallacy that if I can change myself to do this thing well I can get to a point where I’m independent and I love myself.
It’s the epitome of the hedonic treadmill.
How many more enthusiastic real estate agents do we need? How many more life coaches? What good is it going to do them to own their own business and work 80 hours a week and have the perfect spouse and 7% body fat?
Am I missing something? Am I too intellectual myself to ‘get it’?
And, of course, I’m a hypocrite.
If you had asked me for advice in my younger years, I would parrot all that stuff. And I guess that’s true. I did the work. I swallowed the anxiety. I started the companies. I ran the marathons. I wrote the books. I got there.
But is that is the only or the preferred path? And I think this path might be terribly destructive for people with different constitutions and abilities. But, in that I’m just pandering to my own ego.
On the one hand I applaud the way he lifts them up and gives them confidence to set their shit baggage aside and go after what they want. On the other hand, do we really need 3 million broken people starting their own businesses?
Maybe we do.
And, because of my background, the obviousness of the sales funnel mechanics, the social engineering and manipulation, the manipulative marketing tactics directed at people in a weakened state – strikes me as just a tad icky.
The funnel marketing doesn’t stop when you leave the call. I’ll need to mute texts and emails from his organization in the next few weeks because they have programmed in a series of tactics to get you to reconsider and ‘act now’ and ‘last chance’ and ‘only 200 spots left’ – a constant harangue until I block them.
I’ve reread this post at least five times. I guess I don’t have a point.
Or maybe I have too many points.
Some uncanny valley has been crossed from teaching to manipulating.
It feels like something went wrong somewhere.
And I’m distressed by that because it is overshadowing the real value of the message. And it’s a message people need more than ever.
It feels weird.