How much is your integrity worth? Mine so far, 2,000 dollars.
(This will be developed into a much longer freelance piece)
The Internet marketing seminar world is composed of about 5 main companies. Each one is the bastard, inbred child of the others. This is a world of half-truths, lies, manipulation and pressure all in the name of "opportunity" and "financial freedom" It is a modern snake oil sales tent with promises of restorative cures, and financial health!
The company I work for is only a little less sleazy than the others, which is the only reason I have stayed as long as I have. For the most part the products work, but a stone wheel rolls and what good is a stone wheel?
Macon, Georgia is suburban and sprawling across the Georgia landscape like cancer, eating up land and forests with an insatiable appetite. "There is money to be made here," is what our owner tells us before our first seminar.
The hotel with its dingy stucco arches and furniture stacked outside of the rooms, is a welcome sight after 3 hours driving. Driving with these men; stunted in their emotional and intellectual development shortly after their missions, is an unmentioned circle in Dante's Inferno. Constant fart jokes, sexual jokes, and the endless exchange of TV and movie quotes. With each new movie, a bombardment of one liners. Borat was an unbearable movie, not because of the movie but the constant, "Do you like me? I like you?" "Where is the pussy magnet?"
There is something unappealing about each one of them. One of the men has gained 80 pounds in the past year and is always asking, "Are we going to eat?" " Can we eat now? " "I need food!" There is one hungry and angry baby sitting inside his huge belly banging on the walls. I always sit in the very back of the minivan, surrounded by all the luggage and boxes. This is my sanctuary, where I have learned how to doze in every imaginable position.
The seminar beings with its usual assortment of participants. Late middle aged, old desperate people looking for a way to make a few extra dollars to pay for doctor bills or help their children out, a few want to be millionaires. There are retired train workers, a warehouse man, a teacher, a slaughterhouse worker and nurse.
The beginning of the seminar starts before the presentation. We are to mingle with the guests and schmooze them up, find out about why they have come. In the Missionary Training Center, this was part of the sales process for selling Mormonism Inc., called the Commitment Process and these fine return missionaries who own the company are well aware of its success. There are 4x more Mormons since I went out and that's when they started using the Commitment Process. So we small talk and warm them up.
The seminar starts with the fat guy. He's warming them up, and asks if anyone has anything to eat? He goes through the schedule for the day. He introduces himself and his qualifications, but doesn't tell them that he has been doing seminar sales for 10 years. Introduces the team, and his introductions are false. He then introduces the owner and main speaker of the company. I love this part, because the fat guy hates the owner guy but introduces him as his mentor and brilliant marketer. What one will do for money. At least my stripper in Augusta was more honest and had more integrity then these upstanding family men.
The main speaker, we will call him Ned, has a degree....in acting. He is good in front of a crowd. He starts off saying how great it is to come to work and have everyone clap, how many of them would like that kind of job. Then the lies begin. "Companies pay me $10,000 dollars to come a work with them on their Internet marketing" or " I kept on getting laid off after I set up a companies Internet strategies and then they sold the company." He never tells them that the last company this happened with......was an Internet market sales seminar company. He tells them about going to a prestigeous school and Ross Perot speaking, giving him this air or business authority. I wonder how many would buy from him if they knew his degree was in acting? I won't go through all of this lies and half truths at this time, that's for a longer freelanced article I am writing, but to say the least, I sat there thinking to myself....I can't do this any more, but damn I need the money.
Martin and TC were very young for our crowd, twenty something. I like them, they are bright and engaging. TC is a rapper and very talented and Martin wants to do something that will give him freedom. We go through the 8 hours of seminar and we talk through most of it. At the end of the day, they want to buy one of our products. I at least know this product works. They don't have the 5,000 dollars but can come up with maybe 500 and make payments. They want to get the seminar price. That's part of the spiel, " This price is only good for today!" The boss man wants me to get them to sign a promissory note. So I take them to the lobby of the hotel/motel and I break it down for them.
" I like you guys, here it is. The product is good and there is a potential to make some money with it, but these guys who have been talking to you, are full of fucking shit and 75% of the stuff they told you about themselves and the amount of money you can make is a lie. I have no respect for them and the last thing I will let you do is sign a promissory note binding you to them. If you want the product he will sell it to you in a week or a month or a year for the so called "seminar price"
It felt good.
Martin still calls me and is working to get the capital to pay for the product. I will make sure that if he buys it he will be protected.
How much of this can I get away with?
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