Speaker 1: Hey, Dream listeners. If you like this podcast, you're gonna
Speaker 1: love the book. Yeah. I wrote a book. It's called
Speaker 1: Selling the Dream, and it's coming out March twelfth, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, on Atria. It's about all of your favorite
Speaker 1: characters from MLMs and some that you've never even heard of.
Speaker 1: I hope check it out. Previously on the Dream. I
Speaker 1: come from a pr background. I feel like if there's
Speaker 1: anyone who can make this work, it's me. Hello, Vampire,
Speaker 1: You've run the sales record, you broke the sales pipe,
Speaker 1: and the reason why they're successful is they don't sell.
Speaker 1: We are all about sharing. You've unlocked the secrets to
Speaker 1: Eternal Live and then like millions of dollars still out
Speaker 1: of your keyboard. That is the type of language that
Speaker 1: they use and the visuals, so it's not that far fetched.
Speaker 1: But I will keep you posted. I just got a
Speaker 1: notification saying your amazing journey starts here. We can't wait
Speaker 1: to see how you grow the simple step into one
Speaker 1: of the best decisions of your life. Are you feeling motivated?
Speaker 1: I would say motivated is probably not the word I
Speaker 1: feel right now. She just sold you a shitload of
Speaker 1: product and she's going to get a portion of that
Speaker 1: her work is done for the day. I actually forgot
Speaker 1: about that part until you just mentioned it. I really,
Speaker 1: you're just transferring money from the later entrance to the
Speaker 1: earlier entrance, and that is the classic definition of a
Speaker 1: pyramid scheme. I feel like a hamster in a wheel,
Speaker 1: and at the end of the month, I'm reset to zero.
Speaker 1: On our last episode, Mackenzie signed up for her MLM,
Speaker 1: and the minute she hit confirm payment on her starter kit,
Speaker 1: she got bombarded with emails and documents and piles and
Speaker 1: piles of language about how she should launch her new business.
Speaker 1: In all that paperwork, a few practical suggestions like how
Speaker 1: she should post six times a day on Facebook, how
Speaker 1: she should magically find thirty people to make over in
Speaker 1: one month and try to recruit them mixed in, though
Speaker 1: everywhere we looked, we also saw a ton of motivational
Speaker 1: speech notes about self improvement. That we're encouraging Mackenzie to
Speaker 1: be her best self and become a hashtag girl boss
Speaker 1: was all you can do it. You can you can
Speaker 1: sell all of this makeup, and you can make your
Speaker 1: upline a bunch of commission and you can eventually run
Speaker 1: the world. This marriage of positive thinking and investing in
Speaker 1: oneself is actually the heart and soul of multi level marketing.
Speaker 1: No success is unearned, and nothing is gained without sacrifice,
Speaker 1: a strong will, and an unwavering belief in your ability
Speaker 1: to lead and inspire others. Imagine if at your current job,
Speaker 1: the size of your paycheck was directly proportional to your
Speaker 1: ability to sell a flawed mathematical formula so successfully that
Speaker 1: the people you're selling it to also want to sell it.
Speaker 1: Would that make you feel empowered? Does that sound fulfilling?
Speaker 1: That makes that make any sense? I'm not asking you
Speaker 1: a question, I'm reading my view. Was it always this way?
Speaker 1: Did the pioneers of multi level marketing intentionally tie money
Speaker 1: making to self esteem and therefore the ability to inspire others? Well,
Speaker 1: let's ask Dan. Yes, it was literally always that way.
Speaker 1: I'm Jane Marie and this is the Dream Episode four.
Speaker 1: The Mind is a Fertile Field, Dan, Yeah, what have
Speaker 1: you been doing? So? I've been digging into the legal
Speaker 1: history of mlams, and later in this series, I am
Speaker 1: going to take you on a journey through the epic
Speaker 1: battle took place between the FTC and the Multi Level
Speaker 1: marketing industry during the sixties and seventies, And while I
Speaker 1: was looking into the old companies and the history, I
Speaker 1: started to notice this thing over and over again. The
Speaker 1: language that we hear the hashtag girl boss, be your
Speaker 1: best You, that type of language that you cannot escape
Speaker 1: if you start looking into these companies has been around
Speaker 1: from the beginning of the industry until now. It's this
Speaker 1: huge part of how these companies sell themselves to the
Speaker 1: world and how they try to recruit you. And Yeah,
Speaker 1: what I realized is it always has been and it
Speaker 1: still is. Here's a guy named Eric Warre, and Eric
Speaker 1: makes his living training people to be a multi level marketer.
Speaker 1: Now now in fact, he's the guy where if you
Speaker 1: type an MLM into YouTube, he's going to come up
Speaker 1: like six times Eric's facetimes. Yeah, it's just he's there.
Speaker 1: If you're constantly feeding your mind and allowing your mind
Speaker 1: to be infected by negative, pessimistic, compromising thoughts, then you
Speaker 1: can guess what your results are going to be. You're
Speaker 1: not trying to look for an environment that will support you.
Speaker 1: Your job is to create an environment that will support you.
Speaker 1: Create You understand what I'm saying. So it's your job.
Speaker 1: There's another guy actually named Todd Falcone. He's also a
Speaker 1: network marketing trainer. Network marketing training is one of the
Speaker 1: most meta jobs I've ever heard. I'm going to train
Speaker 1: you to train people who then will train people. Well
Speaker 1: not everyone just knows how to train other people to
Speaker 1: train other people. You know, when you're coming from a
Speaker 1: position of belief, you cannot be touched. Nobody can touch you,
Speaker 1: and you must build your business on a foundation of belief.
Speaker 1: So when somebody says to you, is this network marketing,
Speaker 1: your answers Heck, yet it is. If it wasn't, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't touch it. I mean, you can hear this heightened
Speaker 1: sense of assertiveness, this extreme confidence, but it also can
Speaker 1: turn dark. There's like a back and forth between you
Speaker 1: can do it and if somehow you don't do it,
Speaker 1: it's your fault entirely. Yeah, you know, you come join us,
Speaker 1: We're going to help you do it. Oh, look, you
Speaker 1: messed up, right, that's your fault right here on your own.
Speaker 1: You know what, if people are making money in your
Speaker 1: company and you eate, it's not your sponsor's fault. It's
Speaker 1: not the system. Oh, we know, have a very good
Speaker 1: system it's not your product's fault, it's not the company's fault,
Speaker 1: it's not customer service's fault. It is your fault. So,
Speaker 1: like I said, this language is everywhere, and it's been
Speaker 1: everywhere since the beginning of the industry. And because I
Speaker 1: was looking into the legal history, the company that I
Speaker 1: wanted to focus on was the very first MLM to
Speaker 1: be prosecuted by the FTC. And this is in the
Speaker 1: late sixties early seventies, and the company was called Holiday Magic.
Speaker 1: It was run by a pretty larger than life kind
Speaker 1: of guy named William pmpatrick, and William pim Patrick is
Speaker 1: like the archetype of an MLM owner. Holiday Magic operated
Speaker 1: much like an MLM that you would see today. They
Speaker 1: relied on recruitment to help keep money flowing to the top,
Speaker 1: and they made really wild promises to their distributors about
Speaker 1: how rich they could become by distributing Holiday Magic. Unlike
Speaker 1: a lot of MLM owners does, William Pinpatrick believed that
Speaker 1: wealth was kind of out there for the taking, you
Speaker 1: just had to kind of put your mind to it.
Speaker 1: And we're lucky because he had this kind of manifesto
Speaker 1: that he wrote in the mid sixties and then he
Speaker 1: actually recorded it in nineteen sixty seven. The mind is
Speaker 1: like a fertile feel its size, the limits of your imagination.
Speaker 1: It like the field will grow whatever you plant. One
Speaker 1: seed planted and properly nourished with warmth and moisture will
Speaker 1: return thousands of such seeds. Work is required to keep
Speaker 1: the weeds from choking it, and work is required to
Speaker 1: nourish it. Because we know that everything has its price.
Speaker 1: He seems intense, he's super intense, and his story is crazy.
Speaker 1: What is it? Well, let's start at the beginning, Janey Okay. So,
Speaker 1: William Pinpatrick was born in nineteen thirty in North Carolina.
Speaker 1: He was born on March thirty first. Something that jumped out,
Speaker 1: that's your birthday. It's my birthday. You and WPP sharing
Speaker 1: some cake. His life had all the hallmarks of what
Speaker 1: all of the lives of the early MLM owners would
Speaker 1: kind of happen to. Being a depression baby. Yeah, being
Speaker 1: a depression baby is one of them. But also they
Speaker 1: tended to all be door to door salesman to start out.
Speaker 1: They started a lot of businesses but failed at them.
Speaker 1: That's entrepreneurship, that's what it is. It is you're right,
Speaker 1: You're right. We know that, while not independently corroborated, I
Speaker 1: have read in several places that he was bankrupt by
Speaker 1: the time he was thirty. So he goes bankrupt, and
Speaker 1: then he goes to college, gets his teaching credential, and
Speaker 1: then he starts teaching at a junior high school. But
Speaker 1: ambition would get the better of him, Janie, Okay, he
Speaker 1: had to make some money, right, so that's when opportunity struck.
Speaker 1: Let's just say that he was living in San Rafael,
Speaker 1: northern California, just just outside of San Francisco. The legend
Speaker 1: has it that one day he's walking down the street
Speaker 1: in San Rafael, California, and this scent is wafting out
Speaker 1: of a garage, this fruity so be lotiony scent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he's compelled. He at this point stops and decides
Speaker 1: he needs to go into this garage. This is a
Speaker 1: person's garage, a person's home. Right, he's been following, Yes,
Speaker 1: I picture him like floating up the driveway. There's like
Speaker 1: a weird greenish yellow waft coming out and he floats
Speaker 1: towards it. Anyways, he goes in and he finds out
Speaker 1: that I would never walk into anyone's garage lesser having
Speaker 1: a garage sale. This is a guy that smelled opportunity
Speaker 1: and he finds out that this smell is coming from
Speaker 1: this line of soaps and cosmetics that are fruit scented
Speaker 1: from a company called Zolene. And this guy in the garage,
Speaker 1: thankfully he was there, was sitting on just boxes and
Speaker 1: boxes of inventory of Zolene. Do you want to know
Speaker 1: what they sold? Because it's cool? Yeah, I would love okay,
Speaker 1: So what did they sell? So they sold lemon face splash,
Speaker 1: mint ice honey almond facial scrub. Wait, is that one product? Yeah?
Speaker 1: What is it again? Mint ice, honey almond facial scrub.
Speaker 1: Too much stuff, too well? And then I want to
Speaker 1: pick one thing or two straw berry frope cleanser. It's
Speaker 1: fruity beauty. So William Pinpatrick walks in and sees the
Speaker 1: guy and says, what is this? I want this stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your guardian angel. And somehow he coughs up the
Speaker 1: money to buy this guy out of all of his
Speaker 1: product and it costs sixteen five hundred dollars. What year
Speaker 1: was this? This was nineteen sixty four. Hang on, so
Speaker 1: you can do the math. Huh okay, how much was
Speaker 1: it again? Sixteen thousand, five hundred dollars? That is one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty five thousand dollars. This is a guy
Speaker 1: that failed as an entrepreneur, bankrupt, bankrupt, So where does
Speaker 1: he come up with that money? I have no idea. Anyways,
Speaker 1: he obviously changes the name of the company not to
Speaker 1: Fruity Beauty but to Holiday Magic. Now where were we? Ah? Yes,
Speaker 1: the perhaps evil genius of William Penpatrick and his wild
Speaker 1: ride from bankrupt businessman to junior high teacher to prospective
Speaker 1: of peddlers of Fruity Beauty. There was no YouTube in
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, dang it. So we don't have the
Speaker 1: kind of endless treasure trove of blathering on that you
Speaker 1: get from Eric Warre and Todd Falcone. So all we
Speaker 1: have to prove that WPP was just like every other
Speaker 1: one of those blowhards. Is that singular, rare recording of
Speaker 1: him part of what you heard earlier? Dan founded on eBay?
Speaker 1: But don't worry, it's jam packed with gems. It's a
Speaker 1: vinyl record and it's called have to look at it
Speaker 1: because it's got a long and important name. First, of all.
Speaker 1: It's put out on Holiday Magic Records, and it's called
Speaker 1: Redway and Blue and with a handsome photo. That photo
Speaker 1: it's like a painting, an oil painting. It's a m
Speaker 1: that looks very much like Nixon. Yes, and it's called
Speaker 1: Happiness and Success through Principle. I mean, if you listen
Speaker 1: to it, he has a perspective that you're just not
Speaker 1: going to find anywhere else, you know. Think. So this
Speaker 1: leads me to the point of the principle which I
Speaker 1: have discovered as a foundation of my security and happiness,
Speaker 1: which is success. My first inclination is to do as
Speaker 1: most men do, that is to confuse the issue by
Speaker 1: a lengthy analysis of the several specific issues available. A
Speaker 1: volume of one million pages could be written on the
Speaker 1: general subject, with a discussion of how many angels could
Speaker 1: stand on the head of a pen, to the the
Speaker 1: other extreme of how did the earth get here? Since
Speaker 1: I do not wish to enhance my ego, and since
Speaker 1: my purpose is to sincerely share with everyone those things
Speaker 1: that I have discovered to be true, I will only
Speaker 1: give you the principle, knowing that when you understand the principle,
Speaker 1: you will then apply it to the many available issues
Speaker 1: before you. It doesn't mean anything. No, wait, it's just
Speaker 1: a word sound that you can get lost in really easily.
Speaker 1: I'm reading the back of the record. It says a
Speaker 1: few of William Penpatrick's principles. Are you ready, Yeah, here's
Speaker 1: one of them. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being wealthy.
Speaker 1: That's a big one for him. That what you're doing
Speaker 1: is you're providing a service. So if you're wealthy, that's
Speaker 1: just because whatever you're doing is a great service. Obviously
Speaker 1: you're providing a great service. If you have the money
Speaker 1: in your hand, then you are inherently valuable. Wealth comes
Speaker 1: from giving something of to other persons who are willing
Speaker 1: to pay for this value. Each man in a free
Speaker 1: society is rewarded by his fellows in accordance with his
Speaker 1: contributions to his fellows. Should you desire wealth, find a
Speaker 1: better way of giving what you have to offer to
Speaker 1: more people. The more people you can help, the more
Speaker 1: people will pay you for this help. This is a
Speaker 1: man who owns a foraudulent business. Is it really fraud, Dan,
Speaker 1: or is the real fraud that you don't think you
Speaker 1: deserve that money? He just says he deserves it out loud,
Speaker 1: that's what he says, and then that's enough. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the idea I guess he's trying to sell people anyways,
Speaker 1: is that he deserves it or that you can just
Speaker 1: say that out loud, I deserve money and then you
Speaker 1: get money. Yeah, did it work well? According to the
Speaker 1: New York Times, he is a millionaire at thirty four
Speaker 1: and a multimillionaire at thirty six from this company. From
Speaker 1: this company that a guy couldn't even sell one thing
Speaker 1: out of his career, product that would not move. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the real product was him. It was William pinmpatrick,
Speaker 1: or the idea at least that anyone could become like him,
Speaker 1: I guess not the fruity beauty. Today I am earning
Speaker 1: more money each week than ninety percent of the American
Speaker 1: people earn a year. Soon my earnings per day will
Speaker 1: be Likewise. This money will continue as long as I
Speaker 1: desire it to. But money alone is a shallow thing
Speaker 1: and should not be a man's sole purpose. That's one
Speaker 1: of my favorite parts. This money will continue for as
Speaker 1: long as I desire it to. Well. First of all,
Speaker 1: William Pimpatrick, that did not turn out to be true.
Speaker 1: One of the things he was known for was being
Speaker 1: a proponent of what's called the sour grapes philosophy. He
Speaker 1: was widely quoted as saying, those who condemn wealth are
Speaker 1: those who have none and see no chance of getting it,
Speaker 1: which I feel like is kind of a deductive way
Speaker 1: of looking at wealth accumulation. There are many parasites who
Speaker 1: give nothing of value to an economy or society and
Speaker 1: yet demand to be fed. Oh, Peter's gonna hate kind
Speaker 1: of thing, so our grapes. He is like maximum blowhard,
Speaker 1: he is, but we can't blame him. It's what I
Speaker 1: would find out is that this is like as American
Speaker 1: as American can get and has a long history. Jane,
Speaker 1: do you know who Phineas Quimby is? Should I? No? Great?
Speaker 1: Then no? Okay, Well, A lot of this way of
Speaker 1: thinking that we're talking about came from something called new thought,
Speaker 1: and Phineas Quimby was one of the I guess you
Speaker 1: would say fore fathers of new thought. Phineas Quimby was
Speaker 1: a was a hot shot hypnotist in the early eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: right sweet, it is sweet, and he really believed in
Speaker 1: this idea that you could change your own destiny as
Speaker 1: an individual. It was kind of a mind over matter
Speaker 1: or a mind over circumstances, and at the time it
Speaker 1: fit in really well with what would become the American
Speaker 1: dream or what we think of us as the American
Speaker 1: dream is that you can do it if you try. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly is this. Everyone has an opportunity. Yeah, you just
Speaker 1: got to take a hold of that opportunity. You gotta
Speaker 1: work hard, be highte, be a man. Yeah, those two
Speaker 1: things are very important. Yeah. So he would say that
Speaker 1: if you could train your mind, you could not only
Speaker 1: become a success, but you could do things like you
Speaker 1: make yourself healthy if you're sick. One of the people
Speaker 1: that was very interested in his writing was Mary Baker Eddie.
Speaker 1: She was the woman who started Christian science and also
Speaker 1: very much believed in the power of prayer, in this
Speaker 1: case to cure yourself of illnesses and find the keys
Speaker 1: to success or within you or failure. So if you
Speaker 1: hold the keys to your success or failure, then it's
Speaker 1: up to you to unlock them. Is your responsibility to
Speaker 1: do that, and you have the opportunity to do that.
Speaker 1: And new thought would evolve through the eighteen hundreds and
Speaker 1: at the time of the Industrial Revolution, we had the
Speaker 1: birth of mass manufacturing, which gave birth to the need
Speaker 1: for a massive sales force to sell the products that
Speaker 1: they were manufacturing. So over the next few decades, basically
Speaker 1: from the nineteen tens to the nineteen fifties, there was
Speaker 1: a new group of people who would use ideas from
Speaker 1: the New Thought movement and incorporate them into books and
Speaker 1: seminars written about how to take charge and become a
Speaker 1: great salesperson. And that's where you start seeing books like
Speaker 1: The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peel, and
Speaker 1: then a couple other big ones were Think and Grow
Speaker 1: Rich by Napoleon Hill and How to Win Friends and
Speaker 1: Influence People by Dale Carnegie. But he's like rich already,
Speaker 1: Dale Carnegie. Yeah, No, he wasn't. He's not a Carnegie.
Speaker 1: He's not a Carnegie. But he did decide something very
Speaker 1: early on that was probably a great decision for him,
Speaker 1: which is he spelled his name with a Y when
Speaker 1: he was born, and then he changed it to an ie,
Speaker 1: which would be a Carnegie that we would know. I
Speaker 1: thought he was like steel magnet. But wow, okay, so
Speaker 1: he has so many interesting guys, so many interesting guys.
Speaker 1: The thing about Carnegie as well, is that he introduced
Speaker 1: something new, which is large group awareness training. And this
Speaker 1: is where a group of people get together and start
Speaker 1: to implement the tactics and strategies and psychology and practices
Speaker 1: of whatever group you're a part of. Also in the fifties,
Speaker 1: you had this prosperity thing that was starting to rise
Speaker 1: up in Christian churches all over the country. And that's
Speaker 1: where you get a book like The Power Positive Thinking
Speaker 1: by Norman Vincent Peel, who was also a minister. Yes,
Speaker 1: he led a church called Marble Collegiate in Manhattan, and
Speaker 1: it was a place where a lot of very very
Speaker 1: powerful people went, including a young Donald Trump and his family.
Speaker 1: No seriously, Frontline actually lays it out in an episode
Speaker 1: about Trump and totally captures this permission slip that Norman
Speaker 1: Vincent Peelee was riding out for the congregation like go
Speaker 1: get what's yours. As a young man, Donald Trump grew
Speaker 1: up hearing the gospel of success at the Marble Collegiate
Speaker 1: Church in Manhattan. Donald's father made short to expose him
Speaker 1: to Norman Vincent Peale, a man, can you face the future?
Speaker 1: It elevates capitalism, honors wealth by being one one hundred
Speaker 1: percent alive. You are in doubt with the tremendous powers
Speaker 1: of God, and you may have trouble with it, but
Speaker 1: you kind of handle it. So William Pinpatrick basically took
Speaker 1: from all of this stuff, the power of the mind
Speaker 1: to affect your circumstances, the power of positive thinking, large
Speaker 1: group awareness training, prosperity gospel, and he made it dark
Speaker 1: because he's very dark. And he created this training program
Speaker 1: for his employees at Holiday Magic called the Leadership Dynamics Institute.
Speaker 1: He also required his employees to go if they wanted
Speaker 1: to move up the ladder at Holiday Magic. So it's
Speaker 1: like a continuing ed kind of thing where you go
Speaker 1: get your master's and you get a raise, right, only
Speaker 1: it's creepy office retreat. Right after this conversation, Dan and
Speaker 1: I became kind of obsessed with William Penpatrick and this
Speaker 1: whole world, and we started texting each other weird stories
Speaker 1: that we'd find about two books that focus on William
Speaker 1: pen Patrick. The one I read is called Outrageous Betrayal,
Speaker 1: and it talks all about William Penpatrick and leadership Dynamics
Speaker 1: and how he took that new idea and also turned
Speaker 1: it into an MLM. Well, basically, they just recruited people
Speaker 1: to give these lectures and created a pyramid underneath. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that whole jam is like William Penpatrick's side hustle.
Speaker 1: Well it wasn't just a side hustle because he required
Speaker 1: his employees if they wanted to reach a certain level
Speaker 1: within holding magic, right, then he required them to do it. Eventually,
Speaker 1: the Leadership Dynamics got shut down, and we are lucky
Speaker 1: that they got shut down because they got taken to court,
Speaker 1: which means we have depositions and they're bananas. Because William
Speaker 1: Penpatrick he was just a maniac, Like he's a maniac
Speaker 1: about everything. Yeah, I mean it was like the most
Speaker 1: extreme expression of these ideas about power, and he didn't
Speaker 1: have an off button. So what happened, Well, so Leadership Dynamics,
Speaker 1: it was one thousand dollars to go for the whole weekend. Wow,
Speaker 1: some motel in the Bay Area, which in the sixties,
Speaker 1: which is like super creepy to me. Yeah, super creepy
Speaker 1: Hotel California, exactly, the Hotel California. That's exactly what I
Speaker 1: was thinking. So this comes from lawsuits that eventually came up.
Speaker 1: That's how we know all of this. But the people
Speaker 1: who paid one thousand dollars to be at the Leadership
Speaker 1: Dynamics quick aside. Also they had to go to get promoted,
Speaker 1: but then they also had to pay for it. It
Speaker 1: is such nonsense. But wow, so they pay a thousand
Speaker 1: dollars to be at this Leadership Institute weekend get away retreat,
Speaker 1: but it was the opposite of a retreat. What do
Speaker 1: you mean they want to hear what they got to do? Sure,
Speaker 1: they were forced into coffins. What I don't know, that's
Speaker 1: how you become a good boss. They were strung up
Speaker 1: on giant wooden crosses where they'd hang for hours, and
Speaker 1: then they also did group bullying, or like one person
Speaker 1: would admit something embarrassing or something or even just be
Speaker 1: a person, and then all the other people in the
Speaker 1: room would just be yelling at them and making fun
Speaker 1: of them. This is at a corporate training seminar. I guess, okay,
Speaker 1: I don't mean to be laughing. It's horrible. No, it's
Speaker 1: totally horrible. But he's just such a lunatic. This is
Speaker 1: taking this idea of challenging yourself facing difficult traumas through
Speaker 1: brutal honesty to just the absolute darkest place. There was
Speaker 1: a New York Times article written in nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: and this is kind of after a lot of the
Speaker 1: depositions had been taken, the lawsuits filed. The lawsuits concluded.
Speaker 1: It was talking about the coffins. It says sometimes students
Speaker 1: were stuffed into coffins and others were strung up on
Speaker 1: a cross, which we've heard. When he was questioned under
Speaker 1: oath about this, mister Patrick said, no, one was nailed
Speaker 1: to a cross. They were tied. He said, question, how
Speaker 1: was one individual tied to the answer, well, how would
Speaker 1: you normally tie someone to the cross? Mister Patrick was
Speaker 1: asked if anyone suffering from claustrophobia was ever forced into
Speaker 1: a coffin. He replied, well, let me say this. If
Speaker 1: they did, they got over it. Then he had this
Speaker 1: exchange with the question is the coffin a pine box
Speaker 1: or was it? Answer no, We had a modern coffin question,
Speaker 1: a modern coffin answer yes, question with a pillow inside
Speaker 1: and a pad inside. Answer yes, it's very nice. You
Speaker 1: would like it? What agree? He's saying that, being to posed,
Speaker 1: you would like it. To the lawyer deposing him, mister
Speaker 1: Patrick was asked another point about people being injured in
Speaker 1: the classes. He replied, I don't think those things are
Speaker 1: damaging a little painful, but a man needs to learn
Speaker 1: from his pain. And then we found that a couple
Speaker 1: of people who had been at one of these leadership
Speaker 1: things wrote a book. That's right. It was a true story.
Speaker 1: It was called The Pit and it was written by
Speaker 1: two former Holiday Magic distributors who were two of the
Speaker 1: people who are encouraged to go to these seminars. Right,
Speaker 1: there was a movie based on the book. The movie
Speaker 1: came out in the early eighties and you can watch
Speaker 1: it on YouTube for free, and it's called The Circle
Speaker 1: of Power. Anyway, the movie is presented as fiction. It's
Speaker 1: presented as fiction, but it's based on a nonfiction nonfiction book.
Speaker 1: And also, remember we're talking about this crazy stuff because
Speaker 1: this is the world that MLMs came from, which is
Speaker 1: just insane. One of the scenes in the movie, they
Speaker 1: start talking about this guy and some trauma he had
Speaker 1: had in his life. They were trying to make a
Speaker 1: breakthrough with him, like really, get to his core, get
Speaker 1: him to open up. Now, I'm not playing anymore. Everyone plays.
Speaker 1: We can't rush them until we al the throw right,
Speaker 1: and they know all of this information about him, and
Speaker 1: they revealed that they know the information about him because
Speaker 1: his mom told the people who are running the training
Speaker 1: program about this information. And that actually came from a
Speaker 1: real thing that happened. Yeah. So the author of the
Speaker 1: pit says in the book that a Holiday Magic employee
Speaker 1: was forced to acknowledge that he had witnessed his mother
Speaker 1: having sex with another woman as a child, and was
Speaker 1: later molested by his father. The instructors were told of
Speaker 1: these traumas by the participant's own mother, who was also
Speaker 1: a Holiday Magic employee. Go ahead and kill me. I
Speaker 1: don't believe in what you're doing. Have If I could
Speaker 1: find a way out of it, I would leave. You
Speaker 1: would never guts. I don't want the promotion. Obviously, Ted
Speaker 1: rationalizes cowardice with delusions of superiority. I'd like to straighten
Speaker 1: him out. That's it, right, So this was that we
Speaker 1: should probably say this was a really difficult movie to watch.
Speaker 1: I don't recommend it personally. It's a hard watch and
Speaker 1: it took us two sittings. It's just it's kind of excruciating.
Speaker 1: But that was a scene from the movie. Yes, and
Speaker 1: it's based off the pit, which was written about leadership dynamics.
Speaker 1: The thing William Penpatrick and all these MLM leaders have
Speaker 1: in common is not just the language, not just the
Speaker 1: fandom of this particular business model, and not just their blowhardiness,
Speaker 1: but also their desire to be rulers of the quote
Speaker 1: unquote free world. So William Pinpatrick, he ran for governor
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty six. He originally got the idea because
Speaker 1: he was good friends with the founder. This is just
Speaker 1: going to get weirder and weirder. He was good friends
Speaker 1: he had earlier in the decade become good friends with
Speaker 1: the founder of the Minutemen militia group. What yep, his
Speaker 1: name was, Robert Depoe. Robert and him struck up a
Speaker 1: friendship and then they came up the idea for him
Speaker 1: to run for a governor against Reagan in the primaries
Speaker 1: under what's called the California Theocratic Party, which was an
Speaker 1: extreme far right party. And him and Robert Depot also
Speaker 1: had the idea that Patrick run as George Wallace's running
Speaker 1: mate in nineteen sixty eight for president. So this is
Speaker 1: what these guys are scheming up. He's put himself out there.
Speaker 1: He doesn't give a lot of interviews, but he is
Speaker 1: obviously in the public eye to some degree through politics
Speaker 1: and whatnot. And the FTC eventually catches wind of Holiday Magic.
Speaker 1: They receive a complaint, and it's a complaint by one
Speaker 1: of the distributors for Holiday Magic, basically saying that they're
Speaker 1: is no way that they can succeed in this company,
Speaker 1: and that the company has in recruiting them told them
Speaker 1: that they would be exceptionally rich. That's the big promise, right,
Speaker 1: You're going to be wealthy, but on your wildest dreams.
Speaker 1: But if it doesn't work out, that just means you
Speaker 1: didn't dream hard enough. If you don't show up to
Speaker 1: a leadership dynamics course, you're not gonna make it. If
Speaker 1: you don't go to all the conventions you're supposed to
Speaker 1: go to, you're not gonna make it. But you can
Speaker 1: make it, right. That's the other thing is it's not
Speaker 1: just on them, but like they have the ability, they
Speaker 1: say to be a millionaire, and they're still talking that way.
Speaker 1: Can't just sit at home and imagine a Lamborghini and
Speaker 1: it pulls up into the driveway and somebody gives you
Speaker 1: the keys. It's not a magic trick. Like that your
Speaker 1: subconscious brain is working all the time, no matter what
Speaker 1: you're doing, it's working. It's helping you guide and shift
Speaker 1: and make different decisions. But if you get a clear
Speaker 1: picture in your mind, I believe you unlock the power
Speaker 1: of your subconscious mind. And when you unlock the power
Speaker 1: of your subconscious mind, it starts to grind and grind
Speaker 1: and grind and grind to make the picture that you
Speaker 1: have in your imagination or reality. So if you aren't
Speaker 1: a millionaire, it's because you're not unlocking your own potential.
Speaker 1: You're wasted potential. That's what it becomes about. Right when
Speaker 1: you're recruited into an MLM, that's what they talk about.
Speaker 1: They don't focus on the numbers or how it actually works.
Speaker 1: And other businesses, if you're asked to take part in
Speaker 1: a business to have something that looks kind of like
Speaker 1: a franchise, you would think that the numbers would make sense.
Speaker 1: Often with MLMs, the numbers don't make sense, and it
Speaker 1: is difficult to find a way just purely in the
Speaker 1: numbers to make money. They talk about it in terms
Speaker 1: of you can do it, you're expected to do it.
Speaker 1: It's your fault if you don't do it and it's
Speaker 1: not our fault if you don't do it. So that
Speaker 1: becomes a conversation, and I think that it just clouds
Speaker 1: over this idea that it's really difficult to make any
Speaker 1: money doing this. One of the reasons why this language
Speaker 1: is important also is because it's something that the FTC
Speaker 1: would reference a lot in their efforts to shut down
Speaker 1: some of these companies in the sixties and seventies, these
Speaker 1: false promises that the numbers and the structure of the
Speaker 1: companies wouldn't support. And one of the companies that the
Speaker 1: FTC went after was Amway, and it ended up being
Speaker 1: a really big case. And we're going to get into
Speaker 1: that a lot in later episodes, But right now I
Speaker 1: want you to hear a little bit of Rich Davas talking,
Speaker 1: who is one of the founders of Mway, because he
Speaker 1: has a knack for speaking in this same vernacular. How
Speaker 1: would we ever know if we could succeed the aviation
Speaker 1: business until we tried the aviation business? How would we
Speaker 1: ever know whether you could sail a boat? Do you
Speaker 1: try and sell one? How you ever know if you're
Speaker 1: going to be able to sell some? Do they try
Speaker 1: selling some? How do you know whether you could ever
Speaker 1: be a leader of an organization of hundreds of people
Speaker 1: until you try and recruit one. Just promise, Miltru really true.
Speaker 1: Rich Devas, don't forget, was the father in law of
Speaker 1: Betsy Devas, our current Secretary of Education. And in many ways,
Speaker 1: the marriage between our federal government and MLMs is at
Speaker 1: its zenith because not only do we have a president
Speaker 1: that kind of just talks this way anyways, but he
Speaker 1: also used to endorse several MLMs and made a lot
Speaker 1: of money doing it. Never ever quit to be victorious,
Speaker 1: you have to think of yourself as a winner. You
Speaker 1: have to feel that you're a winner. You have to
Speaker 1: feel that you're better than the competition. We want to
Speaker 1: end up being the biggest in the industry. We are
Speaker 1: going to be the biggest in the industry. It's going
Speaker 1: to be our company as a group. And let's make
Speaker 1: this the number one network marketing company anywhere. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Thank you. Next time on the dream Hello, Hello, look
Speaker 1: at you, my gosh, I'm good. We have a ladder obviously,
Speaker 1: like most truck sales companies have. It is not a pyramid.
Speaker 1: Always like and there's pyramid scheme. Those are illegal. I
Speaker 1: would never be part of that. The Dream is a
Speaker 1: production of Little Everywhere and Stitcher, written and reported by
Speaker 1: Me Jane Murrie, Dan Galucci, Mackenzie casab Lyra Smith, and
Speaker 1: help from Claire Rolinson. We are edited by Peter Clowney.
Speaker 1: Our fact checker is Michelle Harris, and special thanks this
Speaker 1: week to Mike Richter for doing the final mix on
Speaker 1: this episode. The Dream is executive produced by Laura Mayer,
Speaker 1: Chris Bannon, Dan Galucci, and me. We appreciate you subscribing, rating,
Speaker 1: and reviewing the show wherever you listen.