S3 E1: Becoming a #Boss

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Hey, dream listeners.

If you like this podcast, you're going to love the book.

Yeah, I wrote a book.

It's called Selling the Dream, and and it's coming out March 12th, 2024 on Atria.

It's about all of your favorite characters from MLMs and some that you've never even heard of, I hope.

Check it out.

On previous seasons of The Dream.

We have a ladder, obviously like most drug sales companies have.

It is not a pyramid.

I always like pointing in there's no pyramid scheme.

Those are illegal.

I would never be part of that.

When you're coming from a position of belief, you cannot be touched.

Nobody can touch you.

And you must build your business on a foundation of belief.

So when somebody says to you, is this network marketing?

Your answer is, heck yeah, it is.

If it wasn't, I wouldn't touch it.

When you unlock the power of your subconscious mind, it starts to grind and grind and grind and grind to make the picture that you have in your imagination a reality.

And you know what?

If people are making money in your company and you ain't,

it's not your sponsor's fault.

It's not the system.

We don't have a very good system.

It's not your product's fault.

It's not the company's fault.

It's not not customer service's fault.

It is your fault.

Do you ever

have any hesitation signing people up?

Like knowing that there is a high turnover, knowing that it is really hard to like make money?

When I first started out, you would hear so many different theories.

There are some consultants who will say that they only recruit what they want to recruit, which is people that they think are going to be like them, are going to be successful.

For me,

no.

This past spring, a small group of folks went to the Caribbean on a kind of work retreat with their business coach.

Only, unlike a work retreat, they all paid out of pocket for this experience.

But they were told it was worth it, that it would kick their careers into high gear.

The coach didn't say exactly what would happen on this trip, but at first they did some sightseeing, ate great food, and then did some outdoorsy group activities, yuck, like going on a hike.

The night before this hike or walk, whatever she wants to call it, happened,

they were told to prioritize rest.

They got up the next morning and they were told, Okay, we're gonna go for you know a couple-hour hike and so bring enough, bring enough water or whatever.

And there was somebody that asked how many tampons they needed to bring because they were on their period, and they figured out it was actually going to be longer than what they were being told.

So they end up going on this hike.

On the way out there, they're all packed in a van, like super tight

and they're being told hey I would prioritize rest I would try to take a nap and everybody I can only imagine what they were thinking at the time well why it's a two-hour hike it's not really that big of a deal we're gonna walk it's cool whatever this is Erin Bees she's a former friend and sort of colleague of the coach who put the retreat together And so they get there and it's the hottest time of the day.

They start walking.

They're in the sun.

And there is somebody that is a diabetic that sounded like required insulin and they started to have trouble with their diabetes and their blood sugar was spiking and then there was another person that was having some issues with the heat and so they ended up putting that person on the back of a colombian residence

moped to be taken into the next city and they kept walking and along the the the walk as people would say hey are we are we almost there

jesse lee had instructed the people that were aware of what was going on to tell them, oh yeah, we're almost there.

We're almost there.

We're almost there just to keep going.

And it was like this sick test of how far can I push them.

Erin worked under Jesse Lee in a multi-level marketing company called Prove It that sells weight loss supplements or something.

They're called drinkable ketones, which doesn't sound real or healthy to me, but whatever.

Jesse Lee rose so far up the ranks in Prove It that she claims to be the number one network marketer in the world.

And with that dubious title under her belt, she has started a new venture, coaching.

According to her website where she goes by boss Lee, which makes me think of boss hog.

And I'm sorry, Jesse Lee, I didn't, I'm not trying to compare you to boss hog, but every time I read boss Lee, that's what I think of.

Anyway, anyone can hire her.

You can.

I can.

Entrepreneurs, realtors, even people who just want to change their mindset.

And she says in return, she'll show you how to earn six and seven figure incomes in no time.

So long as you put in the work, she's selling the dream to anyone who's buying.

Here's a clip of Jesse Lee on stage at a live event.

So I'm really excited for this.

This is one of my favorite trainings of all time because if you haven't heard 130 times this weekend yet,

you can't do much without consistency.

Would you agree?

I forget who it was because it's all blending together.

But if you're working full-time on your weekends, you're you're working what?

Part-time.

And if you're working when there's a sale full-time, but none of the rest of the time, what is that?

Part-time.

And I don't know if they said this exactly, but

if you're running it like a hobby, because it's part-time, it's going to pay you like a hobby.

Not long ago, Erin and Jesse worked together, mostly remotely during the pandemic, selling that diet drink.

And Erin says, at first, she was mesmerized by Jesse Lee's raw-raw sessions online and at conferences.

When I was knee-deep in the MLM and believing that what I was doing was helping, that type of energy and those phrases and those words absolutely would get me going, okay, let's get back to work.

I can do this.

And whatever goal I was working towards, absolutely, yes.

Jesse Lee and I were actually very close.

When she was in town here, she would stay at our house.

She had the code to my front door.

So she would, I would know she was coming and she would come in.

She'd stay in the guest room.

She knew my husband, my kids.

We spent a lot of time together, a lot more than I think some of the other leaders on her team.

We were friends the first time she was teaching at an Eric Wurry event, which is an industry generic event.

It was her first time on stage, and we were like, wow, look at that's our leader, that's our friend.

Eric Warri, the guy who invited Jesse Lee to speak, is a huge name in this world.

Yeah, Eric Wurry is an MLM trainer, if you will.

He's a coach.

He's a coach.

Yep.

He's done it the longest.

And he might have like Tony Robbins come in.

He's had Grant Cardone come in.

Are you kidding me?

I don't know who that is.

Grant Cardone?

No.

Oh my God.

He's under federal investigation.

Oh.

For fraud.

Oh, really?

Yeah, he is a Scientologist.

He is somebody that he gives like real estate advice.

He's the guy behind 10x.

He puts on his own events.

It's that same kind of skeleton business model coach.

To have Eric Warwick shine his light upon you is a really big deal.

And it didn't take long for Jesse Lee to capitalize on the attention and build her own following in the motivational speaking and coaching world.

So recently, as part of that work, she sold that vacation package to Columbia to a group of her clients.

They got shuttled off to Cartagena, which is on the northern coast of Columbia.

It's gorgeous, just resorts and an old town and village area.

Those in attendance knew, of course, this was a business trip, so it wasn't going to be like all lying around on the beach and getting massages.

But this hike they went on that was supposed to be two hours and lasted all day and into the night wasn't exactly what they'd signed up for and paid for.

Erin wasn't there, but she was watching via social media.

keeping up with all the videos people were making about the experience, including Jesse Lee.

So I warned them, I said, i would prioritize some sleep tonight because they didn't know we said we're gonna go you know we're gonna go on a little we're gonna go on a hike tomorrow you know prepare for like two hours and look i knew it wasn't two hours okay we planned to make them walk five kilometers in direct sunlight on the side of a columbian road we planned it to be like this because the whole thing was i wanted to break people And at one point, Jesse Lee started to get really pissed, according to her on her video.

And she was like, we're just walking.

Like, I don't understand.

And then it's hot.

Like, I'm not going to lie.

You're on asphalt.

It's the dead heat of the equator.

We're in Cartagena.

Okay.

And we're just going, going, going.

And then first person goes like,

and I'm like, are you fucking kidding me?

It was 25 minutes into this walk and somebody literally is done.

And then I start getting mad.

I'm like, what?

And then this person starts to mention, well, I have diabetes.

I got to check my blood sugar.

And Sasha and I look at each other like, nobody mentioned diabetes.

Like we might actually kill people on this trip.

Like we literally thought thought that i was like oh my god this is you gotta be kidding me it's been 45 minutes at this time 45 minutes and i know this is a 15 hour situation guys 15 hours we're just getting started yeah okay

i was getting a little spicy And she just could not understand the fact that she, as the leader, did not prepare people for this.

Even though prior to this trip, she was telling people they needed to get in shape.

She was telling people they needed to drop body fat.

And it's just this sick manipulation.

And then they continued the walk, which led them to a beach.

Then they were rock climbing there.

And, you know, with some...

After this, they're rock climbing?

Yes.

How many hours is this?

12.

What?

11, 12.

You know, because they had all this trouble along the way.

They had to stop, you know.

So it's nighttime.

They're cooking their meals on the beach and everybody was probably so hungry by that point that they were like, okay, because they had just finished rock climbing and plus the walk or the hike or whatever.

Erin says, after speaking to some of the folks who were there, they all kept expecting the whole experience to be over like any second now.

Like, surely we'll go back to our rooms at this point.

Surely this hike will be the end.

Wait, no, surely the rock climbing is the last thing we have to do.

Wait, now we have to cook dinner over campfire on the beach?

And so then we get, I say, hey guys, we're going to get in the boat.

And you could see a lot of these people on their faces were like,

why are we getting on a boat almost at midnight?

And I'm like, come on, showdays, let's go on the boat.

Okay, because I knew it was going to happen.

And then they ended up getting on a boat in the middle of the night.

It was pitch black, according to Jesse Lee.

Middle of the ocean, pitch black, nothing to see but stars, no lights anywhere.

We're not near towns, we're not near people, we're not near villages, we're in the middle of the ocean, pitch freaking black.

And so they get on the boat and they go out to wherever.

And the boat stop.

And I go, okay,

jump off.

And they're like,

what?

They end up jumping in because Jesse Lee told them to jump in.

And I said, jump.

Jump into the ocean.

At midnight, I said, jump into the ocean.

So they have their life life vests on.

And you could see they're like, some of them are like, nope, absolutely not.

Absolutely not.

It is cold.

It is pitch black.

I do not jump into black water.

I do not jump into deep water.

I do not jump into the ocean, period.

Hell no.

But I didn't just take them to deep water.

I actually took them to

plankton.

And they see glowing plankton, bioluminescent plankton.

And everybody's like, oh my God.

And they're like, get your cameras out.

And then somebody's like, well, you can't see it on camera.

So they jumped off of the boat into Plankton.

And everywhere they moved, you see green glowing all over the place.

It was, it was everywhere.

It was everywhere.

You can't even capture it on camera.

What do you think her intention was there?

Just to see who was going to do what she wanted them to do.

And then, soaking wet, they had to sleep on the beach overnight.

If she really, truly were a leader that cared about her people, she would have known that this person had diabetes.

She would have set them up for success and said, these are the parameters for this trip.

If you're not in a place where you can, you know, meet these, then maybe don't come on this one.

You know, a leader is going to set these people up for success, not break them down so that you can manipulate them more to sell more MLM products.

But then after that, I think she went live live on TikTok.

It might have been on all the platforms.

I'm not really sure.

And she started to turn it into like a marketing lesson.

Like what she was doing, she says was intentional.

What she was doing, she was trying to say was storytelling and embellishing and selling.

And all of us were just completely dumbfounded that she would take all these people to Colombia and manipulate them in the way that she did with abuse

and say that she was trying to help these people in their business.

It's absolutely absurd to me.

And so then she's just started to double down.

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In that video, and say, No, what I was doing was very intentional.

I knew what I was doing.

People who were there corroborate Erin's version of events, and Jesse Lee's own recap, which you heard, did too.

But still, after the dust settled, Jesse Lee took to the internet to make fun of the criticism she was receiving and to try and spin it, to say it wasn't really as bad as everyone, including herself, made it out to be.

All right, so step to incredible marketing is the following.

Number one, identify the enemy.

Number two, poke the bear/slash agitate.

Number three, offer a solution.

I'm going to use an incredible, incredible example of this.

Now, this is based off of no facts.

This is based off of egregious claims and somebody taking storytelling and then turning it into their reality.

If you just look at her, she is 100% a sociopath, narcissistic, like total psychopath.

You have to stay far, far away from her.

And I want to make sure you know, she literally told people they were going on a two-hour-long hike and literally did not prep them at all.

This is based off of some claims I have seen that are very legitimate.

Okay.

I saw it on YouTube.

I saw it on TikTok.

And I'm telling you, she was storytelling, but that's not the point of her video.

It was all true to come out of her mouth.

She tricked these people.

She knew she was leading them to a death march.

This is somebody that in my opinion, people don't push back against.

They don't question her.

And so to have a group of people on the internet that were actually not afraid to talk about her and not afraid to talk about the tactics and and bringing everything up and saying this is not okay to be treated this way this is not okay for her to treat you this way uh was probably one of the first couple of times that i feel like that's happened at least to this magnitude

Celeste and marketing, guys, none of you were there.

None of you watched us prepare for them for days.

None of you watched the Zooms.

We're 90 days in advance.

I told them we were going to go on a hike.

None of you know all of the secret things, like the special security we had, like the extra people we had that were speaking Spanish along the way to make sure everybody was okay.

Nobody knows how many times we checked in with the amazing diabetic who had the time of her life along with the other 15.

And it's not all women and it wasn't a 15-hour hike.

I was with them the entire time and they were totally safe.

Be careful with people that use crazy sensational language to try to lure you in.

It's just marketing.

My name's Jesse Lee.

Follow along if you do not want crazy people telling you what you should think.

I have a love-hate relationship with this story because it's got everything we worked on in our first two seasons.

It's got MLMs, it's got wellness supplements, but it also has this one other thing that kind of powers those things, and that's a cult of personality.

This story takes all the bad guys from all of our reporting and rolls them into one archetype Americans love for some reason.

A person who it's hard to tell if they're really trying to help people or if they just love controlling minds and pocketbooks.

Maybe I should ask Jesse Lee Ward that question.

Stay tuned.

Who knows if the surprise survivor-like challenge in Columbia will have any lasting effect on Boss Lee's business.

It got a lot of buzz in that world, so it might even help it.

And Jesse Lee is far from alone in this sort of public fiasco gurus sometimes stumble into.

Remember Gwyneth and the jade egg?

I mean, if your whole business is like how to be above reproach, any misstep is closely critiqued.

Uber famous self-help guru Rachel Hollis knows this well.

You may have heard of her New York Times number one best-selling books, Girl Wash Your Face, which is not about soap, but about how to make your dreams come true through truisms like you're in control of your life.

And then her other book, Girl Stop Apologizing, which is the same book basically.

Her latest book, Didn't See That Coming, is a departure from the formula.

In it, she discusses her recent divorce that scandalized the self-help world.

I'm not kidding.

People were like, how dare a life expert get divorced?

And I didn't see that move as being in opposition to the product she was selling.

Isn't getting divorced a really good example of taking control of your life?

Apparently not, if your idea of a good life means everything should go exactly as planned.

The divorce shocked her fans.

Her husband and their love story was a huge part of her business.

But it didn't derail her career.

People seemed to understand that motivational speakers are humans too, And she sold millions of copies of that book.

But about a year later, in only 45 seconds, Rachel did something unforgivable.

She posted an Instagram video where she talked about some criticisms she's gotten around the hired help in her home.

Okay, yesterday I was doing a live stream and I mentioned that there's a sweet woman who comes to my house twice a week and cleans.

She's my house cleaner.

She cleans the toilets.

Someone commented and said, you are privileged AF.

And I was like, you're right.

I'm super freaking privileged.

But also, I worked my ass off to have the money to have someone come twice a week and clean my toilets.

And I told her that.

And then she said, well, you're unrelatable.

What is it about me that made you think I want to be relatable?

No, sis, literally everything I do in my life is to live a life that most people can't relate to.

Most people won't work this hard.

Most people won't get up at 4 a.m.

Most people won't fail publicly, again and again, just to reach the top of the mountain.

Literally, every woman I admire in history was unrelatable.

If my life is relatable to most people, I'm doing it wrong.

This post that she posted included hashtags that she added and those hashtags were Harriet Tubman.

Sorry, I'm not going to be able to get through this list.

included the hashtags Harriet Tubman, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Oprah Winfrey, Frida Kahlo, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Malala.

She definitely added Malala.

And we're back live during a flex alert.

Oh, we're pre-cooling before 4 p.m., folks.

And that's the end of the third.

Time to set it back to 78 from 4 to 9 p.m.

What a performance by Team California.

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Having amassed an enormous following through selling herself as just like you and me, only doing everything the right way, This whole, I don't want to be like you normal people at all actually thing was a slap in the face to her fans.

Still, if we were to go back in time before that misstep, you got to admit, Rachel tapped into something, something that undergirds what most other self-helpers and life coaches believe.

And that is that we live in a meritocracy and that capitalism is a reward system more than anything else.

The people who work the hardest, never mind if that work is simply making an endless supply of Instagram videos, the hardest workers, at least according to themselves, should reap the biggest rewards.

Wealth and health should be bestowed upon those of us who at least feel like we're putting in the most effort, right?

I mean, why would books like The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People or Think and Grow Rich be nationwide bestsellers for decades now?

Why do we keep needing people like Tony Robbins, for example?

What's ironic is when you interview people that make at least $750,000 a year, right?

Just under a million, 80% of them say they'll never retire.

When you interview people that make a very little amount of money, they all talk about wanting to retire.

And the people that do retire say they'll retire after 75.

Because the real goal is not to have to work.

If you don't work, you'll go stark raving mad because we all need to be productive to feel alive.

Mel Robbins, no relation.

So what happened for me is I invented a hack, a brain hack.

It's the stupidest thing in the world.

And it turns out that it's actually tremendously profound and powerful at a neurological level and at a scientific and a psychological level.

When I invented it, I had no clue what I had invented.

And it took me about three years from the moment that I invented it to actually realize that, holy shit, I think I've discovered the secret to changing anything.

Or Stacey or Kevin or Jarek or Kelly or Kim or Daniel, who, according to Google, are all life coaches in my area with the last name Robbins.

Brene Brown, Suze Orman, Eckhart Toll are household names at this point.

People we turn to for advice on how to live.

And there are plenty of celebrities who, frankly, have no business telling us how to live, but they're getting in on the game.

All right, now

here's the biggie.

Thank you.

All you.

Over 2 million of you?

You had a choice.

You ain't got to be here.

If you're doing whatever you do every other Monday or any other time, but you're not.

You're here.

This is a recording of a live event from The Art of Living, a brand new life coaching program from Matthew McConaughey.

It was a virtual live event, so that cheering track isn't real.

so

what am i doing here now i think we're all trying to figure out the riddle you know put put some rhyme to the reason and answer the bigger existential question of

what the hell are we doing

here in this life that we're living

in this life that sometimes we feel like we're not living at all

All right, all right, all right.

I could listen to this nonsense all day, and I did.

It's silly, but also enchanting.

What if we really do live in a world where Matthew McConaughey holds the secrets to happiness and success?

That would be awesome.

As J.R.R.

Tolkien made Samwise Gamgee say in Lord of the Rings, where there is life, there is hope.

And Tolkien said another thing, A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.

Except he didn't say that.

It was just some copy that was put on a movie poster for the Lord of the Rings animated film, and then everyone thinks he said it, but he didn't say it.

It was just like the advertising company or whatever, whoever put the movie up.

Hoping and dreaming for a better life is just part of who we are and who Hobbits are.

And claiming to have the secret to achieving those hopes and dreams and selling that secret for a premium is also who we are.

I should know.

I used to have an advice column.

This season on the dream, we're going to figure out why we're all so desperate for someone to tell us how to do life.

I'm not talking about therapists or financial advisors or, you know, like actual teachers.

I'm talking about these general life coaches, self-proclaimed experts that say you're the only thing standing in the way of your own success.

These are the people who rise so high in the MLM pyramid that they fly off the top of it.

Selling their perspective on everything you need to change about yourself.

Why do they do it?

Well, in this industry, unlike multi-level marketing, there's actual money to be made.

We spend $3 billion a year on people we think can show us how to be better people.

Not therapists, gurus, experts, life coaches.

If you hire a business coach, They promise you can expect a seven-fold return on your investment.

I shit you not.

There are love experts, parenting coaches, college admissions coaches, personal trainers.

There are even life coaches that are death coaches.

They'll help you have the very best death ever.

The number of life coaches in the U.S.

has doubled over the last 10 years, from around 10,000 to 23,000.

And that's only counting the ones who get certified, which is not a requirement anyway.

There's no standardized curriculum, no test, no license you have to get.

How does one figure out they'd be good at helping other people figure out how to be better people?

Who is privileged enough to hire a personal cheerleader?

And are they the people who really need it?

What is it about the American dream that says, try harder in these certain ways to wake up every morning as the best version of yourself and you will reap unimaginable rewards?

We're going to find out this season on The Dream.

Okay, so I've been shopping for a life coach.

I don't know how you shop for a life coach.

I was going to ask you that.

Because I still am not sure what a life coach is.

I used Google, first of all.

It's the place to be.

I googled best life coaches in Los Angeles.

Location, not an issue for me for a limited amount of time.

All right.

So this is Yelp's number one life coach in Los Angeles.

Uh-oh.

I just saw something I don't like.

But let's just watch the video.

Okay.

What's up, Black?

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Hey, dream listeners, it's finally here.

The Dream Plus, where you can get every single episode of our show with no ads.

It's $5 a month.

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And your contribution will help change the way every listener hears the dream.

We'll be able to take out the ads that we don't even know are getting put into this show, which is annoying to both you and us.

We're also going to have an amazing discussion board.

The interface has it cataloged under AMA, Ask Me Anything.

But I don't love rules.

So what I did is started a bunch of threads.

like ask Dan and I questions, general chit chat, just to make friends and and stuff.

And every time I've been in charge of a discussion board, I've made a tab called Women Be Shopping, and it's there.

And we're just going to talk about what we bought.

It'll be fun.

That's thedream.s-u-p-e-r-ca-st-t dot com.

Supercast.

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It's less than a latte if you live in Los Angeles.

See you there.